The Bilingual Phonemic Awareness: A Case Study

Résumé ou Introduction

This case study attempts to assess a bilingual child’s fluency in phonemic awareness and her skills in reading and writing. The child that was observed for this purpose currently attends the first grade of an elementary school in Long Beach. In terms of keeping the child’s anonymity the pseudonym “Maria” will be used throughout this paper instead of her actual name.

As part of this case study, I observed Maria first in her school classroom. During her reading lesson, Maria seemed to be shy and did not participate in the tasks her teacher assigned the class. For example, while her classmates were singing the alphabet-song altogether with the teacher, Maria did not seem to be interested and was talking to her classmates instead of being engaged in the class activities.

After observing her reading lessons, I met Maria individually to ask her some questions about her language background before starting with the actual assessment: Maria has a multilingual background as she can speak Spanish and English fluently. Also, she can read in both languages. At home, she mostly speaks Spanish with her mother and English with her sisters. Her mother is also the only person who reads stories to her. When she plays on the playground with her friends, she speaks both English and Spanish with them. Maria claimed that reading is easy for her; however, she thinks that it is harder than arithmetic. Maria’s favorite book which she got from the library is called “George” and additionally she has about ten books at home that she likes to read.