Edited by: Xinjie Chen, Stanford University, United States
Reviewed by: Eva Commissaire, Université de Strasbourg, France; Joana Acha, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Spain
This article was submitted to Language Sciences, a section of the journal Frontiers in Communication
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Bilingual children are a heterogeneous population, as the amount of input and use of their languages may differ due to various factors, for example, the status of each language (majority, minority), which language is used in the school, and whether children are acquiring literacy in one or both languages. Their language ability depends to a large extent on the use of each language and on whether they each language at the same rate. The aim of the study was to investigate how primary school bilingual children in the UK perform on several domains of language and reading skills and how these relate to language dominance. Moreover, it addressed how this performance is affected by a range of contextual factors and whether there are cross-language relationships in the children's language and reading abilities. Forty Greek-English bilingual children in Year 1 and Year 3 were tested on vocabulary, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, morpho-syntax, and decoding in Greek and English. The results showed that as a group, the children were Greek dominant before the age of 4 but English dominant now and confirm that language dominance could change even before children enter school and affects language and literacy skills equally. A strong relationship between language use and performance was only in evidence in the minority language, which suggests that parental effort should be directed toward the minority language because schooling appears to level out differences in the majority language. There was no negative relationship between the use of the heritage language and children's language and reading performance in the majority language. In contrast, significant positive cross-language associations were revealed among vocabulary, phonological awareness, inflectional morphology and decoding skills. The practical implications of this study are that parents and teachers should be informed for the positive effects of heritage language use in and outside the home for the maintenance of the heritage language and for the development of the children's language and literacy skills.
The number of bilingual children attending school in the UK has increased dramatically in the last years (National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum,
The process of learning to read is one of the first main goals of primary education, therefore, reading was a particular area of interest for the current research. According to the Simple View of Reading (e.g., Gough and Tunmer,
An additional factor that should be taken into account when reading development is examined is the level of the orthographic consistency in the languages tested. Alphabetic languages differ in the consistency of the mappings between symbols and sounds. For example, Italian has a highly transparent orthography, where there is a one to one relationship between graphemes and phonemes. English, on the other hand, has an opaque orthography, with many inconsistent words with unpredictable spellings (e.g., yacht, through). Orthographic consistency may affect reading development across grades, for example the rate of acquisition has been shown to be faster in the relatively transparent vowelized Hebrew orthography than in English, although Hebrew was the minority language (Geva and Siegel,
Taken together, research suggests that the development of early reading skills in monolinguals and bilinguals relies on the same mechanisms and set of skills, although the relative importance of the underlying components may differ as a function of language-specific properties (Geva and Wang,
Several studies have examined the acquisition of decoding skills across different languages (Ziegler et al.,
Regarding the development of decoding skills in bilingual children, Verhoeven (
While the role of phonological processing skills for early reading development is well-established, research has pinpointed several other predictors of word-level reading skills. For example, knowledge of print concepts and
In line with the above, several further studies have investigated the relationship between expressive vocabulary and word reading performance in monolingual children (Chiappe et al.,
In terms of the contribution of vocabulary to word reading in bilinguals, similarly to studies on monolinguals, the few studies that have been carried out have shown mixed results, with some showing significant links between the two skills (Lindsey et al.,
The development of oral language skills depends to a large extent on the amount and nature of language exposure (Pearson et al.,
The relationship between the acquisition of vocabulary and the amount of bilingual exposure was investigated by Thordardottir (
The relationship between contextual factors and word-level reading skills has received less attention compared to the relationship between contextual factors and oral language skills. Dolson (
Dickinson and Porche (
Previous research suggests that reading development in the heritage language can benefit reading development in the majority language (Cummins,
Given the fact that bilingual children form a very heterogeneous population, where the amount of language input and exposure and biliteracy vary considerably, it is important to examine the development of the heritage and majority languages in relation with reading development in both languages in combination to contextual factors that lead to the heterogeneity of the population. Students who have developed strong reading comprehension strategies (e.g., predicting, clarifying, visualizing) and attitudes (love of reading) in a heritage language are highly likely to apply those same skills and attitudes to reading in the majority language. For students who arrive in U.K. schools with stronger oral proficiency (and literacy skills) in a language other than English, promoting heritage literacy development has the potential to affect positively English literacy development. However, there have only been a limited number of studies investigating the acquisition of oral language skills and reading in both the heritage and majority languages in combination with contextual and linguistic factors in bilingual children.
