Literacy Skills in Bilinguals and Monolinguals with Different SES

Abstract

This study compared language minority bilingual (LMB) second graders with two groups of monolingual peers (with comparable low SES or with high SES) in a set of literacy skills (reading fluency, spelling, reading and oral comprehension) tested in the target school language (L2 for bilinguals). The aim was to disentangle the roles of bilingualism and SES in the literacy skills of LMB children. The LMB group appeared comparable to both monolingual groups in reading fluency. However, both the reading comprehension and spelling of bilinguals in the target language were weaker compared to both monolingual groups. Monolinguals and bilinguals with low SES underperformed compared to the high-SES group in oral comprehension. These results confirm previous evidence that reading fluency is a well-acquired literacy skill for low-SES bilinguals, whereas reading comprehension in L2 represents a weakness in their profile. The study adds insights into the difficulties encountered by LMB children in spelling tasks, filling a gap in the previous literature. Finally, oral comprehension seems to be more related to SES than to home language.

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