Biliteracy acquisition in Kannada and English: A developmental study

Abstract

This study investigated the contribution of decoding and language comprehension sub-skills to Kannada and English biliteracy development over three years in multilingual students in urban low-income communities in one large city in India. Syllabic awareness, phonemic awareness and decoding skills were measured in Grades 3–5 (Time 1), and participants were followed to Grades 6–8 (Time 2), when their oral language comprehension and reading comprehension skills were tested. Hierarchical regression results revealed that: (1) both syllabic and phonemic awareness predicted Kannada decoding scores; however, only phonemic awareness predicted English decoding scores; (2) decoding ability from Time 1 and language comprehension skills from Time 2 made unique contributions to reading comprehension skills at Time 2 in both languages; (3) there were significant cross-linguistic relationships between corresponding reading sub-skills at both times; and (4) there was an independent contribution of Kannada decoding to English decoding at Time 1; however, the contribution of Kannada reading comprehension to English reading comprehension at Time 2 was not direct. The theoretical and pedagogical implications of these findings for alphasyllabic-alphabetic biliteracy development are discussed.