The aims of the study were to investigate how primary school Greek-English bilingual children living in the U.K. perform on several domains of language and reading skills and how a range of contextual and linguistic factors contribute to the development of the children's language and reading skills in the two languages spoken of the bilingual children. An additional area of interest was to address cross-language relationships between the two languages in the children's language and reading abilities and identify positive associations. To address these aims we administered an extensive battery of objective measures addressing language and reading abilities of the children in both languages, Greek and English. We predicted that dominance would shift from Greek to English when children enter primary school and that participants would perform better in English than Greek, reflecting increasing dominance to English through schooling. The dominant language may be stronger for skills that develop at school, such as decoding, and less strong for early acquired domains of language, such as phonology and vocabulary. To address the role of contextual factors, we used a parental questionnaire and collected information about the children's language exposure, parental level of education, and parental self-rated language proficiency and we investigated the associations between these factors and the objective measures of language and reading abilities. The hypothesis was that contextual factors would contribute positively to the children's performance on the objective measures of language and reading abilities. To address cross-language relationships between the two languages and how this may affect bilingual children's reading abilities we examined cross-language correlations between Greek and English expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, morpho-syntactic skills and decoding skills. We predicted cross-language correlations in phonological awareness and decoding skills and weaker correlations in oral language skills.
The research questions were:
Does children's performance on objective measures of language and literacy skills depend on age (Year 1 vs. 3 of primary school) and language (English vs. Greek tasks)?
What is the relationship between contextual factors and the children's performance on the objective measures of language and literacy, in each language?
Are there cross-language associations between Greek and English expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, morpho-syntactic skills and decoding?
Forty typically developing Greek-English bilingual children were recruited from primary schools in the London, Reading and Oxford area: 20 from Year 1 (Mean age = 76.6 months, SD = 3.6, 14 boys and 6 girls) and 20 from Year 3 (Mean age = 100.4 months, SD = 3.4, 9 boys and 11 girls). All children attended an English mainstream primary school and a Greek supplementary school. Most children were born in the U.K., but some were born in Greece and moved to the UK at least 2 years before the commencement of the study. The children came mostly from families of average and above-average socioeconomic status. Moreover, none of them had any history of speech and/or language delay or impairment and their parents were not concerned about their language development.
The LITMUS-PABIQ questionnaire (Tuller,
Descriptive statistics of language exposure before 4 years, current skills, language use in the home and outside the home, mother and father's self-rated language proficiency in Greek and English.
Language exposure before 4 years (/4) | Mean | 2.40 | 2.45 | 1.95 | 1.80 |
SD | 0.598 | 0.76 | 0.605 | 0.768 | |
Min-Max | 1–3 | 1–3 | 1–3 | 1–3 | |
Current skills (/15) | Mean | 9.90 | 11.75 | 12.55 | 14.55 |
SD | 2.7 | 1.97 | 1.76 | 0.759 | |
Min-Max | 7–15 | 8–15 | 10–15 | 13–15 | |
Language use in home (/20) | Mean | 5.40 | 7.05 | 7.75 | 7.70 |
SD | 1.875 | 1.61 | 3.09 | 2.43 | |
Min-Max | 3–9 | 4–10 | 0–11 | 4–12 | |
Language use outside home (/18) | Mean | 5.00 | 8.00 | 11.35 | 11.95 |
SD | 2.00 | 1.52 | 1.137 | 1.64 | |
Min-Max | 2–9 | 5–10 | 10–14 | 9–14 | |
Mother's self-rated language proficiency (/4) | Mean | 3.70 | 3.75 | 3.20 | 3.25 |
SD | 0.657 | 0.444 | 0.696 | 0.786 | |
Min-Max | 2–4 | 3–4 | 2–4 | 2–4 | |
Father's self-rated language proficiency (/4) | Mean | 3.30 | 3.65 | 3.55 | 3.60 |
SD | 1.34 | 0.503 | 0.605 | 0.503 | |
Min-Max | 0–4 | 1–4 | 2–4 | 3–4 |
Descriptive statistics Parental Educational Level in Years.
