The Impact of Multilingualism on Children’s Reading/Writing Skills and Scholastic Performance

Scientific Conference (2023, August 23)

While research on multilingualism has shown both, positive (e.g. inhibition; Coderre et al., 2013), and negative (e.g. vocabulary; Bialystok et al., 2008) effects on cognition and language proficiency ... [more ▼]

While research on multilingualism has shown both, positive (e.g. inhibition; Coderre et al., 2013), and negative (e.g. vocabulary; Bialystok et al., 2008) effects on cognition and language proficiency, its influence on scholastic achievement appears to be largely negative (Hoffmann et al., 2018; Martini et al., 2021). Children in Luxembourg are educated in a multilingual educational system. In Kindergarten, the main teaching language is Luxembourgish. This switches to German for literacy acquisition in elementary school, with French taught as a second language. Despite its small size, Luxembourg is also highly multi-cultural, boasting 170 nationalities (The Government of the Grand Dutchy of Luxembourg, 2023). Thus, many of the children in the school system do not speak the language(s) of instruction at home. Data from the Luxembourgish national school monitoring program reveals significant differences in German reading comprehension in grade 3 depending on the language spoken at home. Because Luxembourgish is linguistically close to German, Luxembourgish-speaking children generally perform better than children who do not speak Luxembourgish at home (Hoffmann et al., 2018; Martini et al., 2021). Furthermore, the language-based differences in children’s scholastic performance complicate the diagnostic process of children with potential learning disorders, such as dyslexia and/or dyscalculia. In Luxembourg, the language in which children are screened and diagnosed for potential learning disorders is usually identical to the main language of instruction at school, which at time of diagnosis (typically grade 3) is German. It is therefore difficult to distinguish poor performance based on potential difficulties with reading/writing or mathematics from poor performance based on low language proficiency in the test language. Furthermore, the diagnostic tools currently employed in Luxembourg are developed in countries with primarily one language of instruction, challenging the validity of the diagnostic process in a multilingual population (Ugen et al., 2021). We have thus developed a comprehensive reading/writing test battery adapted to the Luxembourgish educational curriculum and multilingual environment. Children’s potential language proficiency differences in the test language (German) are taken into account using simplified instructions with reduced language load, multiple examples, varying degrees of difficulty of the test materials, as well as the construction of distinct language-group norms, depending on the language(s) spoken at home. This helps avoid over-diagnosis of reading and writing disorders in children who do not speak the language(s) of instruction at home and underdiagnosis of children who do. The developed test battery assesses children’s performance in key domains relevant for reading and writing comprising phonological skills, (non)word and text reading (fluency and accuracy), reading comprehension, writing, and vocabulary. Furthermore, we link children’s performance in the newly developed test battery to their performance in the Luxembourgish national school monitoring program. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used We have tested 214 children during the pre-test phase of the project (February – June 2022; age 8 – 12; M = 9.59; SD = 0.68; 95 girls) and will test approximately 735 children during the validation and norming phase (February – June 2023). All children attend grade 3 in public primary schools in Luxembourg. The distribution of classes participating in the project covers all 15 regions of the country, resulting in a representative sample of the Luxembourgish school population. Children complete the 9 sub-tests of the novel reading/writing test battery, which includes precursor skills: Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN), non-word phoneme segmentation, non-word phoneme deletion; reading skills: word and non-word reading, text reading and comprehension; writing skills: gap dictation and text dictation; as well as a receptive vocabulary task. The vocabulary and writing skills are assessed in a group setting (all children complete the tasks together in the classroom), the precursor and