Profile of phonological awareness in bilingual and monolingual children.
OBJECTIVE
To compare the performance of phonological awareness skills in bilingual and monolingual students of both genders.


METHODS
This research presents an observational, cross-sectional descriptive study conducted with 17 students from the 3rd grade, aged between seven years and 8 years and 11 months, with similar socioeconomic level, from two private schools, being one a monolingual school, and the other a bilingual one. Children at risk for auditory deprivation of any degree, those with learning difficulties, and children enrolled in the school less than two years were excluded from the research. A total of nine bilingual and eight monolingual students was tested using the Phonological Awareness Profile test.


RESULTS
The results showed that 64.7% of the 17 students tested reached the performance expected for their age, and 35.3% performed above expectation, being 83.3% of the latter bilingual students. The bilingual children presented better performance in the sequential rhyme skill and in the total test score, and the male bilingual children presented better performance in the phoneme addition skill. There was no statistically significant difference when comparing the performance of bilingual and monolingual female students.


CONCLUSIONS
Bilingual children had greater command of phonemic awareness skill. Male bilingual children showed better performance when compared to their monolingual peers than female bilingual students.
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, RN, Brazil.
Lourdes Bernadete Rocha de
LB
Souza
Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, BA, Brazil.
Aline Gisele Conceição
AG
Leite
D002648:Child; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D010700:Phonetics; D012737:Sex Factors; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D013334:Students; D014825:Vocabulary