Flex those Muscles: The Variety of Skills that Developing Bilingual Children Use When They Read

S. Hlne Deacon1, Lesly Wade-Woolley2, and Kathleen Kelly1

1Dalhousie University and 2Queens University

1. Introduction There is an extended history of research into the impacts of bilingualism on

development. It was long assumed that children growing up with two languages would suffer negative consequences from their affliction. Indeed, this view was enunciated clearly in Thompsons statement in a child development textbook in 1952, outlining that there can be no doubt that the bilingual will be handicapped in his or her language growth (p. 385). At the time, this assertion was founded solidly on research demonstrating the negative impacts of bilingualism on performance on a host of tasks assessing cognitive and language functioning. In what lead to a theoretical revolution, Peal and Lambert published their landmark study in 1962 demonstrating that bilinguals might, in fact, have some cognitive advantages. The inclusion of a wide range of controls in their study made this finding hard to dispute. The empirical weight of this study, in combination with the theoretical basis provided by Vygotsky (1962) and Chomsky (1968), turned the tides of opinion. It brought on a new era of research in which the emphasis turned to the strengths and flexibilities of bilingual populations.

One of the many areas in which adaptiveness had been demonstrated is in the use of skills across languages, termed transfer. In the domain of second language acquisition, transfer is often considered in the context of interlanguage and contrastive analysis, which does not necessarily involve conscious or strategic processes. For biliteracy development, however, it is necessary to consider transfer at two different levels. The first is the typological level, or the level of the individual orthography, where features of the writing system may induce transfer. The second is the strategic or conscious level, where reflective processes are of a nature that can be learned in the first language and applied in the second (or vice versa). In other words, the premise is that if a child has an understanding of how a linguistic construction is represented in one language, they might be able to use this appreciation to work out a similar principle in another orthography. For example, they might use their ability to manipulate the sounds in words in one language to decode another. This flexibility might serve as an advantage to help bilinguals to overcome the potentially challenging task of becoming literate in two orthographies.

It is useful to turn to the code that children need to break in order to determine linguistic understandings that are candidates for transfer across orthographies. In contrast to the fairly transparent orthographies such as Finnish and Italian, the French and English orthographies are relatively complex because these languages are encoded on several levels in the orthography: phonological, morphological and orthographic.

French and English, like most alphabetic orthographies, rely in part on the sounds in words, or their phonology, to generate spellings. The words cat and non (no in French) are spelled on the basis of the sounds that make them up. And yet for a host of other words, this purely phonological level does not explain the wide range of variability in the ways in which sounds are represented. It is often assumed that this inconsistency can be conquered only through the brute force of rote memorisation. However, this unpredictability is more apparent than real; both English and French rely on additional sources of regularities than simply phonology.

One of these levels of consistencies lies in the component units of meaning in language, or morphology. Morphemes are the smallest semantic units out of which words are constructed and the spellings of words in both French and English pay allegiance to these constituent elements of meaning. For example, the spelling of the word magician in each language (magician in English and magicien in French) is determined by the root magic and the addition of the appropriate suffix (ian in English and ien in French). This level of regularity can help to explain some of the spellings that violate strict letter-sound correspondence rules.

A third source of information comes from orthographic regularities that guide the legal combinations of letters. In English, for example, words can end, but not start with consonant doublets (e.g., full, but not fful). In French, words cannot end with consonant doublets (e.g., pomme, but not pomm for the word apple in French). Like morphological regularities, these patterns help to explain why spellings in both English and French do not always accord with phonetic encodings.

An appreciation of each of these types of regularities might help bilingual children to learn to read in each of their languages. This might be particularly likely for children learning to read in English and in French, each of which encode at these three levels (phonological, morphological and orthographic). To determine the plausibility of this hypothesis, we can look to the existing research with monolingual readers on the role that each of these variables plays in reading outcomes in those populations.

Phonological awareness, or the ability to manipulate the units of sound that make up words, is a clear determinant of reading outcomes in monolingual readers. This result has been observed in a wide range of orthographies (see Adams, 1990; Goswami & Bryant, 1990; Hulme & Snowling, 1994; National Reading Panel, 2000; Perfetti, 1985; Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998; Chan & Siegel, 2001; Ho & Bryant, 1997; Zieger & Goswami, 2005). At least in English, the link between phonological awareness and reading has been shown

to be causal (e.g., Bradley & Bryant, 1983). These empirical results strongly suggest that phonological awareness would be useful to bring to reading across orthographies.

Orthographic knowledge captures a range of skills regarding how letters are put together within an orthography. This includes knowledge of the letter-patterns (e.g., ight and consonant doublet rules). Orthographic processing has been shown to account for unique variance in reading and spelling in monolinguals once phonological processing skill has been accounted for in the analysis of variance (e.g., Stanovich, West, & Cunningham, 1991).

