Continua of Biliteracy

TLDR

Biliteracy is common worldwide, yet scholarly attention to it remains limited. This review proposes a framework for understanding biliteracy by drawing on literacy, bilingualism, and second‑language teaching literature. The framework is built on a series of interrelated continua—micro‑macro, oral‑literate, monolingual‑bilingual, reception‑production, oral‑language‑written language, first‑and‑second‑language transfer, simultaneous‑successive exposure, similar‑dissimilar language structures, and convergent‑divergent scripts—that define contexts, development, and media. Recognizing the intersecting and nested continua informs teaching and research in biliteracy.

Abstract

Although biliteracy is common worldwide, relatively little scholarly work has attended explicitly to it. This review draws from the literatures on literacy, bilingualism, and the teaching of reading, writing, and second and foreign languages to propose a framework for understanding biliteracy. It argues that the complex array of possible biliteracy configurations can be accounted for by understanding biliteracy in terms of a series of interrelated continua. These continua define the contexts, individual development, and media of biliteracy, and are as follows: micro-macro, oral-literate, monolingual-bilingual, reception-production, oral language-written language, first and second language transfer, simultaneous-successive exposure, similar-dissimilar language structures, and convergent-divergent scripts. An understanding of the intersecting and nested nature of the continua has implications for teaching and research in biliteracy.