Developing Reading Skills in Multilingual Children Harper Bundy Children are capable of comprehending multiple languages at a similar level of speaking fluency when being read aloud to. By coupling simple drawings and short, easy words, young children have the capacity of retaining and recognizing words in two distinct languages in literary form. It has been proven that bilingual children have a reading advantage over children in a monolingual environment. Learning multiple languages provides early tools for young minds to think about language, diction, and syntax more than in children who are a part of monolingual communities. Two boys, ages 1 ½ and 3, who are being raised in a multilingual household and attend school at a Japanese immersion daycare, comprehend both Japanese and English in picture book form at their speaking fluency. Their parents report that they have read English, Japanese, Hungarian, and French books, but that they did not have many books that incorporated multiple languages. Multilingual books can aid in further development of reading comprehension and an expansion of multilingual abilities. Multilingual children who are at the cusp of reading, can be read aloud to in different languages they are learning and will continue to understand the story and comprehend the language shifts.
8 | Reading and the Brain | Volume 4 | Spring 2022