Educational level in years | Mean | 17.8 | 17.9 | 18.3 | 17.7 |
SD | 1.8 | 1.8 | 1.8 | 1.4 | |
Min–Max | 16–21 | 16–21 | 16–21 | 16–21 |
To examine whether the children's language skills in Greek differed from their English skills, according to parent reports, we ran paired samples
To examine language dominance at the individual level on the basis of language use before age 4, we subtracted Greek Exposure before the child was 4 years old from English Exposure before the child was 4 years old. The same subtraction was carried out for current use of the two languages within the home and outside the home. The results showed that 21 of the 40 (52.5%) children were Greek dominant before the age 4, but currently, 13 of the 40 children (32.5%) were Greek dominant within the home and all children were English dominant outside the home. To examine language dominance on the basis of Current Language Skills, we subtracted the Greek score from the English score. Two participants from Year 1 had a negative score, which indicates that they were Greek dominant in terms of their current language skills. All other children were English dominant in terms of their current language skills.
The participants were assessed in both their languages in order to estimate their language and reading skills in both Greek and English. Standardized and non-standardized assessments as well as experimental tasks were used to measure the children's non-verbal abilities, vocabulary, phonological awareness, and reading decoding skills. A parental questionnaire was used to measure the children's language history. To be able to compare the children's performance in English and Greek, we included assessments that had parallel versions in the two languages. Full details of the tasks used are given below.
Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices Test (Raven et al.,
Children's expressive vocabulary in English was measured with the Renfrew Word Finding Vocabulary Scale (Renfrew,
To measure vocabulary in Greek, children were administered the Greek version of the Renfrew Word Finding Vocabulary Scale (Renfrew,
The blending and elision tasks from the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing-Second Edition (Wagner et al.,
For blending in Greek we developed a task similar to the one from the CTOPP-2 using the same testing procedure. Participants listened to the sounds of a word separately and had to put them together to create the word, e.g., i-p-n-o-s (úπνoς = nap), a-r-i-th-m-o-s (αριθμóς = number). The task included five practice items that asked participants to put together two syllables to make a word. Five of the test items required the participant to put an onset and a rime together to make a word, and the remaining twenty-one items require the participant to put individual sounds together to make a word. For elision in Greek we used the Greek adaptation of the CTOPP-2 by Georgiou et al. (
Two experimental tasks were developed in order to measure morphological awareness in inflectional morphology. The first task was a sentence analogy task based on Pittas and Nunes (
The second task was a sentence production task and was adapted from Rothou (
The structure and administration of the Greek inflectional morphology tasks was the same as in the English versions of the tasks. The sentence analogy task was based on Pittas and Nunes (
The sentence production task adapted from Rothou (
(Tora aftos grafi ena grama—Now he is writing a letter).; Xθε ς μίαφ
Two tasks were designed in order to assess the children's morphological awareness of derivational morphology. The first task was a sentence analogy task adapted from Nunes et al. (
The second task was a production task with derivational words based on Casalis and Louis-Alexandre (
Based on preliminary strong correlations between sentence analogy and sentence production tasks (
The structure and administration of the Greek derivational morphology tasks was the same as in the English versions of the tasks. The first task was a sentence analogy task adapted from Nunes et al. (
The second task was a production task with derivational words based on Casalis and Louis-Alexandre (
To measure children morpho-syntactic skills, a sentence repetition task was administered in both English and Greek. The tasks were used to assess different aspects of oral language skills, including knowledge and use of syntactic structures, ability to produce grammatically correct sentences, listening comprehension.
