Biliteracy Effects on Phonological Awareness, Oral Language Proficiency and Reading Skills in Taiwanese Mandarin-English Bilingual Children

The present study examined the effect of learning to read a heritage language on Taiwanese Mandarin-English bilingual children's Chinese and English phonological awareness, Chinese and English oral language proficiency, and English reading skills. Participants were 40 Taiwanese Mandarin-English bilingual children and 20 English monolingual children in the U.S. Based on their performance on a Chinese character reading test, the bilingual participants were divided into two groups: the Chinese Beginning Reader and Chinese Nonreader groups. A single child categorized as a Chinese Advanced Reader also participated. Children received phonological awareness tasks, produced oral narrative samples from a wordless picture book, and took standardized English reading subtests. The bilingual participants received measures in both English and Chinese, whereas English monolingual children received only English measures. Additional demographic information was collected from a language background survey filled out by parents. Results of two MANOVAs indicated that the Chinese Beginning Reader group outperformed the Chinese Nonreader and English Monolingual groups on some phonological awareness measures and the English nonword reading test. In an oral narrative production task in English, the English Monolingual group produced a greater total number of words (TNW) and more different words (NDW) than the Chinese Nonreader group. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to determine whether bilingual children's Chinese character reading ability would still account for a unique amount of variance in certain outcome variables, independent of nonverbal IQ and other potential demographic or performance variables and to clarify the direction of causality for bilingual children's performance in the three domains. These results suggested that learning to read in a heritage language directly or indirectly enhances bilingual children's ability in phonological awareness and certain English reading skills. It also appears that greater oral language proficiency in Chinese promotes early reading in the heritage language. Advanced heritage reading may produce even larger gains. Practical implications of learning a heritage language in the U.S. are discussed.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Speech and Hearing Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Yang, Fang-Ying

Contributors dc:contributor

• Johnson, Cynthia J.

• Health Sciences, Speech Pathology
• Education, Reading

Identifier

(UMI)AAI3406821

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/72382