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- abstract below

Reading development in bilingual biscriptal children

Sharon Chong and W. L. Lee

National Neuroscience Institute of Singapore sharoncsk@hotmail.com

Abstract

Most of the research in developmental dyslexia has been carried out on the English language, which is an alphabetic script. Recent research on dyslexia in other types of writing systems (e.g., Japanese kanji, which is a syllabic script) has mostly been carried out on acquired dyslexia. There is little research on developmental dyslexia in Chinese, which is morphosyllabic in nature. Knowing the factors that contribute to the reading development of Chinese will aid in the early identification and remediation of children who are dyslexic. The aim of this study was to identify cognitive, linguistic and phonological factors that contribute to successful literacy development in both English and Chinese in bilingual biscriptal children in Singapore. It was found that the pattern of English literacy development for Singapore children, who are exposed to a different writing script and a different teaching method, is different from that of unilinguals elsewhere. Letter-name knowledge and phonological awareness appeared to play little role in the reading development of bilingual biscriptal children, while phonological memory and oral language were the best predictor of later reading achievement. Oral language and phonological memory were also identified as factors pertinent to the development of Chinese reading. Implications of these findings are discussed.

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