Both the English and Greek Sentence Repetition Tasks were developed within the COST Action IS080419 (Marinis and Armon-Lotem,
Both English and Greek had the same administration procedure. The sentences were pre-recorded by a native speaker of English and Greek, respectively, and were embedded into a PowerPoint presentation. The task was introduced as a game to the children named “The Treasure Hunt” featuring a bear named Teddy. Children were seated in front of a computer laptop and were given a set of headphones to prevent any noise disruptions. They were told that in order to follow Teddy on his treasure hunt, they had to listen carefully to the sentences and repeat exactly what they hear. Children's responses were voice-recorded and subsequently transcribed for further analyses. Children's responses were scored for overall accuracy, grammaticality and correct use of the target structure. Based on preliminary strong correlations between accuracy, grammaticality and structure in both Greek and English, we transformed these variables into composites scores. Greek accuracy was significantly correlated with Greek grammaticality (
The Test of Word Reading Efficiency (Torgesen et al.,
For decoding in Greek we used the adaption of the TOWRE-2 by Georgiou et al. (
Children were assessed individually in a quiet room in their schools or homes. Testing was divided into two sessions lasting roughly 45 min each. One session consisted of measuring the children's non-verbal IQ, English expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness, and decoding. In this session the participants' parents completed the LITMUS-PABIQ questionnaire. The other session consisted of the administration of the Greek language and literacy tasks (expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness and decoding). The order of the sessions as well as the order of the tests within each session were counterbalanced. Parental written consent was obtained prior to onset of the data collection.
The first research question addressed if there is a difference between the children's performance on objective measures of reading and reading-related skills in School Year 1 and 3 and between the Greek and English tasks.
Descriptive statistics of the children's performance on the Greek and English expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness (blending, elision), decoding (real-words, pseudo-word) tasks (percentage correct).
Expressive vocabulary | Mean | 58.1 | 73.8 | 76.4 | 87.6 |
SD | 8.5 | 12.7 | 9.3 | 9.95 | |
Min-Max | 42–70 | 50–94 | 66–100 | 70–100 | |
Blending | Mean | 65.3 | 80.5 | 80.5 | 92.3 |
SD | 16.2 | 9.7 | 10.3 | 6.6 | |
Min-Max | 40–95 | 65–100 | 65–100 | 80–100 | |
Elision | Mean | 53.1 | 81.4 | 69.3 | 85.3 |
SD | 18.5 | 13.2 | 11.3 | 8.2 | |
Min-Max | 20.7–93.1 | 51.7–100 | 50–90 | 70–100 | |
Real-word reading (accuracy) | Mean | 57.6 | 79.1 | 67.6 | 82.7 |
SD | 21.5 | 16.4 | 13.3 | 7.96 | |
Min-Max | 25–93.2 | 38.6–100 | 38.9–86.1 | 58.3–92.6 | |
Pseudo-word reading (accuracy) | Mean | 48.3 | 75.4 | 67.9 | 84.6 |
SD | 19.9 | 18.1 | 14.3 | 7.03 | |
Min-Max | 20.6–84.1 | 30.2–103.2 | 34.9–93.9 | 65.2–95.5 |
Descriptive statistics of the children's performance on the Greek and English morphological awareness and sentence repetition (SRT) tasks (percentage correct).
M.A. inflectional. analogy | Mean | 65.3 | 80.5 | 80.5 | 92.3 |
SD | 16.2 | 9.7 | 10.3 | 6.6 | |
Min-Max | 40–95 | 65–100 | 65–100 | 80–100 | |
M.A. inflectional production | Mean | 53.1 | 81.4 | 69.3 | 85.3 |
SD | 18.5 | 13.2 | 11.3 | 8.2 | |
Min-Max | 20.7–93.1 | 51.7–100 | 50–90 | 70–100 | |
M.A. derivational analogy | Mean | 57.6 | 79.1 | 67.6 | 82.7 |
SD | 21.5 | 16.4 | 13.3 | 7.96 | |
Min-Max | 25–93.2 | 38.6–100 | 38.9–86.1 | 58.3–92.6 | |
M.A. derivational production | Mean | 48.3 | 75.4 | 67.9 | 84.6 |
SD | 19.9 | 18.1 | 14.3 | 7.03 | |
Min-Max | 20.6–84.1 | 30.2–103.2 | 34.9–93.9 | 65.2–95.5 | |
S.R.T. accuracy | Mean | 58.1 | 73.8 | 76.4 | 87.6 |
SD | 8.5 | 12.7 | 9.3 | 9.95 | |
Min-Max | 42–70 | 50–94 | 66–100 | 70–100 | |
S.R.T. grammar | Mean | 65.3 | 80.5 | 80.5 | 92.3 |
SD | 16.2 | 9.7 | 10.3 | 6.6 | |
Min-Max | 40–95 | 65–100 | 65–100 | 80–100 | |
S.R.T. structure | Mean | 53.1 | 81.4 | 69.3 | 85.3 |
SD | 18.5 | 13.2 | 11.3 | 8.2 | |
Min-Max | 20.7–93.1 | 51.7–100 | 50–90 | 70–100 |
