PHONEMIC AWARENESS AMONG MONO- AND BILINGUAL CHILDREN

Contemporary psycholinguistic research has shown that bilinguals have two differentiated linguistic systems, which interact with each other in different ways and in different domains, including phonology. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the simultaneous acquisition by bilingual children of two languages with varying degrees of orthographic transparency significantly affects the tempo and dynamics of their development of phonemic awareness, in comparison to monolinguals. The development of phonemic awareness in Polish was analyzed in 150 Polish children (age 6;3 to 10;3) from two primary schools: one with English (opaque orthography) as the language of instruction, and the other with Polish (relatively transparent orthography). Phonemic awareness was tested using a trial based on removing a phoneme from a word, and a trial based on phonemic analysis of words and non-words. The bilingual group had significantly lower scores in phonemic analysis, and a statistical tendency to lower scores in the missing phoneme trial; moreover, they acquired phonemic awareness later (beginning only in the second grade). In the older classes, these differences diminished. An “English” profile of phonemic awareness was observed in the bilingual children, even in relation to their native Polish. When training for reading is more intensive in an orthographically opaque language than in a transparent language, it is essential to support the development of phonemic skills. The specific nature of the languages should be taken into account when analyzing the achievements of bilingual children in terms of phonological awareness.