Beyond the letters : the effect of orthography on word-reading in trilingual French immersion students
department or school: Medicine, Faculty of
department or school: Audiology and Speech Sciences, School of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Zhi, Flora
issued: 2025-10-22T23:16:20Z
issued: 2025
related degree: Master of Science - MSc
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: As of 2022, about 50% of all FI students in B.C. and Ontario came from immigrant families and many of them are multilingual. Despite this trend, there is a gap in our understanding of how reading develops in these multilingual students. Languages with similar writing systems such as French and English can facilitate cross-language transfer of reading skills, while little or no transfer has been observed in languages with different writing systems, such as French and Chinese. This project investigated the effects of different writing systems on word reading in multilingual FI students from Chinese backgrounds. The two main research questions were: (1) How do language and literacy abilities compare across the three languages (French, English, Chinese) and across the two grades? (2) What are the language and literacy measure associations among the three languages? Data was collected from 24 Chinese-speaking students enrolled in FI in kindergarten and Grade 1. Studentsâ performance on standardized and experimental language and literacy measures in French, English, and Chinese was compared. Significant improvements from kindergarten to Grade 1 were observed in most Chinese skills; no significant changes were found in French and English. Studentsâ abilities across languages were similar. Partial support was found for possible cross-language transfer among all three languages between phonological awareness and decoding skills. Overall, the reading abilities in these young children did not differ across orthographies, supporting past research that strong readers in one language are generally strong readers in all languages.
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/92711
note: BEYOND THE LETTERS: THE EFFECT OF ORTHOGRAPHY ON WORD-READING IN TRILINGUAL FRENCH IMMERSION STUDENTS by Flora Zhi B.A., University of British Columbia, 2023 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE in The Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (Audiology and Speech Sciences) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) October 2025 © Flora Zhi, 2025 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled: Beyond the Letters: The Effect of Orthography on Word-Reading in Trilingual French Immersion Students submitted by Flora Zhi in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Sciences in Audiology and Speech Sciences Examining Committee: Dr. Stefka Marinova-Todd, Associate Professor, School of Audiology and Speech Sciences, UBC Supervisor Dr. Guofang Li, Professor, Department of Language and Literacy Education, UBC Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract As of 2022, about 50% of all FI students in B.C. and Ontario came from immigrant families and many of them are multilingual. Despite this trend, there is a gap in our understanding of how reading develops in these multilingual students. Languages with similar writing systems such as French and English can facilitate cross-language transfer of reading skills, while little or no transfer has been observed in languages with different writing systems, such as French and Chinese. This project investigated the effects of different writing systems on word reading in multilingual FI students from Chinese backgrounds. The two main research questions were: (1) How do language and literacy abilities compare across the three languages (French, English, Chinese) and across the two grades? (2) What are the language and literacy measure associations among the three languages? Data was collected from 24 Chinese-speaking students enrolled in …
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2025-11
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0450534
language: eng
degree discipline: Audiology and Speech Sciences
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
contributor: Marinova-Todd, Stefka
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/92711