Development of Phonological Awareness Among Learners of Typologically Distant Languages: A Study With Korean-Speaking EFL (English as a Foreign Language) Children

• In Event: Poster Session 6
  In Poster Session: Bilingualism/English as a Second Language

Abstract

The current study critically extends the scope of previous research on biliteracy development by systematically examining the development of phonological awareness among Korean-speaking children who learned English as a foreign language. Specifically, the study investigated their processing of subsyllabic unites in English and Korean. Participants in this study included a total of 123 second- and fourth-grade student in a large urban school district in Seoul, Korea. Results showed that Korean-speaking children had different degrees of sensitivity to the subsyllabic units and sounds in their first and the second languages. Given the similarities and differences in orthography and phonology between English and Korean, the study produces findings with both theoretical and practical implication for biliteracy development from a broad cross-language perspective.

Authors

• Tae-Jin Kim, Northern Illinois University

• Li-Jen Kuo, Northern Illinois University