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Word and phonological awareness in preliterate children : the effect of a second language

It has often been suggested that bilingual children might have enhanced metalinguistic awareness, as compared to monolingual children. In this paper, the evidence for such a stance was reviewed. In contrast to most previous thinking, it is suggested here that if metalinguistic awareness were enhanced at all by exposure to a second language, it might be the process of learning a second language that draws children's attention to their knowledge about language. Accordingly, a group of preliterate second-language learners was compared with monolinguals and bilinguals on word and phonological awareness tasks. It was found that, for the most part, there were no significant differences among linguistic groups on the performance of these tasks. However, a trend of low performance by the bilingual children was observed. This suggests that if the learning of a second language enhancer metalinguistic awareness, these tasks might not be the most appropriate measures.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.61059
Date January 1992
CreatorsNicoladis, Elena
PublisherMcGill University
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Formatapplication/pdf
CoverageMaster of Arts (Department of Psychology.)
RightsAll items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
Relationalephsysno: 001288334, proquestno: AAIMM74644, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest.

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