Similarly, morphological awareness, or the ability to manipulate the component units of meaning within words, is an important contributor to monolingual reading outcomes independently of phonological awareness (e.g., Brittain, 1970; Carlisle, 2000; Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Mahony, Singson & Mann, 2000). For example, Deacon and Kirby showed that performance on a morphological analogy task in grade 2 determined reading ability in grade 5, after controlling for verbal and non-verbal ability, phonological awareness and prior reading ability.

The empirical evidence to date then nominates phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge and morphological regularities as important skills that underlie reading success. For children learning to read in both English and French, orthographies that depend on each of these types of regularity, it might be useful to have such abilities. In the next section, we consider the evidence that these variables determine reading outcomes in second-language learners. We address this question both within bilingual childrens languages, as well as across languages. The latter is, of course, the transfer question; does an appreciation of a regularity in one language determine reading outcomes in another?

There is clear cut evidence from research with that second language learners phonological awareness is a skill that can be brought across languages. Studies with a wide range of language combinations have shown that children learning to read in two languages bring their understanding of the sound structure of words to reading both within and across languages. For example, Carlisle, Beeman, Davis, & Spharim (1999) demonstrated that both native and second language phonological awareness (Spanish and English, respectively) contribute to reading comprehension in the second language. By far the most robust finding, which has been replicated in a wide range of language combinations (Durgunoglu, Nagy & Hancin-Bhatt., 1993; Gottardo, Yan, Siegel, & Wade-Woolley, 2001; Muter & Diethelm, 2001), is that phonological awareness measured in one language is related to word reading in the other language; the case of children learning both English and French is no exception (Comeau, Cormier, Grandmaison, & Lacroix, 1999; Cormier & Kelson, 2000; Tingley et al., 2004). Indeed, Comeau et al. (1999) used this population to set the stringent standard for cross-linguistic transfer in which the contribution of a skill to reading must exist cross-linguistically both from the first to the second language and from the second to the first. Their findings with French immersion

children met this standard. The ability of young dual language learners to bring the ability to manipulate the phonemes within words to reading across languages is impressive.

In contrast to the positive evidence of phonological awareness transferring to reading across languages, studies of the role of orthographic knowledge in second-language learners converge on the conclusion that it does not transfer to reading in a second language. Arab-Moghaddam and Snchal (2001) investigated young Persian-English bilingual children. They found that, although orthographic skills predicted reading within each language, it did not determine reading across languages. Similar results were reported in studies with a wide range of bilingual groups, including Hebrew-English children (Abu-Rabia, 1997), Russian-English high school students (Abu-Rabia, 2001), and Chinese-English children (Gottardo, Yan, Siegel & Wade-Woolley, 2001).

The traditional interpretation of the lack of orthographic transfer is that children must work out orthographically-based rules individually for each language that they are learning to decode. However, it is also possible that the absence of transfer uncovered in previous studies is a result of the combinations of languages investigated to date. These languages (Hebrew, English, Russian and Chinese) all come from different orthographic groupings (e.g., English is alphabetic while Chinese is logographic). It is possible that transfer might occur in cases in which children are learning languages with the same basis (e.g., alphabetic). Further, transfer might be more likely to occur in pairs of languages for which spellings are determined, at least in part, by orthographic regularities. French and English, then, offer an ideal candidate set of languages within which to re-examine the possibility of transfer of orthographic knowledge and, thereby, the nature of this skill.

Morphological awareness is the third skill that is potentially useful for second-language readers. In contrast to the widespread evidence of its utility in monolingual populations, there is little data on its effectiveness in second language learning. In the first study on this question, Droop & Verhoeven (1998) showed that the morphological awareness of second language learners of Dutch was related to their reading. Notably, this relationship was demonstrated within a single language (Dutch), not across languages. The first hint of cross-linguistic use of this skill comes from a single study of spelling. Bindman (2004) found that awareness of a single morphological principle in Hebrew was related to spelling based on that principle in English. This shows that there is a relatively specific link between morphological awareness and spelling based on individual morphological principles (e.g., root consistency). Based on published research to date, we do not know if morphological awareness might transfer across languages to aid bilingual children in their reading.

The study that we report on here is designed to answer two questions. The first lies in determining whether there is a cross-linguistic impact of orthographic knowledge to reading. And the second lies in assessing whether there is such a cross-linguistic effect for morphological awareness. We address these questions within a population of children learning to read in French and

English. This language pairing is particularly informative as both languages have an orthography that represents morphological and orthographic information, in addition to phonologically based regularities.

