Acceso usuarios
Gil-Marie Mercelina
, Eliane Segers, Ronald Severing, Ludo Verhoeven
The present study aims to examine the individual variation in Creole Papiamento and Dutch spelling development of 146 children in the Dutch Caribbean as a function of the initial instruction language and L1 and L2 kindergarten preliteracy measures (phonological awareness, rapid naming, short-term memory, letter knowledge) in the first two primary grades. In this post-colonial context, children start developing literacy either in the mother tongue (L1) or in the (ex)colonial language (L2). We found an instruction language effect: L1 Papiamento-instructed children performed better on Papiamento spelling and L2 Dutch-instructed children better on Dutch spelling. For grade 2 Papiamento spelling, kindergarten letter knowledge was the main predictor when instructed in L1, while kindergarten RAN was the main predictor when instructed in L2. For grade 2 Dutch spelling, grade 1 Dutch spelling was the main predictor when instructed in L2, while kindergarten word decoding and vocabulary were the main predictors when instructed in L1. The mismatched instruction groups experienced more interference from the other language than the matched instruction groups. In conclusion, children’s L1 and L2 spelling development benefit from a match with instruction language and is predicted by both preliteracy measures and first-grade decoding.
