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Article published In: Cross-linguistic transfer in reading in multilingual contexts – recent research trends
Edited by Elena Zaretsky and Mila Schwartz
[Written Language & Literacy 17:1] 2014
► pp. 16–39

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The development of orthographic processing skills in children in early French immersion programs

 | University of Delaware, USA
 | University of Toronto, Canada
 | Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
Published online: 11 April 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.17.1.02com
Children learning to read in two languages are faced with orthographic features from both languages, either unique to a language or similar across languages. In the present study, we examined how children develop orthographic processing skills over time (from grade 1 to grade 2) with a sample of Canadian children attending a French immersion program and we investigated the underlying factor structure of orthographic skills across English and French. Two orthographic processing tasks were administered in both languages: lexical orthographic processing (e.g. choose the correct spelling from people–peeple) and sub-lexical orthographic processing (e.g. which is the more word-like vaid–vayd?), which included both language-specific and language-shared orthographic regularities. Children’s performances in sub-lexical tasks increased with grade but were comparable across languages. Further, evidence for a one factor model including all measures suggested that there is a common underlying orthographic processing skill that cuts across measurement and language variables. Keywords: orthographic processing; reading; French immersion; bilinguals; second language learners
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