The Role of Phonological Awareness in Early Writing Development of Spanish-English Bilingual Children

• In Event: Roundtable Session 37
  In Roundtable Session: Biliteracy Trajectories: Patterns of Language Use and Development

Abstract

The purpose of this study is twofold: 1) to identify which basic early literacy skills are capable of predicting bilingual children’s writing performance over two years; and 2) to examine whether these literacy skills in one language may exert cross-language impact on writing performance in the other language. To this purpose, we followed a sample of thirty-six Spanish/English bilingual 1st graders through 2nd grade. Regression analyses were conducted to examine the longitudinal relationship between their early literacy skills in grade 1 and writing performance in grade 2. Spanish phonological awareness was found to be the significant predictor of Spanish narrative writing, whereas English spelling as the significant predictor of English narrative writing.

Authors

• Shuang Wu, Texas A&M University

• Elba Barahona, Texas A&M University - College Station

• Zhuo Chen

• Renata Burgess-Brigham McFail, Texas A&M University - College Station

• Angelica Ribeiro, Texas A&M University - College Station

• Eman Hasan, Texas A&M University - College Station

• L. Quentin Dixon, Texas A&M University - College Station