This study investigates the cross-linguistic transfer of literacy skills in Spanish-English, Chinese-English bilingual, and English monolingual children (N = 283, 5-10 years). Research question 1 examines English literacy and asks how phonological and morpho-semantic skills contribute to word reading as a function of children's language…

Developing young learners' language awareness is becoming an important educational goal in a rapidly globalised world characterised by linguistic and cultural diversity. Drawing upon previous research in the field, the article highlights the importance of promoting language diversity and nurturing language awareness from an early age. We present a…

About one-third of children under age 8 in the United States have at least one parent who speaks a language other than English at home. And as of 2016, 9.6 percent of all U.S. public school students were identified as English language learners. It is obvious that the American student population is becoming increasingly multilingual. This trend is…

This study aimed to clarify the relations between morphological awareness and literacy skills in Spanish and English in young simultaneous bilingual learners. Guided by theoretical perspectives on the associations between morphological awareness and word- versus sentence-level literacy skills, and their transfer between bilinguals' two languages,…

In the field of third language acquisition metalinguistic awareness is posited to be a fundamental component of multilingual competence and a key factor facilitating the acquisition of additional languages. Building upon Bialystok's model of attention and control, and Wrembel's research into metaphonological awareness in adult L3 learners, this…

Preschoolers' metalinguistic and visual capabilities may be associated with the writing system of their culture. We examined patterns of performance in phonological awareness, naming of letters, morphological awareness, and visual-spatial relations, in 5-year-old native speakers of Spanish (n = 43), Hebrew (n = 40), and Cantonese (n = 63) and the…

There is growing evidence of cross-language transfer in metalinguistic processes related to reading acquisition and development. In particular, phonological awareness is a requisite process that shares similarities across Spanish and English. Through explicit instruction and instructional design analyses, we propose principles to facilitate…