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Phonological specificity relates to phonological awareness and reading ability in English–French bilingual children

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Abstract

The 1-year longitudinal study presented here examined the extent to which the ability to build phonologically specific lexical entries as a result of increasing vocabulary size predicts word reading via its impact on phonological awareness within and across languages in 62 emerging English (L1) and French (L2) Grade 1 children (M = 75.69 months, SD = 3.18) enrolled in an early French immersion program in Canada. Lexical specificity was assessed with a computerized word learning game in which children were taught new English (e.g., ‘foal’ and ‘sole’) and French (e.g., bac ‘bin’ and bague ‘ring’) word pairs contrasted by minimal phonological differences. The results revealed that the specificity of English words at the beginning of Grade 1 predicted English word reading at the end of Grade 1 and that this relationship was mediated by English phonological awareness at the beginning of Grade 1. French lexical specificity at the beginning of Grade 1 did not predict French word reading at the end of Grade 1. Notably, English lexical specificity at the beginning of Grade 1 also predicted French word reading at the end of Grade 1 and this relationship was mediated by English phonological awareness at the beginning of Grade 1. It is concluded that exposure to word pairs involving minimal phonological contrasts fosters phonological awareness, which in turn facilitates word reading within the L1 that then transfers to the L2.

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Notes

  1. One participant did not respond to this question.

  2. One participant in the ELL group did not respond to this question.

  3. A higher threshold for the ceiling rule was implemented in French because results obtained from piloting the measure revealed that children required six (as opposed to three) items in order to be able to consider the remaining higher-level items as too difficult.

  4. T tests between ELL and EL1 children revealed equal variances between the groups based on Levene’s test for equality of variances. There were no significant differences in means between the groups on any of the measures reported in this study (available from the authors upon request).

  5. There was no significant difference between EL1 and ELL children as concerns the number of minimal-pairs that were learned.

  6. There were nine (out of ten) different unique-to-English phonological contrasts versus seven unique-to-French contrasts. Moreover, whereas each of the nine different English contrasts involved a distinct set of phonemes, in French, the variety of contrasts was more limited (four involved /R/, five nasal vowels).

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Development Grant (to X.C.). Opinions reflect those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the funding agency. The author(s) had no financial or other conflicts of interest. A special thank you to Dr. Esther Geva, Dr. Alexandra Gottardo, and Alexandra Bellissimo for their invaluable guidance and support throughout the project. This research would not have been possible without the support of the teachers, parents, and children at our partner schools, in addition to all of the research assistants of the Multilingualism and Literacy Lab.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor St. W., Toronto, ON, M5S 1V6, Canada

    Klaudia Krenca, Xi Chen & Sharry Shakory

  2. Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands

    Eliane Segers & Ludo Verhoeven

  3. Department of French, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

    Jeffrey Steele

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  1. Klaudia Krenca
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  2. Eliane Segers
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  3. Xi Chen
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  4. Sharry Shakory
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  6. Ludo Verhoeven
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Correspondence to Klaudia Krenca.

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Krenca, K., Segers, E., Chen, X. et al. Phonological specificity relates to phonological awareness and reading ability in English–French bilingual children. Read Writ 33, 267–291 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-019-09959-2

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