PHONOLOGICAL AND LEXICAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO READING AND SPELLING IN ENGLISH: A COMPARISON OF ENGLISH-L1, MANDARIN-L1 AND MALAY-L1 BILINGUAL CHILDREN

LITERACY ACQUISITION DEPENDS ON ORAL LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE AND IS INFLUENCED BY CROSS-LINGUISTIC FACTORS (BIALYSTOK, 2002). PHONOLOGICAL MEMORY IS ASSOCIATED WITH VOCABULARY ACQUISITION (GATHERCOLE ET AL., 1992), AND READING (GOSWAMI & BRYANT, 1990) AND SPELLING DEVELOPMENT (BROWN & HULME, 1996), YET FEW RESEARCHERS HAVE EXAMINED THESE INTER-RELATIONSHIPS USING THE SAME PARTICIPANTS, AND NONE WITH DIFFERENT BILINGUAL SUBTYPES. TO ADDRESS THIS GAP, THE RELATIVE CONTRIBUTIONS OF TWO PHONOLOGICAL MEMORY MEASURES (DIGIT SPAN AND NONWORD REPETITION), AND LEXICAL KNOWLEDGE (RECEPTIVE VOCABULARY) TO SUBSEQUENT READING AND SPELLING PERFORMANCE WERE EXAMINED IN A LONGITUDINAL STUDY INVOLVING 7-8-YEAR-OLD BILINGUAL CHILDREN (N=82) WITH ENGLISH, MANDARIN, OR MALAY AS A FIRST LANGUAGE (L1). HIERARCHICAL REGRESSIONS REVEALED THAT READING AND SPELLING WERE PREDICTED BY LEXICAL KNOWLEDGE FOR THE ENGLISH-L1 GROUP, DIGIT SPAN FOR THE MANDARIN-L1 GROUP AND NONWORD REPETITION FOR THE MALAY-L1 GROUP. THESE

Author dc:creator

• CHOO RUI QI

• psycholinguistics, bilingualism, phonological processing, lexical knowledge, reading acquisition, spelling acquisition