To examine differences between the Year groups and between Greek and English, we entered the results (in percentages correct) into repeated-measures ANOVAs with School Year as the between participants factor and Language as the within participants factor, for each task separately. In all tasks, there was a significant main effect of School Year, favoring Year 3 as expected [expressive vocabulary:
There was also a significant main effect of Language, favoring English [expressive vocabulary:
Contrary to the prediction that language dominance may shift in these bilingual children between Year 1 and Year 3, there was no significant interaction between School Year and Language in vocabulary, phonological awareness, inflectional morphology and decoding tasks, indicating that the children had a higher score in Year 3 than in Year 1 and had a higher score in English compared to Greek in both School Year 1 and School Year 3 (expressive vocabulary:
There was, however, a significant interaction between School Year and Language in derivational morphology in the production task [
A significant interaction between Language and School Year was also observed for the S.R.T.- grammaticality [
The second question addressed the relationships between parental report measures of children's language exposure and proficiency level, parental level of education, parental rating of their own language proficiency, and the objective measures of children's language and reading measures in Greek and English separately. Pearson's correlations were conducted, as shown in
Correlation matrix showing correlations between children's performance on objective measures and parent-questionnaire measures of language exposure before 4 years and language use in and outside home, mother and father's self-rated language proficiency and mother and father's educational level in Greek.
1. Expressive.Vocabulary.Gr | ||||||||||
2. P.A.Gr | 0.42 |
|||||||||
3. Inflectional.Morphology.Gr | 0.48 |
0.66 |
||||||||
4. Derivational.Morphology.Gr | 0 | 0.25 | 0.03 | |||||||
5. S.R.T.Gr | 0.46 |
0.34 |
0.22 | 0.08 | ||||||
6. Decoding.Gr | 0.47 |
0.67 |
0.50 |
0.26 | 0.28 | |||||
7. Greek Exposure before 4 years old | 0.10 | 0.02 | 0.11 | 0.16 | 0.08 | 0.10 | ||||
8. Language use in home | 0.41 |
0.10 | 0.11 | 0.01 | 0.31 |
0.09 | 0.12 | |||
9. Language use outside home | 0.54 |
0.31 | 0.32 |
0.04 | 0.48 |
0.34 |
0.11 | 0.71 |
||
10. Parents.Edu.Level | 0 | 0.13 | 0.10 | 0.15 | 0.13 | 0.33 |
0.37 |
0.13 | 0.23 | |
11. Parents.Prof.Level.Gr | 0.20 | 0.31 | 0.23 | 0 | 0.34 |
0.21 | 0.23 | 0.18 | 0.27 | 0.14 |
Correlation matrix for children's performance on objective measures and language exposure before 4 years and language use in and outside home, mother and father's self-rated language proficiency and mother and father's educational level in English.
1. | Expressive.Vocabulary.Eng | ||||||||||
2. | P.A.Eng | 0.52 |
|||||||||
3. | Inflectional.Morphology.Eng | 0.65 |
0.75 |
||||||||
4. | Derivational.Morphology.Eng | 0.43 |
0.33 |
0.38 |
|||||||
5. | S.R.T.Eng | 0.38 |
0.05 | 0.30 |
0.33 |
||||||
6. | Decoding.Eng | 0.72 |
0.75 |
0.77 |
0.53 |
0.37 |
|||||
7. | English Exposure before 4 years old | 0 | 0.19 | 0.05 | 0.18 | 0.06 | 0.19 | ||||
8. | Language use in home | 0.20 | 0.07 | 0.11 | 0.13 | 0.13 | 0.08 | 0.40 |
|||
9. | Language use outside home | 0.20 | 0.19 | 0.22 | 0.05 | 0.17 | 0.16 | 0.27 | 0.53 |
||
10. | Parents.Edu.Level | 0 | 0.24 | 0.06 | 0.16 | 0.01 | 0.25 | 0.46 |
0.31 | 0.19 | |
11. | Parents.Prof.Level.Eng | 0.30 | 0.14 | 0.07 | 0.34 |
0.19 | 0.06 | 0.06 | 0.02 | 0.01 | 0.16 |
The analysis revealed that overall, children's performance on the majority of the Greek tasks was significantly positively correlated with Greek language use outside the home. Specifically, for the results on the Greek tasks, expressive vocabulary was significantly positively correlated with language use in the home and outside the home. Inflectional morphology was significantly positively correlated with language use outside the home. The score of the S.R.T. task was significantly positively correlated with language use in the home and outside the home and parental self-rated proficiency. The score of the decoding task was significantly positively correlated with language use outside the home and parental educational level.
