Written language acquisition in French/Greek bilinguals (2021-2024)

An increasing number of children are growing up in a bilingual environment, due to family bilingualism for example (parents of different languages) or to immigration situations (different languages are used at home and at school). A large number of research studies have shown the positive consequences of bilingualism at the cognitive level (likely due to frequent language switching) and recent studies are looking at the impact at a more academical level. Written language learning (including reading and spelling) is a key in the success of school learning in general, and this project therefore aims to examine the characteristics of bilingual children in this area. More specifically, we are studying the extent to which skills developed in one language are linked to and promote skills in the other language, in reading, spelling, vocabulary, etc. The study of French/Greek bilinguals constitutes a population of particular interest because of their different writing systems, although both are alphabetic, a situation rarely addressed in the literature when examining skill transfers between L1 and L2 speakers.

Project Manager: Eva Commissaire (LPC/FRLC)