Desempenho das habilidades linguísticas e metalinguísticas em crianças bilíngues em fase de alfabetização

Abstract

Introduction: The acquisition of the language happens through the interaction of the child with his/her family members and the society and the neurobiological development. This study is composed of three scientific articles: the first one a literature review and the others, original studies, through the evaluation of language and metalinguistic abilities in bilingual children. Objective: to verify the performance in phonological processing, vocabulary, syntactic awareness and reading of bilingual children in the literacy phase. Method: For study 1, an integrative literature review was used, and for studies 2 and 3 it was a transversal, descriptive and quantitative study, carried out withstudents from 1st to 5th grade. The participants of study 2 were 10 children forthe bilingual group and 5 for the monolingual children from the 1st year of elementary school. In study 3 32 children participated, divided into: G1: five 1st grade children; G2: five 2nd grade children; G3: eight 3rd grade children; G4: five 4th grade children; G5: nine 5th grade children. The children were evaluated in the Portuguese language in phonological awareness skills, phonological operating memory, fast automatic naming, vocabulary, syntacticawareness, and reading. Results: In study 2 significant differences were found in phonological awareness (phonemic and total), rapid automatic naming (objects), and pseudoword reading between the monolingual and bilingual group, with better performance for English bilinguals. In study 3, it was noted that children with higher schooling performed better in all skills assessed. Conclusion: the exposure to a second language in a sequential way makes the children more susceptible to the sounds of the language, presenting benefits in the development of predictor reading skills that have a positive impact on literacy.