2. Participants

We tested a group of seventy-six children enrolled in a French immersion

program in a largely monolingual (Anglophone) region of Canada. These children had a mean age of 7 years and 10 months. They came from monolingual homes in which the majority of parents did not speak French. They had been schooled entirely in French since kindergarten. Other research on this population suggests that they achieve bilingualism by grade 6 (~12 years of age). As such, in grade 2, they can be termed developing bilinguals. Although their current state is not one of bilingualism, they are well on the road to that destination.

3. Methods and results

In the spring of grade two, we assessed the participants reading ability,

morphological awareness, and orthographic knowledge in English and in French. For a complete description of the tasks (and results), see Deacon, Wade-Woolley, & Kirby (2006a). Reading ability was tested with standardized measures. The English task was designed for English monolingual children and the French measure for French Immersion children. The orthographic task involved the recognition of the correct spelling of words out of a pair of letter-sequences (based on Olson, Forsberg, Wise, & Rack, 1994). The morphological awareness task asked children to perform sentence analogies in which the critical manipulation was the tense of the verb. Finally, we also included a measure of phonological awareness (deletion) as a control variable. Given the widespread evidence of cross-linguistic transfer of phonological awareness (e.g., Comeau et al., 1999), we tested phonological awareness only in English.

We conducted linear regression analyses (summarised in Table 1) to determine the independent contributions of orthographic knowledge and morphological awareness in each language to reading both within and across languages. This type of analysis is informative as it can isolate the unique contributions of a variable in accounting for the variance in an outcome measure such as reading.

The goal of the analyses was to determine if given variables measured in one language would contribute to reading within that language and in the second language. To establish the within-language contribution of a variable such as English orthographic knowledge, other within language variables such as English morphological awareness and English phonological awareness were entered first into the regression equation, followed by the variable of interest (English orthographic knowledge). This ensured that the resulting value would represent an independent within-language contribution from that variable. The

cross-language analysis was then conducted, which, following the example given, entered French orthographic knowledge as the fourth variable in the regression equation. This permitted the evaluation of cross-language contributions that were independent of within-language contributions. These analyses were conducted with the orthographic knowledge and morphological awareness measures.

We need to acknowledge that the analyses built on the assumption, as outlined earlier, that phonological awareness would transfer from one language to the other; in the analyses, we used the English phonological awareness score in both the English and the French analyses. Given the widespread evidence of the transfer of phonological awareness within French and English learning groups (e.g., Comeau et al., 1999; MacCoubrey, Wade-Woolley, Klinger & Kirby, 2004), this seems to be a reasonable assumption. Table 1. Independent contributions (r2 change) of final predictor variables of English phonological awareness, English and French orthographic knowledge and English and French morphological awareness.

Independent Contribution to Reading in Final predictors measured in English English French Phonological Awareness .031* .083*** Morphological Awareness .049** .070** Orthographic Knowledge .258*** .087*** Final predictors measured in French Morphological Awareness .028* .071** Orthographic Knowledge .069*** .138***

Note. *** indicates p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05

The first set of analyses focussed on English orthographic knowledge and its role in reading both within and across languages (English and French, respectively). The results are reported in Table 1. This first analysis determined that English orthographic knowledge contributed 26% of the variance in English reading, after controlling for within-language variables of phonological and morphological awareness. We then entered French orthographic knowledge as the fourth step in the equation. This assessed its cross-linguistic contribution to English reading; it accounted for an additional 7% of variance. We then evaluated the role of French orthographic knowledge in reading in French and in English. Results indicate that it explained 14% of the variance in French reading ability. English orthographic knowledge was then entered as the fourth step and it accounted for 9% of variance in reading cross-linguistically. These analyses indicate that orthographic knowledge measured in each language contributes significantly to reading both within and across languages, and this contribution is independent of morphological and phonological awareness.

The next set of analyses determined the role of English morphological awareness in first and second language reading (also reported in Table 1).

English morphological awareness determined a unique 5% of variance in English reading. The addition of French morphological awareness as the fourth variable accounted for an additional 3% of variance. Similarly, French morphological awareness made a contribution of 7% to reading within that language, accounting for English phonological awareness and French orthographic knowledge. English morphological awareness entered as the fourth step in the equation accounted for an additional 7% of variance. Thus, like orthographic knowledge, morphological awareness played a significant role in reading both within and across languages. Furthermore, it contributed variance independently of orthographic knowledge and phonological awareness.

Finally, it is noteworthy that phonological awareness made significant within and across language contribution to reading. English phonological awareness contributed 3% to reading in English, after English morphological awareness and orthographic knowledge. Further, it contributed 8% to reading in French, after controlling for French morphological awareness and orthographic knowledge. This offers support for the assumption in the data analyses that phonological awareness is a transferable skill.

