The concurrent development of reading and spelling in English and Persian were
examined in a sample of bilingual children. The objective was to compare how
phonological and orthographic processing skills contribute to reading and spelling
for two alphabetic languages that differ drastically. English orthography is
characterised by both polyphony (i.e., a grapheme representing more than one
phoneme) and polygraphy (i.e., a phoneme represented by more than one grapheme)
which results in a complex script to read and write. In contrast, vowelised-Persian
orthography is characterised by polygraphy only, which results in a simple script to
read but more complex to write. Fifty-five Iranian children in grades 2 and 3, who
had lived in English-speaking Canada for an average of 4 years, were tested on word
reading and spelling in English and Persian. We found that the predictors of reading
performance were similar across languages: Phonological and orthographic processing
skills each predicted unique variance in word reading in English and in Persian once
we had controlled for grade level, vocabulary, and reading experience. As expected,
the predictors of spelling performance differed across language: Spelling in English
was predicted similarly by phonological and orthographic processing skills, whereas
spelling in Persian was predicted by orthographic processing skills only. It is
possible that the nature of the Persian orthography encourages children to adopt
different strategies when reading and spelling words. Spelling Persian words might
be particularly conducive to using an analytic strategy which, in turn, promotes the
development of and reliance on orthographic skills.
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