Biliteracia simultânea na educação bilíngue: efeitos na conectividade da fala e na fluência da leitura de crianças do 5º ano

Abstract

Recently we have seen a significant increase in the number of children registered in schools that offer bilingual curriculum or bilingual programs in Brazil. A detailed review by Williams and Lowrance-Faulhaber (2018) analyzed 35 articles on reading and writing in bilingual children and showed advantages in simultaneous biliteracy. The development of one language supported the other language, children used their knowledge of both languages; thereby, one language supporting the other in parallel. This research investigates the effects of bilingual education and simultaneous biliteracy on the levels of speech connectivity and reading fluency in Portuguese and English with 31 students who are 10 years old and study in a bilingual school in Natal/RN. In this research, we used individual oral production and reading tasks in L1 and L2, also, we assessed proficiency in L2. Our findings argue for possible advantages of simultaneous biliteracy for the linguistic and cognitive development of children in biliteracy. Therefore, we argue that there is a concomitant development in the fluency and reading comprehension of bilingual students, as well as in the connectivity of oral production, without causing disadvantage to both, when we analyze the two languages in this context.