Early Literacy Among Monolingual Bilingual Children

This book sets a high standard for rigor and scientific approach to the study of bilingualism and provides new insights regarding the critical issues of theory and practice, including the interdependence of linguistic knowledge in bilinguals, the role of socioeconomic status, the effect of different language usage patterns in the home, and the role of schooling by single-language immersion as opposed to systematic training in both home and target languages. The rich landscape of outcomes reported in the volume will provide a frame for interpretation and understanding of effects of bilingualism for years to come.

Originally published in 1992. This book brings together the work of a number of distinguished international researchers engaged in basic research on beginning reading. Individual chapters address various processes and problems in learning to read - including how acquisition gets underway, the contribution of story listening experiences, what is involved in learning to read words, and how readers represent information about written words in memory. In addition, the chapter contributors consider how phonological, onset-rime, and syntactic awareness contribute to reading acquisition, how learning to spell is involved, how reading ability can be explained as a combination of decoding skill plus listening comprehension skill, and what causes reading difficulties and how to study these causes.

This volume explores Chinese reading development, focusing on children in Chinese societies and bilingual Chinese-speaking children in Western societies. The book is structured around four themes: psycholinguistic study of reading, reading disability, bilingual and biliteracy development, and Chinese children’s literature. It discusses issues that are pertinent to improving language and literacy development, and complex cognitive, linguistic, and socio-cultural factors that underlie language and literacy development. In addition, the book identifies instructional practices that can enhance literacy development and academic achievement. This volume offers an integrative framework of Chinese reading, and deepens our understanding of the intricate processes that underlie Chinese children’s literacy development. It promotes research in reading Chinese and celebrates the distinguished and longstanding career of Richard C. Anderson.

Literacy is an individual's ability to read and write. The complexities of skills required to be literate raise an intriguing question: "how does one become literate?" Literacy skills emerge during early childhood (known as emergent literacy) and lead a child towards the path of reading. Many precursors such as oral language skills, phonological awareness skills, and written language (print) awareness skills facilitate the development of emergent literacy. The subcomponents within each of these precursors have a very intricate relationship with one another. The attempts made over the last few decades to understand the components of literacy, the stages of literacy acquisition in children, and literacy failure in school children are evident in research reports, but the focus appears to be skewed towards monolingual children. As a result, a void exists when one encounters a bilingual child for assessment. However, studies from linguistically diverse countries in recent years highlight the differences in early literacy behaviors of monolingual children and bilingual children. As a consequence, the knowledge gap is slowly narrowing to recognize the emergent literacy spectrum in bilingual children who are known to have cognitive advantages. Since cognition, language, and literacy fall on a continuum, there are bound to be advantages for bilingual/multilingual children in the development of early literacy behaviors. The available information supports the idea of cognitive benefits derived through exposure to languages, emphasizing that communication is more important than the specific linguistic units used by the teachers. Emergent Literacy Spectrum of Bilingual Children in India describes the concepts, components, and dimensions of literacy and emergent literacy; bilingualism; language and script-diaspora in the Indian context; the continuum of language and literacy; language policy for education in India; challenges for identification, assessment, and promotion of emergent literacy skills in India; and typical examples in Indian languages with research evidence for understanding the spectrum of emergent literacy in bilingual children. A theoretical rationale is given for each of the concepts followed by simple descriptions, examples, and illustrations. The book provides crucial knowledge and useful tips for professionals, teachers, and informed parents in their teaching-learning activities with children. Researchers may explore the ideas discussed in the monograph by pursuing studies to augment our knowledge of the acquisition of literacy in bilingual children. The author's many years of experience as a speech-language pathologist in the Indian subcontinent suggests that there is scanty information on emergent literacy in Indian bilingual children. Several interactions held with professionals and preschool teachers during workshops and seminars have indicated that there is a great need to enhance the knowledge base on emergent/early literacy, its development, and the likelihood of failures in literacy acquisition in children. The publication is useful to all professionals working with young children, educational administrators as well as policymakers.

Grounded in state-of-the-art research, this book explores how English language learners develop both the oral language and literacy skills necessary for school success. Chapters examine the cognitive bases of English acquisition, and how the process is different for children from alphabetic (such as Spanish) and nonalphabetic (such as Chinese) language backgrounds. The book addresses a key challenge facing educators and clinicians: identifying students whose poor English skills may indicate an underlying impairment, as opposed to still-developing language proficiency. Implications for diagnosis, intervention, and instruction are highlighted throughout.

Reporting the findings of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth, this book concisely summarises what is known from empirical research about the development of literacy in language-minority children and youth, including development, environment, instruction, and assessment.

A large and growing number of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in the US and around the world have the potential to develop bilingualism and biliteracy if supported in their immediate environment. At the forefront in focusing exclusively on biliteracy development in early childhood across a variety of languages, this book provides both findings from empirical research with young bilinguals in home and school contexts and practical applications of these findings. Each chapter is structured in a similar format to offer parallel descriptions of the research, including a brief review of related empirical studies, an overview of the methods for data collection and analysis, a description of the main findings, and specific pedagogical implications to support educators’ efforts to construct meaningful, challenging, and dynamic literacy and language learning communities where one or more languages are used for communicating and learning. Pushing the field forward, this book is a valuable resource for helping literacy educators understand and respond to critical issues related to the development of young children’s literate competencies in two languages in home and school contexts.

This practical and reassuring guide will enable readers to make informed decisions about how to raise their child bilingually.

Young Dual Language Learners 45 contributing experts provide clear and concise responses to questions that early childhood and elementary education administrators and preschool directors ask about educating young children who are learning in two languages. This user-friendly guide helps all practioners navigate the landscape of early childhood education in linguistically and culturally responsive ways.