reading skills are assessed individually in a quiet room in the school. The total testing time (group test + individual tests) does not exceed 90 minutes per child. All tests are conducted by trained test administrators following a standardised procedure. The pre-test data were analysed per sub-test using Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance with language group as the between-subject factor and results of the sub-test (per category where applicable) as the within subject factor. Significant main effects of language group were explored using post-hoc pairwise-comparisons (Bonferroni corrected t-tests). Four language groups were created based on the frequencies of the reported language(s) spoken at home: Luxembourgish/German monolingual, Luxembourgish/German bilingual, Romance language (e.g., French, Portuguese, Spanish) mono- and bilingual, Other language (e.g., English, Slavic) mono- and bilingual. The results of each sub-test of the novel reading/writing test battery were also correlated with children’s performance on German listening and reading comprehension in the Luxembourgish national school monitoring programme (Bonferroni corrected Pearson correlations). Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings The results of the pre-test phase show that children, who speak Luxembourgish or German at home outperform children who speak a Romance or Other language at home. Particularly, significant differences between language groups were observed for: word reading accuracy (F(3,190) = 4.94, p = .003); word reading fluency (F(3,190) = 4.59, p = .004); text reading accuracy (F(3,190) = 8.73, p < .001); text reading fluency (F(3,190) = 11.50, p < .001); text comprehension (F(3,190) = 12.45, p < .001); gap dictation (F(3,180) = 10.52, p < .001); text dictation (F(3,180) = 18.22, p < .001). The significant main effects of language highlight the need for separate language group norms for screening and diagnostic purposes. The lack of main effects of language for non-word phoneme deletion, non-word phoneme segmentation, and non-word reading indicate that the sub-tests using non-words were successfully constructed to account for language proficiency effects. Significant Pearson correlations between the school monitoring results of German listening (.28 < |𝜌| < .59) and German reading comprehension (.24 < |𝜌| < .65) and the majority of the newly developed sub-tests of the reading/writing test battery were also observed. These correlations provide a measure of construct validity, illustrating the significant link between children’s scholastic performance and performance in the novel reading/writing test battery. We expect to replicate these initial findings with a larger sample of children during the validation and norming phase of the project and supplement our data analyses with more detailed results highlighting the distribution of scores per sub-test based on language spoken at home and its effect on scholastic performance as assessed by the Luxembourgish national school monitoring program. References Bialystok, E., Craik, F., & Luk, G. (2008). Cognitive Control and Lexical Access in Younger and Older Bilinguals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 34(4), 859–873. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.34.4.859 Coderre, E. L., van Heuven, W. J. B., & Conklin, K. (2013). The timing and magnitude of Stroop interference and facilitation in monolinguals and bilinguals. Bilingualism, 16(2), 420–441. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728912000405 Hoffmann, D., Hornung, C., Gamo, S., Esch, P., Keller, U., & Fischbach, A. (2018). Schulische Kompetenzen von Erstklässlern und ihre Entwicklung nach zwei Jahren. In T. Lentz, I. Baumann, & A. Küpper (Eds.), Nationaler Bildungsbericht (pp. 84–96). University of Luxembourg & SCRIPT. Martini, S., Schiltz, C., Fischbach, A., & Ugen, S. (2021). Identifying Math and Reading Difficulties of multilingual children: Effects of different cut-offs and reference group. In M. Herzog, A. Fritz-Stratmann, & E. Gürsoy (Eds.), Diversity Dimensions in Mathematics and Language Learning (pp. 200–228). De Gruyter Mouton. The Government of the Grand Dutchy of Luxembourg. (2023, January) Society and culture – Population Demographics. https://luxembourg.public.lu/en/society-and-culture/population/demographics.html Ugen, S., Schiltz, C., Fischbach, A., & Pit-ten Cate, I. M. (2021). Lernstörungen im multilingualen Kontext. Diagnose und Hilfestellungen. Melusina Press. https://doi.org/10.26298/bg5s-ng46 [less ▲]

