Bilingual is as bilingual does: Metalinguistic abilities of Arabic-speaking children

The study explores the effects of the relationship between exposure to two languages in childhood and metalinguistic abilities. Arabic-speaking childr en who had been exposed to both spoken and literary Arabic were compared to Russian-Hebrew bilinguals and Hebrew monolinguals. All of the children wer e in kindergarten or first grade. The tests included language arbitrariness , phonological awareness, and vocabulary. As compared to the Hebrew monolin guals, the Russian-Hebrew bilinguals revealed the following pattern: higher performance on arbitrariness and phonological awareness tasks and lower pe rformance on the vocabulary measure. The results of the Arab children mimic ked those of the Russian-Hebrew bilinguals and differed from those of the H ebrew monolinguals. We conclude that exposure to literary Arabic requires t he same intensive language analyses as those demanded of children exposed t o languages as different as Russian and Hebrew.