Abstract

Mehmet-Ali AKINCI
From bilingualism to biliteracy. A comparaison between Turkish-French bilingual pupils and French monolingual pupils

Langage et Société n° 116, June 2006, p. 93-110

Our study focuses on the evolution of Turkish-French bilingual children’s written productions in France, compared to those of French monolinguals. By this comparison we aim to understand how bilingual and monolingual pupils of various ages (compared with adults), construct narrative and expository written texts. In order to evaluate these texts, we analysed connectors as a syntactic tool to insure cohesion in a text. Results show that the development of textual competence follows the same path for bilinguals and monolinguals, since all results, whatever the age and type of text considered, are very close. As these results prove that linguistic abilities are the same for both populations, monolingual parents should not fear that children from immigrant backgrounds present fewer linguistic abilities because of the presence of a language other than French in their home.

Bilingualism / children of migrants / textual production / syntactic linkage / turkish community

Retour sur le numéro