Preschool predictors of learning to read and spell in an additional language: a two-wave longitudinal study in a multilingual context.

The study explores whether foundational skills of reading and spelling in preschool
(age 5–6) predict literacy skills cross-linguistically in an additional language in
Grade 1 (age 6–7). A sample of linguistically diverse preschool children completed
tasks of phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge, verbal-short term memory, rapid automatized naming, and lexical knowledge in the language of preschool
instruction Luxembourgish. The children were followed-up in Grade 1 where literacy skills were assessed in the language of schooling, i.e., German, after fve months
of literacy instruction. German was a non-native language for all children. Longitudinal correlations confrm that individual diferences in single word/pseudoword
reading and spelling in German in Grade 1 can be predicted by all the foundational
literacy skills that were assessed in Luxembourgish. Path analyses showed that phonological awareness in Luxembourgish emerged as the strongest unique predictor of
Grade 1 literacy skills in German. The second unique preschool predictor of Grade 1
literacy skills was letter-sound knowledge. Results are consistent with the view that
literacy development in an additional language builds upon similar building blocks
as literacy acquisition in a frst language, at least for languages that are typologically
close. However, current fndings suggest that respective contributions between predictors and literacy skills in children learning to read in an additional language may vary from patterns observed in studies with children acquiring literacy in their frst
language.