Predicting the development of early reading in Chinese–Dutch bilinguals

Abstract

The relationships between phonological awareness, rapid naming, short term verbal memory, letter knowledge, visual skills and word reading in kindergarten, and the predictive patterns from kindergarten to first grade were examined in 41 Chinese-Dutch bilingual children living in the Netherlands in both their first language (Chinese) and second language (Dutch). In kindergarten, Chinese word reading was predicted by Chinese phonological awareness, and Dutch word reading was predicted by Dutch phonological awareness and letter knowledge. There was a robust autoregressive effect of word reading from kindergarten to first grade in both Chinese and Dutch. Follow-up mediation analyses further showed that both phonological awareness in Chinese and phonological awareness combined with letter knowledge in Dutch in kindergarten had an indirect effect on Grade 1 word reading via kindergarten word reading. Although cross-language correlation was found in word reading for bilingual children in kindergarten, Dutch word reading did not add to the prediction of Chinese word reading when Chinese precursor measures were taken into account.