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Objective: This study investigates how literacy acquisition is shaped by bilingual education. We hypothesize that learning a phonetic language, like Spanish, will improve performance on phonologically-based tasks in English. Comparatively, we expect learning a different orthographic system, like Cantonese, will improve performance on semantically-based English tasks.

Methods: Participants included 107 native English speakers between 7 and 9 years old from San Francisco schools. There were 42 children in general education English programs (GENED), 35 in Spanish (Sp) immersion programs, and 30 in Cantonese (Cn) immersion programs. Students scoring less than 85 on a nonverbal intelligence screener were excluded (KBIT-2 Matrices). Groups' performance in English was compared on phonological (CTOPP-2 Blending Words) and orthographic learning tasks (KABC-II Rebus).

Results …