Heritage and non-heritage bilinguals

The present study explores the effects of literacy support in the languages of the bilingual child on the linguistic and cognitive skills of (non-)heritage speakers. 70 children speaking Albanian (L1) and Greek (L2) are divided into three groups according to whether they receive literacy support in their L1, L2 or in both languages. To test the children's proficiency in Greek, we used an expressive vocabulary task, two working memory tasks, a non-verbal intelligence task and a sentence repetition task (SRT). The findings suggest that good levels of biliteracy established through bilingual education positively influence the child’s linguistic and cognitive performance. Furthermore, the lack of working memory effects on the children’s SRT performance emphasizes the importance of biliteracy development and its educational support, which together with vocabulary knowledge contribute to bilingual development.

Published online: 29 May 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.59.07and