The similarity of phonological skills underpinning reading ability in shallow and deep orthographies : a bilingual perspective

Abstract

Reading comprehension relies on the integration of phonological, semantic, syntactic and pragmatic language abilities and early reading success is attributed to several interrelated factors. The current study investigated one of these skills, phonological awareness and its relation to six-year-old children’s mastery in reading Maltese and English. The researchers recruited eighty-two bilingual participants attending bilingual schools in Malta and administered two parallel batteries comprising a word reading test and phonological tests/tasks in the two respective languages. Descriptive statistics indicated suitability for further analysis. The Bartlett’s test of sphericity and the Kaiser-MeyerOlkin measure of sampling adequacy showed that the data were suitable for multivariate exploration. Principal components analysis identified clear componential structures in both language batteries. A statistical regression analysis identified similar phonological underpinnings across the two single word reading measures. The results showed that specific measures of phonological awareness constituted common phonological underpinnings of reading performance in both Maltese and English, although to different degrees. The results support the notion of similarity in the patterns of association of skills sustaining reading across Maltese and English in bilingual children. The view that the phonological skills driving reading development across alphabetic languages may not differ substantially between different orthographies is supported.