In the study, 'Impacts of the COVID-19 disruption on the language and literacy development of monolingual and heritage bilingual children in the United States,' researchers examined the effects of COVID-19-related school disruptions on English language and literacy development among monolingual and bilingual children in the United States.
In this Q&A with Language Sciences, Xin Sun, Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of Psychology at UBC, discusses how certain at-home language practices can lead to a child being at a higher-risk of falling behind in their reading achievement when their education is disrupted, the difference between informal and formal home literacy activities, and how caregivers can support children's literacy practices at home.
How does being monolingual versus bilingual or multi-lingual impact a child's language and literacy development?
Children growing up in bilingual environments often approach English language and literacy in different ways compared to their monolingual peers, and this is influenced by their experience with the other language. For example, children may transfer skills they learned in their other language to those in English. Languages such as Spanish share many cognates with English, such as ‘conversation-conversación’, and therefore children can easily link these words across languages.
Aside from these explicit transfer effects from shared language structures, bilingual transfer can also be more “invisible”. For example, my prior study (Sun et al., 2021) found that sound-based skills play a greater role in English word reading among Spanish-speaking children, whereas meaning-based skills are more important among Chinese-speaking children. This is because learning to read in Spanish depends more on sound-based skills, and Chinese reading acquisition depends more on meaning-based skills. In other words, bilingual children transfer their reliance on different sets of skills from their other language to English reading. These children may have similar levels of language and reading skills in English, but the strategies they use in reading may be different due to their bilingual experiences.
Can you explain why children who speak one language at home and a different language at school may be at a higher risk of falling behind in their reading achievement when schooling is disrupted, such as during the COVID-19 school shutdown?
Many bilingual children in North America are heritage bilinguals – they speak a home language representing their heritage background, and they learn English mostly at school. When schools shut down, these bilingual children may have less exposure to English and therefore are likely to be more susceptible to decreases in English reading.
Another important reason is the relatively lower socio-economic background in the bilingual child population. These children mostly come from immigrant families, who often have lower family income and less educational resources and support. In fact, my study found that bilingual children from mid-to-high SES backgrounds maintained good progress in their English language skills as well as some of their reading skills.
Can you explain what informal and formal home literacy activities are, and what the benefits are to using these activities for language and literacy development?
Informal home literacy practices are often performed through parent-children interactions and access to literacy resources. An example is shared reading practices between parents and children. Another more casual practice is simply making books available at home, like regularly borrowing books from a local library. Informal practices mainly support oral language development such as vocabulary, and they are generally less purposeful than formal practices. Formal home literacy practices focus on directly engaging children with printed texts. For example, teaching children about the alphabet and letter-sound correspondences. For older children, it may be asking them to read independently on a regular basis, such as doing a 30-minute reading every day. Formal practices mainly support letter knowledge, word decoding, and reading comprehension development.
What are some home literacy practices that caregivers can do with children to support their language and literacy development?
The practices mentioned above are very effective approaches. Studies generally found that formal practices are more important to language and literacy development, as these practices more directly tap into essential components of reading acquisition. Indeed, my study results showed that the most effective literacy practice is that children themselves, regardless of their bilingual status, practice reading on a regular basis at home. This is certainly truer for children who are able to read to themselves - typically children in the second grade or higher. For these children, parents can play a supportive role such as guiding children to plan out their reading schedules and helping them find reading materials. Younger children may need more direct parental involvement, such as parents teaching children how to sound out letters and words in a book, etc.
Written by Kelsea Franzke