TY  - UNPB
ID  - discovery10021708
N1  - Some content has been redacted due to third party rights or other legal issues and is labelled as such in the document.
EP  - 358
AV  - restricted
N2  - Metalinguistic awareness is transferable between oral and written forms of
language, and between different languages. Recent research has established a
connection between monolingual children's grammatical awareness and their
morphological spelling knowledge. Studies of bilingual children have shown that
phonological awareness and alphabetic knowledge transfer across languages, even if
the languages are dissimilar and are written with different scripts. This study
investigates transfer of grammatical awareness and morphological spelling knowledge
across dissimilar languages and scripts.
In spoken language, children learn not only surface-level language 'facts'
specific to that language (e.g. vocabulary) but also deeper-level grammatical principles
(e.g. morphological and syntactic relationships), which govern other languages.
Similarly, literacy requires surface-level knowledge of a specific script (e.g. letters and
their sound values), and knowledge of the principle underlying that script (e.g. that
alphabets represent phonology and morphology), which governs other scripts of the
same type.
I propose that transfer across languages occurs at the level of grammatical
awareness but not at the level of vocabulary. The hypothesis was tested in Englishspeaking
children (6-11 years) learning Hebrew as a second language. In Study 1,
Hebrew learners were given oral measures of vocabulary and grammatical awareness,
and measures of morphological spelling knowledge. Grammatical awareness and
morphological spelling knowledge were significantly correlated across languages, but
vocabulary was not. In Study 2, awareness of conceptually similar aspects of English
and Hebrew morphology was measured in oral language and spelling. These were
significantly correlated across languages. In both studies, Hebrew learners with high
levels of Hebrew scored significantly higher than English-speaking monolinguals on
grammatical and spelling measures.
I conclude that grammatical awareness and morphological spelling knowledge
are transferable across languages and scripts, and that learning a second language can
benefit specific aspects of metalinguistic and spelling development.
PB  - Institute of Education, University of London
Y1  - 1997///
A1  - Bindman, Miriam Ruth.
M1  - Doctoral
UR  - https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10021708/
TI  - Relationships between metalinguistic and spelling development across languages: evidence from English and Hebrew.
KW  - Language development
KW  - Transfer
KW  - Bilingualism
KW  - Grammar
KW  - Spelling
KW  - English language
KW  - Hebrew language
KW  - Language awareness
ER  -