The English phonological awareness skills of 5;0-6;0-year-old Polish-English, Portuguese-English bilingual speakers and English monolingual children

AbstractPrevious research on bilingual children's phonological awareness (PA) abilities is contradictory. Some studies suggest that bilinguals are advantaged compared to monolinguals, benefiting literacy acquisition. Other research indicates that any advantage in PA skills is transient, influenced by language learning context, proficiency in both languages, and the language pair being acquired. This study compared the English PA skills of two groups of bilingual children and a monolingual English-speaking group matched for age, gender, and social class. The 54 participants were 5 to 6 years old, in their first or second year of school. There were 18 children speaking Polish–English, 18 children speaking Portuguese–English and 18 English-speaking monolingual children. Their letter knowledge, syllable, onset–rime, and phoneme awareness were assessed using subtests from standardized assessments plus one task specifically designed for this study. Parents of bilingual children completed a questionnaire about t...