‘Multiliteracy in primary school: the relationship between learning to read in the heritage language and literacy skills in the majority language’

Prof Dr Theodoros Marinis, University of Konstanz, Germany

Growing up bilingually and acquiring two languages in their spoken and sometimes written form has been shown to influence literacy development positively (Durgunoglu, Nagy and Hancin-Bhatt, 1993; Niolaki and Masterson, 2012). However, it is not clear whether learning to read in the heritage language supports literacy skills in the majority language and whether this changes over time. In this talk I will present results from a study (Papastefanou, in progess) addressing literacy development in primary school children in the UK who acquire Greek as a heritage and English as a majority language compared to monolingual English children in Year 1 and 3. 40 Greek-English speaking children (Year 1=20; Year 3=20) and 40 monolingual English speaking children (Year 1=20; Year 3=20) participated in tasks measuring phonological awareness and reading decoding tasks in Greek, the heritage language and English, the majority language. Parents completed the LITMUS-PABIQ questionnaire (Tuller, 2015) to obtain language history/use data. The Greek-English children were dominant in Greek before entering primary school but they were dominant in English at the time of testing. In line with their language dominance, their performance was higher in English than Greek across school years and tasks. Importantly, Greek-English children were more accurate than monolingual English children in phonological awareness and reading decoding tasks. The results confirm that language dominance affects language and literacy development and suggest cross-language transfer of phonological awareness and reading decoding skills. Reading instruction and/or learning to read in a language with transparent orthography (Greek) can benefit literacy developemt of a language with opaque orthography (English).

 

Lunedì 29 ottobre 2018, ore 14.30

Sala Lauree del Dipartimento di Psicologia, UNIMIB, U6 (3° piano)

Tutti gli interessati sono invitati a partecipare.

Per informazioni:

Prof.ssa Maria Teresa Guasti

mariateresa.guasti@unimib.it