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English phonological specificity predicts early French reading difficulty in emerging bilingual children

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Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine the predictive value of a dynamic test of English and French lexical specificity on at-risk reading classification in 13 at-risk and 44 not at-risk emerging English (L1)–French (L2) bilingual Grade 1 children (M = 75.87 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 indicated that the dynamic test of lexical specificity in English contributed significantly to the prediction of children’s French at-risk reading status at the end of Grade 1 after controlling for French phonological awareness and nonverbal reasoning skills. However, French lexical specificity did not predict children’s reading risk classification in French after controlling for French phonological awareness. Thus, it may be feasible to identify at-risk status in emerging bilinguals using dynamic measures in their stronger language.

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Notes

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

  2. 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.

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Acknowledgments

A special thanks to Dr. Jeffrey Steele, Dr. Eliane Segers, Dr. Ludo Verhoeven, Sharry Shakory, 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.

Funding

This research was funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Development Grant No. 430-2015-00786 (to X.C.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Klaudia Krenca, Esther Geva & Xi Chen

  2. Department of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Alexandra Gottardo

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  1. Klaudia Krenca
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  2. Alexandra Gottardo
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  3. Esther Geva
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Correspondence to Klaudia Krenca.

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Krenca, K., Gottardo, A., Geva, E. et al. English phonological specificity predicts early French reading difficulty in emerging bilingual children. Ann. of Dyslexia 70, 27–42 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-019-00188-4

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