Literacy skills in monolingual and emergent bilingual primary school children in Wales

This study explores the effects of emergent Welsh-English bilingualism on early literacy development in primary school children in Wales, aged 54–90 months. Sixty-three primary school pupils participated, including 38 Welsh-English emergent bilinguals and 25 English monolinguals. There were no differences between language groups for age (months), socioeconomic status, nonverbal intelligence, and English receptive vocabulary. Groups were compared on a battery of English literacy assessments from the MABEL [Multilanguage Assessment Battery of Early Literacy; Caravolas et al. 2019. MABEL: Multilanguage Assessment Battery for Early Literacy], namely Phoneme Awareness (phoneme isolation, deletion and blending) and word- and pseudoword reading skills. Language groups (monolingual and emergent bilingual) were further divided up based on their school year (Reception, Year 1 and Year 2) resulting in six smaller sub-groups. Results revealed superior emergent bilingual performance compared to monolingual peers on Phoneme Isolation, Phoneme Blending, Word- and Pseudoword reading in Reception, and Phoneme Deletion in Year 1, with no group differences in Year 2. This demonstrates that emergent bilingualism has a facilitative effect in the development of early literacy skills in primary school children. Future directions and implications are discussed.