4. Discussion.

This study was designed to investigate whether orthographic knowledge

and morphological awareness transfer across languages. Previous evidence for the first hypothesis has been resoundingly negative. The second question has not been yet addressed in reading research. We found positive evidence of typological and strategic transfer of both of these skills within the sample that we studied here: young English learners of French.

The finding that orthographic knowledge transfers to reading across languages is surprising given the previous demonstrations of its language-specific relationship with reading in second-language learning groups. However, when considered in typological terms, it seems plausible that the discovery of a connection between orthographic knowledge and reading in this experiment has a direct link to the types of orthographies studied. English and French share an alphabetic basis, and many of the graphemes (especially consonants) share phonemic representations across languages. Children with an appreciation of orthographic conventions in one of these languages might do well do bring this knowledge to the reading of the other. And, indeed, there is evidence here that they do so. This finding advocates for a consideration of the contexts within which we examine transfer. We need to consider the types of language pairings under investigation when considering the possibility of whether skills might transfer across languages. Such an approach will allow us to make more precise predictions concerning the degree to which we may expect to observe transfer across the two languages.

These results also force us to consider morphological awareness as an abstract, strategic ability that can be transferred to reading across languages. The cross-linguistic effect is a robust one that is independent of both

orthographic knowledge and phonological awareness. While children are likely to be learning language-specific information about morphological regularities, this morphological knowledge can be extended to reading beyond the language-specific context. To date, this has been an under-investigated area in the domain of reading and it seems to be a fruitful area to pursue.

Further research needs to explore these effects in different language pairings to determine the range and strength of the morphological cross-linguistic effect. It is entirely possible that morphological awareness is only transferred to reading in languages that represent morphology in the orthography (e.g., in English, but not in Finnish). Further, its role might be greater in certain scripts, such as Chinese (as suggested by McBride-Chang et al., 2005). Its role might also change over time. For example, children might need to build up a requisite amount of vocabulary knowledge and language proficiency before being able to perform morphological computations on a language or orthography. If this is the case, then we would not expect immediate transfer of morphological knowledge. This is a possibility considered by Deacon, Wade-Woolley, and Kirby (2006b), but it is one that requires a great deal more investigation, particularly with children and adults in the early stages of language learning. Such investigations can tell us about the amounts and types of knowledge that might be necessary for transfer to occur.

Similar questions can also be asked of the transfer of orthographic knowledge. How much experience with an orthography is required for children to extract orthographic regularities? Research with monolingual readers suggests that such knowledge is in place remarkably early (e.g., Cassar & Treiman, 1997; Pacton, Perruchet, Fayol, & Cleeremans, 2001) and yet we know little of the second language learning context. We need to find out how children go about building up separable orthographic knowledge in a manner that also permits transfer of this knowledge across orthographies when there is adequate similarity between the representations. Possibly, the amount of exposure required is related to the degree of typological similarity between languages; for example, bilinguals may require less exposure to English and French, which share many grapheme-phoneme correspondences, than they would to English and Russian, where the most of the common graphemes have competing phonemic representations. Such questions, of course, require new empirical investigations.

Finally, we see the intersection of orthographic and morphological knowledge as an intriguing new avenue for research. Morphological awareness is an oral language based ability, assessed with tasks that tap the ability to implicitly or explicitly manipulate morphological units. The majority of research on morphological awareness and reading has demonstrated the importance of this relationship (e.g., Deacon & Kirby, 2004), while not tackling directly the question of how it is that it works. New research investigating childrens ability to use morphemes in an on-line manner when reading (e.g., Carlisle & Stone, 2005) is an excellent first step in this direction. Orthographic knowledge is also important in this endeavour. Children might need to build up

a minimal amount of orthographic knowledge, particularly about the common representations of morphemes, before morphological awareness can be used in reading. This hypothesis requires experimental testing with children with differing levels of orthographic experience. For example, children who have achieved some level of reading ability may be able to tune into the fact that the spellings of morphologically-related words in English, such as heal and health retain the evidence of their relationship in their written form, despite sounding quite different. These questions are important in monolingual investigations and they also have implications for bilingual research.

The ability to read and write in ones first and second languages are important skills in interacting with ones environment in a fully bilingual manner. The evidence that we have reported here shows that children are remarkably flexible in the range of linguistic factors from which they draw to achieve biliteracy. Morphological awareness and orthographic knowledge have been shown to be potent variables in determining reading within and across languages.

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Independent Contribution to Reading inCarlisle, Joanne F., & Stone, C. Addison (2005). Exploring the role of morphemes in word reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 40(4), 428449.