For the English language measures, the only significant positively relationship was between performance on the derivational morphology tasks and parental English proficiency level, as shown in
No negative correlations were found between any of the factors and children's abilities in any of the two languages.
An additional area of interest was to investigate whether there was evidence of cross-language associations in the children's language and reading skills. This was achieved through examining the cross-language correlations between Greek and English expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness (blending, elision), morphological awareness, morpho-syntactic skills and decoding (word reading and pseudo-word reading). Partial correlations were used to determine the relationship between Greek and English tasks controlling for age, as shown in
Partial-correlation matrix for children's performance on expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, morpho-syntactic skills, decoding in Greek and English controlling for age.
Younger.Older.Group | 1.Expressive.Vocabulary.Gr | |||||||||||
2.Expressive.Vocabular.Eng | 0.433 |
|||||||||||
3.P.A.Gr | 0.070 | 0.071 | ||||||||||
4.P.A.Eng | 0.031 | 0.056 | 0.372 |
|||||||||
5.Decoding.Gr | 0.175 | −0.111 | 0.470 |
0.444 |
||||||||
6.Decoding.Eng | 0.173 | 0.171 | 0.636 |
0.669 |
0.558 |
|||||||
7.Inflectioanl.Morphology.Gr | 0.211 | 0.370 |
0.474 |
0.418 |
0.246 | 0.422 |
||||||
8.Inflectional.Morphology.Eng | 0.196 | 0.265 | 0.452 |
0.393 |
0.041 | 0.403 |
0.526 |
|||||
9.Derivational.Moprhology.Gr | 0.082 | 0.197 | −0.269 | −0.258 | −0.281 | −0.178 | 0.006 | 0.008 | ||||
10.Derivational Morphology. Eng | −0.139 | −0.118 | 0.002 | −0.004 | 0.046 | −0.007 | 0.093 | −0.097 | 0.059 | |||
11.S.R.T.Gr | 0.102 | −0.102 | −0.146 | −0.151 | −0.236 | −0.179 | −0.251 | −0.154 | 0.169 | −0.009 | ||
12.S.R.T.Eng | 0.239 | 0.297 | −0.245 | −0.039 | −0.252 | 0.063 | −0.084 | −0.289 | 0.224 | −0.169 | 0.035 |
As shown in
English expressive vocabulary was significantly positive correlated with Greek inflectional morphology. English phonological awareness was significantly positive correlated with Greek decoding, English decoding, Greek inflectional morphology and English inflectional morphology. English decoding was significantly positive correlated with Greek and English inflectional morphology.
The broad aim of this study was to understand more fully the benefits of bilingualism. Toward that aim, we investigated how Greek-English bilingual children who acquire Greek as a minority language and English as a majority language in the first and third year of primary school in the UK perform on several domains relating to both language and decoding dimensions of the Simple View of Reading (Gough and Tunmer,
We first addressed language dominance using parental reports and objective measures. We investigated whether there was a difference between the children's level of exposure to Greek and English before the age of 4 years, their current language skills (at the time of testing, when children were in Year 1 or Year 3 of primary school) in the two languages, and their current language use of the two languages in the home and outside the home.
