Emergent biscriptal biliteracy: Bilingual preschoolers hypothesize about writing in Chinese and English

The dominance of the Chinese and English languages and the growing interactions between the Chinese- and English-speaking worlds indicates the high value of Chinese-English biliteracy. Unfortunately, relatively few schools develop Chinese-English biliteracy and relatively little research investigates how children learn to read and write in an alphabetic and character-based script at the same time. This dissertation seeks to expand the present understanding of emerging reading and writing behaviors of children negotiating two different writing systems. Greater understanding will lead to better teaching/learning environments for Chinese-English bilingual students and will increase their chances for long-term academic success.; This eight-month exploratory case study of four children in a Chinese-English bilingual preschool examines the hypotheses the children made about writing in an alphabet and writing in characters, and the ways in which these hypotheses were influenced by social interactions. The participants, two boys and two girls, met with the researcher weekly for approximately one-and-a-half hours to engage in a variety of literacy activities created to draw out their thinking about writing in Chinese and English. The data, including written artifacts, videotape of weekly meetings, and interviews with the participants and their teachers, were coded and analyzed for emerging patterns and themes related to (a) each child's hypotheses about written English, (b) each child's hypotheses about written Chinese, (c) evidence of hypotheses about one language influencing hypotheses about the other language, and (d) the role of peer interactions in the evolution of these hypotheses.; Analysis shows that participants developed unique sets of hypotheses regarding the ways in which Chinese and English are written, and that hypotheses made about one language did not overtly influence hypotheses made about the other language. Analysis also shows that participants were able discern constructive advice from peers with greater understanding of the orthography. Thus, children with the most understanding of the writing system had potential for the greatest influence over peers during social interactions. This dissertation suggests curricular implications for educators of children learning to write an alphabet and Chinese regarding ways to develop biscriptal biliteracy and to further the cognitive advantages seen in bilingual children negotiating two orthographies.