Bilingualism and learning to read and write in Spanish

Abstract

The view that learning to read must be treated as a language-based process is now one with which most a teachers agree in order that children can understand the nature of the alphabetic writing system. Since the nature of spoken language is a key issue to be considered in reading acquisition, it is important to take into account the role of the way different writing systems encode language. The assumption that reading is a universal process in every language (Goodman) needs scrutiny. On the contrary, Katz, Frost, Upward, Gough and Segalovich do not agree with Goodman's view. For them, the role of the different writing systems has been frequently neglected in the debates on methods of teaching literacy. In that sense, they argue that the consistency of the relation between sounds and letters of every writing system plays a key rol and has a strong influence in the way children elicit phonemic or lexical strategies when they face the task of reading and writing.
The present paper examines misspelling errors made by english/spanish bilinguals (L1 english) in both languages. Results show that for the students, english spelling is almost 4 times more difficult than spanish one, in spite of the bilinguals superior competence in their L1.