Early Precursors of Literacy Development in Simultaneous Bilinguals: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

AbstractSeveral literacy precursors have been identified in monolingual English-speaking children; however, it is unclear whether the same precursors are also associated with literacy development in bilingual children.PurposeWe examine whether in simultaneous bilingual children: (i) code-related, oral-language, and domain-general cognitive literacy precursors have been utilized — similar to monolingual children; (ii) other types of precursors have been identified; (iii) code-related, oral-language, domain-general cognitive, or other types of literacy precursors are associated with word/non-word and/or text-level reading skills; in (a) one or (b) both spoken languages; (iv) the type of literacy outcome measure, and (v) language background measure influence performance on emergent literacy skills.MethodWe examined reported statistical associations, between a given literacy precursor and outcome measure, and conducted a meta-analysis examining specific code-related and oral-language precursors in relation to word/non-word reading and/or text reading comprehension.ResultsApart from semantic awareness, all code-related, oral-language, domain-general cognitive and eight additional identified precursors were significantly associated with reading in simultaneous bilinguals. However, these precursors were predominantly assessed only in English, or English in addition to a heritage language. Phonological awareness and vocabulary emerged as commonly-assessed precursors consistently associated with reading.ConclusionsParticularly, these code-related and oral-language skills may be used as precursor screening tools in simultaneous bilinguals, across heritage and societal languages. Future research should develop language-specific precursor screening tools and investigate the reliability of non-linguistic precursors, to address the evident English assessment bias and support biliteracy development across spoken languages.