Specific learning disorder in mathematics in a multilingual education context - Diagnosing with language in mind

Scientific Conference (2023, May 22)

In the diagnostic process of specific learning disorder in mathematics, individual weaknesses and strengths are identified to provide adequate support and hence minimize the impact on children’s ... [more ▼]

In the diagnostic process of specific learning disorder in mathematics, individual weaknesses and strengths are identified to provide adequate support and hence minimize the impact on children’s scholastic achievement. In general, diagnostic tools use language to give instructions and present tasks and thus, test language proficiency is prone to impact student’s test performance, especially in linguistically diverse contexts. In Luxembourg, for instance, most children’s home languages differ from the language of math instruction, which is used in the diagnostic process. In addition, given that linguistic heterogeneity is generally not considered in currently used diagnostic instruments, difficulties arising from low language skills need to be disentangled from problems resulting from an underlying learning disorder. To optimize the diagnostic process, we have developed a test battery in mathematics for third-grade children, tailored to a multilingual education context. Based on diagnostic guidelines and neurocognitive models of number processing, we devised a total of 17 subtests addressing different key domains, with reduced language load both in the instructions and within the items. Results from the pilot study (N=211) show significant performance differences based on linguistic backgrounds in three tasks (number naming, number writing, and verbal counting), in favor of children most familiar with the test language. Moreover, we compared general performance in the test battery of a sub-sample (N=116) with the mathematics score of the same children in the Luxembourgish school monitoring program. A significant interaction between test and language profile revealed that differences in performance based on student’s language background profiles were less pronounced in the new test battery than in the monitoring tasks. These findings (a) highlight the importance of considering test language proficiency when diagnosing specific learning disorders and (b) provide first evidence of the new tool’s suitability in a multilingual education setting. [less ▲]

Development of a test battery to diagnose specific learning disorder in mathematics in a multilingual education context

Scientific Conference (2022, November)

Longitudinal changes in cortical responses to letter-speech sound stimuli in 8 – 11 year-old children

in npj Science of Learning (2022)

While children are able to name letters fairly quickly, the automatisation of letter-speech sound mappings continues over the first years of reading development. In the current longitudinal fMRI study, we ... [more ▼]

While children are able to name letters fairly quickly, the automatisation of letter-speech sound mappings continues over the first years of reading development. In the current longitudinal fMRI study, we explored developmental changes in cortical responses to letters and speech sounds across 3 yearly measurements in a sample of 18 8–11 year old children. We employed a text-based recalibration paradigm in which combined exposure to text and ambiguous speech sounds shifts participants’ later perception of the ambiguous sounds towards the text. Our results showed that activity of the left superior temporal and lateral inferior precentral gyri followed a non-linear developmental pattern across the measurement sessions. This pattern is reminiscent of previously reported inverted-u-shape developmental trajectories in children’s visual cortical responses to text. Our findings suggest that the processing of letters and speech sounds involves non-linear changes in the brain’s spoken language network possibly related to progressive automatisation of reading skills. [less ▲]

Cortical responses to letters and ambiguous speech vary with reading skills in dyslexic and typically reading children

in NeuroImage: Clinical (2021), 30

One of the proposed issues underlying reading difficulties in dyslexia is insufficiently automatized letter-speech sound associations. In the current fMRI experiment, we employ text-based recalibration to ... [more ▼]

One of the proposed issues underlying reading difficulties in dyslexia is insufficiently automatized letter-speech sound associations. In the current fMRI experiment, we employ text-based recalibration to investigate letter- speech sound mappings in 8–10 year-old children with and without dyslexia. Here an ambiguous speech sound /a?a/ midway between /aba/ and /ada/ is combined with disambiguating “aba” or “ada” text causing a perceptual shift of the ambiguous /a?a/ sound towards the text (recalibration). This perceptual shift has been found to be reduced in adults but not in children with dyslexia compared to typical readers. Our fMRI results show significantly reduced activation in the left fusiform in dyslexic compared to typical readers, despite comparable behavioural performance. Furthermore, enhanced audio-visual activation within this region was linked to better reading and phonological skills. In contrast, higher activation in bilateral superior temporal cortex was associated with lower letter-speech sound identification fluency. These findings reflect individual differences during the early stages of reading development with reduced recruitment of the left fusiform in dyslexic readers together with an increased involvement of the superior temporal cortex in children with less automatized letter-speech sound associations. [less ▲]