Bilingual children at the transition from kindergarten to primary school: the development of their reading and writing skills.

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The aim of the project is to examine the accomplishments of bilingual Russian-German children in reading and writing during the first two years of primary school and to identify early predictors of literacy problems. We will compare the development of children at risk for specific language impairment (SLI) at the age of 4 to 5 years as well as of children of the same age who score high in language tests of Russian, but below the 1 SD in language tests of German in comparison to a control group of typically developing children. The development of these three groups will be traced in two domains:(a) in segmental and prosodic phonology and in phonological awareness as prerequisites for reading and writing. Of special importance for early literacy is the examination of the predictor function of phonological competence and phonological awareness (at the age of 5 to 6 years) as well as of rapid automatized naming. (b) in text competence, i.e. the comprehension and production of coherent texts. Furthermore, we aim to find out how comprehension and production of oral texts in preschool bilinguals may predict their reading and writing skills in primary school.