Development of preliteracy and literacy in monolingual and mono-literate bilingual children in an Italian school setting : a longitudinal study with metaphonological, RAN, and graphic intervention

This research analyzed longitudinally the development of preliteracy and literacy in a sample of Italian monolingual and mono-literate bilingual children, who were monitored from the last year of kindergarten to the 3rd grade of primary school. Study 1 described the typical development of preliteracy and the first steps of literacy in mono- and bilinguals. We found similar phonological skills but a disadvantage in other bilinguals’ abilities. Production of direct object clitic pronouns was difficult for both groups. A test was implemented with balanced morphosyntactic conditions. Study 2 investigated how the above-mentioned abilities intervene in the development of literacy in the same sample. Literacy revealed its multicomponential nature. Different abilities contributed to different extents in different developmental times. RAN was assumed as a measure of phonological automaticity, intervening in every index of reading and writing. Different measures of RAN and phonological awareness predicted different portions of literacy. Study 3 showed the effects of three different interventions (METAphonological, RAN, and GRAPHic) administered in two different cycles (in the last year of kindergarten and 1st grade of primary school). The META group and the GRAPH group improved significantly on several measures of literacy, thus showing positive effects of phonological awareness and visual-graphic training on reading and writing. Study 4 analyzed a small group of children who developed some literacy problems. The analysis of individual, social, (meta)linguistic, and memory predictors of the difficulties showed significant effects of social deprivation (with and without language disorder), working memory, vocabulary, metaphonological skills, and RAN on the difficulties. A single training administered in the 1st grade to children reported as problematic by teachers did not show any significant effect. A double META training had positive effects on several measures of literacy. A double RAN training showed positive effects on non-word writing, which were attributed to the acquisition of automaticity in the phonological route of writing. We conclude that interventions on preliteracy skills should be planned from kindergarten and reinforced during early literacy acquisition. They should be multicomponential to face the different abilities involved in the multifaceted tasks of reading and writing.