The effects of bilingualism on phonological awareness and word reading tasks in primary school children

The purpose of this study was to explore the roles of bilingualism and similarity/dissimilarity between first language (L1) and second language (L2) on word reading and phonological awareness of bilingual students. Totally 1614 monolingual and bilingual pupils from Tehran [Persian monolingual (Pm) area], Sanandaj [Kurdish-Persian bilingual (KPb) area] and Tabriz [Turkish-Persian bilingual (TPb) area] were included who were assessed on a word reading and also four phonological tasks (word chains, rhyming, phoneme deletion, and reading for non/pseudo-word). Kurdish language is similar to Persian language according to orthography and phonology but from these points of view Turkish and Persian languages are supposed to be dissimilar. Both of them are spoken languages in Iran and are mainly based on phonological processing. According to the results Pm were better than bilinguals in word reading and non/pseudo-word reading tasks. In rhyming and phoneme deletion tasks, KPb were better non-significantly than Pm but there was no difference between TPb and monolinguals. In word chains, there was no significant difference between bilinguals and monolinguals. The results suggest that bilinguals can benefit from similarity between L1 and L2 since KPb were better than TPb in all reading and phonological tasks. The bilingual advantages are observed more in phonological tasks. Findings are discussed based on different patterns existed on word reading and phonological awareness tasks in bilinguals and monolinguals, similarity and dissimilarity between languages, grade and gender differences.