The Development of Language and Reading Skills in Emergent Bilingual Children
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation examined language and literacy development in English-Hebrew emerging bilinguals. During their senior kindergarten year, one group of children participated in a bilingual English-Hebrew program (“early” group; n = 17) while another participated in an English-language program with minimal Hebrew instruction (“late” group; n = 19). Both groups were merged in Grade 1 and continued to receive a partial Hebrew immersion program. The first part of this dissertation explored longitudinally how an early partial Hebrew immersion program contributes to literacy (word reading, pseudoword reading, reading comprehension), language (vocabulary and morphological awareness (MA)), phonological awareness, and rapid automatized naming in English and Hebrew. Similar improvement from senior kindergarten to Grade 1 was noted for both groups across all measures, however the early group displayed significantly stronger Hebrew vocabulary skills. Literacy and language inter- and cross-linguistic correlation patterns were not significantly different between the two groups. The second part examined the relevance of the Simple View of Reading framework (SVR; Gough & Tunmer, 1986) in Grade 1 (N = 36). The contribution of word reading and language proficiency was examined within and between languages. Two aspects of MA (derivational awareness and inflectional awareness) were considered as additional components of oral language. Word reading, vocabulary and both MA measures were used as predictors. The SVR model significantly explained English reading comprehension based on a combination of word reading and derivational awareness (but not vocabulary), and Hebrew reading comprehension based on word reading and vocabulary. In English, derivational awareness contributed unique variance to reading comprehension above word reading although this was not the case in Hebrew. In addition, English word reading and inflectional awareness predicted Hebrew reading comprehension, thus supporti…
abstract: This dissertation examined language and literacy development in English-Hebrew emerging bilinguals. During their senior kindergarten year, one group of children participated in a bilingual English-Hebrew program (“early” group; n = 17) while another participated in an English-language program with minimal Hebrew instruction (“late” group; n = 19). Both groups were merged in Grade 1 and continued to receive a partial Hebrew immersion program. The first part of this dissertation explored longitudinally how an early partial Hebrew immersion program contributes to literacy (word reading, pseudoword reading, reading comprehension), language (vocabulary and morphological awareness (MA)), phonological awareness, and rapid automatized naming in English and Hebrew. Similar improvement from senior kindergarten to Grade 1 was noted for both groups across all measures, however the early group displayed significantly stronger Hebrew vocabulary skills. Literacy and language inter- and cross-linguistic correlation patterns were not significantly different between the two groups. The second part examined the relevance of the Simple View of Reading framework (SVR; Gough & Tunmer, 1986) in Grade 1 (N = 36). The contribution of word reading and language proficiency was examined within and between languages. Two aspects of MA (derivational awareness and inflectional awareness) were considered as additional components of oral language. Word reading, vocabulary and both MA measures were used as predictors. The SVR model significantly explained English reading comprehension based on a combination of word reading and derivational awareness (but not vocabulary), and Hebrew reading comprehension based on word reading and vocabulary. In English, derivational awareness contributed unique variance to reading comprehension above word reading although this was not the case in Hebrew. In addition, English word reading and inflectional awareness predicted Hebrew reading comprehension, thus supporti…
author: David, Dana
language: en_ca
keywords: Bilingualism, Literacy
date published: 2013-08-07
date modified: 2026-07-27T21:28:11Z
provider: University of Toronto
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Toronto

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/35802