Comparing Learning to Read in English and French

Comparing Learning to Read in English and French – View full text here

Most of what we know about how children learn to read and write comes from studies conducted with English speaking children. We know much less about how children learn in other languages such as French. One possibility is that the mechanisms are the same across languages. Another is that the characteristics of the language affect how children learn. In the CLLR lab, we conducted research to test whether the characteristics of the language influenced how children learn. We examined this possibility with the French language as well as other languages (e.g., Farsi). In some studies, the children spoke only one language, and in others, they were bilingual.