Factors affecting L2 phonological awareness in Chinese-Dutch preschoolers
The present study compared the relationship between Dutch phonological awareness (rhyme awareness, initial phoneme
isolation), Dutch speech decoding and Dutch receptive vocabulary in two groups in different linguistic environments: 30 Mandarin
Chinese-Dutch bilingual children and 24 monolingual Dutch peers. Chinese vocabulary and phonological awareness were taken into account in
the bilingual group. Bilingual children scored below their Dutch monolingual counterparts on all Dutch tasks. In the bilingual group, Dutch
rhyme awareness was predicted by Dutch speech decoding, both directly, and indirectly via Dutch receptive vocabulary. When adding Chinese
proficiency to the model, Chinese rhyme awareness was found to mediate the relationship between Dutch speech decoding and Dutch rhyme
awareness. It can thus be concluded that second language (L2) phonological awareness in Chinese-Dutch kindergartners is affected by their L2
speech and vocabulary level, on the one hand, and their level of phonological awareness in the first language (L1).
Article outline
- Predictors of phonological awareness
- Bilingualism and phonological awareness
- The present study
- Method
- Participants
- Materials
- Dutch speech decoding
- Dutch receptive vocabulary
- Dutch rhyme awareness
- Dutch initial phoneme isolation
- Chinese receptive vocabulary
- Chinese rhyme awareness
- Chinese onset awareness
- Procedure
- Results
- L2 predictors of phonological awareness for bilingual children
- L1 and L2 predictors of phonological awareness for bilingual children
- Discussion
- Limitations and future research
- Conclusions
-
References
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