Emergent literacy performance across two languages: assessing four-year-old bilingual children

There are few emergent literacy assessments available for bilingual children. This study investigated the usefulness of a screening battery of oral language and print-related measures as an assessment tool for bilingual Samoan–English speaking children. A total of 18 children were recruited from three Samoan language immersion kindergartens (Aoga Amatas) in Auckland, New Zealand. A control group of 15 monolingual children were recruited from neighbouring kindergartens. Both Aoga Amatas and the kindergartens run programmes that are based on Te Whāriki – the New Zealand National Early Childhood Curriculum – regardless of the language spoken. The bilingual children were assessed on two occasions, once in English and once in Samoan by undergraduate speech pathology students, who were fluent in Samoan or English, on measures of story retelling and comprehension, phonological awareness, letter name knowledge and vocabulary. Results were analysed for each language, and across languages using composite scoring, and showed that the bilingual children's performance in one language (either Samoan or English) significantly underestimated their composite language performance. Furthermore, the bilingual children significantly outperformed their monolingual peers on receptive vocabulary when composite scoring was used. Practical implications of these findings are outlined.