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Cross-linguistic Transfer in Reading in Multilingual Contexts
Edited by Elena Zaretsky and Mila Schwartz
[Benjamins Current Topics 89] 2016
► pp. 17–42

The development of orthographic processing skills in children in early French immersion programs

| Université de Strasbourg, France
| University of Delaware, USA
| University of Toronto, Canada
| Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada

Children learning to read in two languages are faced with orthographic features from both languages, either unique to a language or similar across languages. In the present study, we examined how children develop orthographic processing skills over time (from grade 1 to grade 2) with a sample of Canadian children attending a French immersion program and we investigated the underlying factor structure of orthographic skills across English and French. Two orthographic processing tasks were administered in both languages: lexical orthographic processing (e.g. choose the correct spelling from people–peeple) and sub-lexical orthographic processing (e.g. which is the more word-like vaid–vayd?), which included both language-specific and language-shared orthographic regularities. Children’s performances in sub-lexical tasks increased with grade but were comparable across languages. Further, evidence for a one factor model including all measures suggested that there is a common underlying orthographic processing skill that cuts across measurement and language variables.

Keywords: bilinguals, French immersion, orthographic processing, reading, second language learners
Published online: 3 October 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.89.02com
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