78A Research Symposium on High Standards in Reading for Students From Diverse Language Groups: Research, Practice & Policy •• PROCEEDINGS •• April 19-20, 2000 •• Washington, DC U.S. Department of Education • Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs (OBEMLA) Literacy Development in Two Languages: Cognitive and Sociocultural Dimensions of Cross-Language Transfer Aydin Yücesan Durgunoglu and Banu Öney Abstract One of the basic but implicit assumptions of bilingual education is that developing literacy proficiency in the first-language will transfer and facilitate literacy development in the second-language. To address the transfer issue in this paper, first we will summarize the evidence from two different lines of research. The first line of research is on literacy development in other (monolingual) contexts. This research helps us identify the universal versus language-specific factors of literacy development around the world. The second line of research is on bilingual students, and how their proficiencies in the two languages are related to each other. Finally, after discussing these cognitive underpinnings of transfer, we will also relate these factors to their sociocultural contexts of development. Introduction In this paper, our goal is to provide an overview of literacy development in different linguistic and multilingual contexts. We will start with the cognitive variables of literacy development, and discuss how they apply in monolingual contexts other than English, as well as in bilingual contexts. We will then discuss transfer across languages and conclude by considering the sociocultural dimensions of multilingual literacy development in multilingual contexts. Background and Significance Although educating students from non-English-speaking backgrounds has been a familiar issue in the American educational system, bilingual education programs have only become formally available since 1968 with the passage of the Bilingual Education Act (August & Hakuta, 1997). During the 30 years since the establishment of bilingual programs, much has been accomplished, but questions remain regarding the effectiveness of bilingual literacy education and the nature of psychological processes involved in literacy development in a second-language (Willig, 1987). According to the 1990 census, 14% of the school-aged students in the United States between the ages of 5 and 17 come from homes where a language other than English is spoken. Over half of these students are in Grades 1-4. The Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs reports that of the 3.2 million limited-English-proficient students nationwide, only 1.3 million are in bilingual education programs ([http://www.ed.gov/offices/OBEMLA/rileyfct.html)]. It has been well documented that students with limited English proficiency are at higher risk for having reading problems (NAEP, 1996). In 1989, among people between the ages of 16-24, 42%79of those who reported difficulty with English dropped out of school, compared to 10.5% of those who spoke only English (August & Hakuta, 1997). However, the discrepancies in educational achievement start in elementary school. Given that literacy development during the early elementary school years has an ever-widening impact on academic achievement in later years (Stanovich, 1986), it needs to be addressed much earlier in the education of children who have home languages other than English. Understanding Bilingual Literacy Development It is clear that attaining high levels of literacy in a second-language is possible. It is less clear, however, how initial exposure to literacy in a second-language affects the subsequent development of literacy skills in that language. The National Research Council’s report, Preventing Reading Difficulties (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998), highlights the lack of and need for straightforward, data-based answers to questions about bilingual literacy development, but continuing debates on bilingual literacy programs are usually fueled by the social, economic and political climate of the times rather then being based on arguments guided by research. Especially lacking is clear information on who benefits from bilingual programs, whether literacy instruction in a second-language affects the growth of literacy in that language, and the cognitive processes in bilingual literacy.Bilingual literacy programs are based on the implicit assumption of transfer of skills between the first and second-languages, however, research on the nature of cross-language transfer (CLT) in literacy is quite limited. Most of the existing research focuses on the transfer of background knowledge or metacognitive strategies, rather than on cognitive processes of reading and writing. This is partly due to the dominance of top-down models of reading among researchers studying second-language reading and partly due to the focus on adult participants who already have proficient word recognition processes. However, existing research on CLT suggests that such transfer does occur, and that there is a positive influence of literacy instruction in the first-language on literacy skills in the second-language (Durgunoglu, 1998; Lanauze and Snow, 1989). The study of bilingual literacy acquisition is further complicated by fact that one cannot always assume proficiency in the first-language among different second-language learners. Hence, there is a controversy about what transfers in bilingual reading. If there is a weakness in L2 reading, is it a language problem or is it a reading problem? (Alderson, 1984) Of course, cognitive data alone cannot be the decisive factor on resolving the debate about bilingual education programs since political considerations are usually the major guiding force for decisions. However, it is necessary to understand the cognitive processes of bilingual literacy development and to inform educational policy makers accordingly. In order to study bilingual literacy development systematically, we start with a general framework of literacy development. We have used this general framework in our earlier studies with children (Durgunoglu & Öney, 1999; Öney & Durgunoglu, 1997), as well as in developing and evaluating an adult literacy program (Durgunoglu, Öney, & Kuscul, 1995). We first give an overview of this model. A General Model of Literacy Development The model