Literacy in a Second Language Context: teaching immigrant children to read

Abstract

This article goes into both sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic aspects of literacy education to immigrant children. From a sociolinguistic point of view attention is given to the literacy needs of ethnic minority groups in a multilingual community, the language policies that authorities can follow with regard to literacy and the monolingual and bilingual literacy instruction models that these policies can give rise to. From a psycholinguistic point of view aspects of immigrant children's processes of learning to read are highlighted, and arguments for bilingual literacy instruction are summed up. In addition, a perspective of literacy education to immigrant children is given.