Previous research has shown that bilingual children have different abilities in their two languages, which is often linked with one language being more dominant (e.g., Thordardottir et al.,
The language history questionnaire included information about the children's exposure to both Greek and English in the home and outside the home both before they had started school (before the age of 4 years) and also at the time this study was conducted, as well as about the parental perception of their children's current language skills. This enabled us to address the children's relative language dominance on the basis of exposure as well as subjective proficiency. We were also able to measure language dominance based on the children's performance on objective measures of their proficiency in the two languages.
According to the questionnaire, the children were Greek dominant before the age of 4, but by the time of the study, when they were in either Year 1 or Year 3, they were English dominant. In terms of dominance inside and outside the home, we found that currently only 32.5% of the participants were Greek dominant within the home, whereas all children were English dominant outside the home.
The results on dominance based on language exposure were in line with the results on dominance based on the parental perception of their children's current language skills: the parents indicated that the majority of children had better language skills in English compared to Greek, and were thus English dominant. This finding is also in line with the children's performance on the objective tasks measuring language and reading skills, as they performed better in the English than the Greek tasks in both School Year 1 and 3.
This demonstrates first that the parents were accurate in judging their children's relative language skills in the two languages and suggests that our language history questionnaire was a valid tool for measuring language dominance. Second, the reported switch from dominance in the minority language before school to dominance in the majority language during the school years is in line with previous studies addressing language dominance in children (Cobo-Lewis et al.,
The study also addressed whether language (expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, morpho-syntactic skills) and reading skills (decoding) in Greek and English were associated with contextual factors (language use before the age of 4 years, current language use at home, and outside the home, parental self-rated language proficiency and their educational level).
Focusing first on the Greek language, vocabulary, phonological awareness and morpho-syntax tasks were significantly correlated with language use at home and outside the home. Additionally, performance on decoding was significantly correlated with Greek language use outside the home and parent's educational level.
These findings are in line with several previous studies. For example, Thordardottir (
An additional finding was that there was no negative relationship between the use of the minority language and the children's language and word-level reading skills performance in the majority language. In line with the findings from previous studies related to language exposure, the use of the minority language did not impact the children's developing English (majority language) vocabulary and reading skills (Gutiérrez-Clellen and Kreiter,
In contrast to Chondrogianni and Marinis (
As far as decoding skills are concerned, it is worth noting that there was no significant correlation between the English language and reading skills and the quantity/quality of use of that language in the home and outside the home. This finding could be explained by the fact that the language spoken in U.K. schools is exclusively English. As a result, input and use of English in school is relatively consistent across children and can level out individual differences in exposure to the majority language outside school.
Similar to Dickinson and Porche (
An additional area of interest was to examine cross-language correlations for expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, morpho-syntactic skills and decoding skills controlling for age.
Our findings on phonological awareness are in line with Dickinson et al. (
In terms of morphological awareness, our findings showed that there was a significant correlation between Greek and English morphological awareness tasks. This finding is in contrast with Gutierrez-Clellen et al. (
With regard to decoding, the correlation between English and Greek scores was high. This finding could support the argument that learning a first language with a more transparent orthography could enhance phonological and decoding skills in the second language (Geva and Siegel,
The within and between languages correlations showed that both Greek and English phonological awareness were significantly correlated with Greek and English decoding tasks indicating cross-language relationships. This finding is in agreement with Durgunoglu et al. (
Our study aimed to investigate how Greek-English bilingual children who acquire Greek as a minority language and English as a majority language in the first and third year of primary school in the UK perform on several domains relating to both language and decoding dimensions of the Simple View of Reading (Gough and Tunmer,
The findings confirm that language dominance could change even before children enter school and affects language and literacy skills equally: children have better skills in the majority compared to the minority language in both Year 1 and Year 3. Additionally, we did not find any negative relationship between the use of the heritage language and children's language and reading performance in the majority language (Brunell and Linnakylä,
The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.
The study has been reviewed by the Research Ethics Committee of the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences at the University of Reading and has been given a favorable ethical opinion for conduct (ethics application number: 2016-217-TM). All investigators on this project have had criminal records checks and have been approved to work with children. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants' legal guardian/next of kin.
The study was conceptualized and designed by all three authors. The data were collected and analyzed by TP under the supervision of TM and DP. The paper was written up by TP, TM, and DP.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
1Composite scores were calculated in the same way for all tasks.