The effects of Spanish heritage language literacy on English reading for Spanish–English bilingual children in the US

Models of monolingual literacy propose that reading acquisition builds upon children’s semantic, phonological, and orthographic knowledge. The relationships between these components vary cross-linguistically, yet it is generally unknown how these differences impact bilingual children’s literacy. A comparison between Spanish–English bilingual and English monolingual children (ages 6–13, N = 70) from the US revealed that bilinguals had stronger...