Early skills that predict English reading ability: A longitudinal study of bilingual children from 5 to 10 years

• Published in: Journal of experimental child psychology Vol. 246; p. 105993
• Main Authors: Giguere, David, Tulloch, Michelle K., Core, Cynthia, Hoff, Erika
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01-10-2024
• Subjects: Bilingual development; Child; Child, Preschool; Comprehension; Female; Humans; Language transfer; Longitudinal Studies; Male; Multilingualism; Oral skills; Phonetics; Reading; Reading comprehension; Vocabulary; Word reading; Oral skills; Bilingual development; Word reading; Reading comprehension; Language transfer
• ISSN: 0022-0965; 1096-0457; 1096-0457
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2024.105993

•Spanish phonological awareness and concepts about print predict English decoding.•Spanish phonological awareness and English vocabulary predict reading comprehension.•Phonological awareness is a language-general skill that supports reading.•Vocabulary knowledge has a language-specific benefit to reading comprehension.•In bilinguals, the reading gap associated with early oral skills narrows over time.
Despite substantial research, the contribution of oral language skills acquired in Spanish to Spanish–English bilingual children’s acquisition of English reading skill is unclear. The current study addressed this question with data on the oral language and pre-literacy skills of 101 Spanish–English bilingual learners at 5 years of age and their English word reading (i.e., decoding) and reading comprehension skills at 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 years. Separate multilevel models using English language, Spanish language, and pre-literacy skills as predictors of these outcomes identified English phonological awareness, Spanish phonological awareness, and concepts of print knowledge as positive predictors of word reading. A final model including all these significant predictors found only Spanish phonological awareness and concept of print to be significant predictors. Significant predictors of reading comprehension in separate models were English vocabulary, Spanish phonological awareness, and concepts about print. In the final model, only English vocabulary and Spanish phonological awareness predicted English reading comprehension. These findings provide evidence that phonological awareness is a language-general skill that supports reading across languages, consistent with the common underlying proficiency model of bilingual reading development. The finding that only English vocabulary predicts English reading comprehension suggests that vocabulary knowledge is not part of a common underlying proficiency but is language specific in its value to reading ability.