Bilingualism and Readability in written language production
Sr No:
Page No:
116-119
Language:
English
Authors:
Chrysovalantou Kapeta*
Received:
2025-05-01
Accepted:
2025-05-13
Published Date:
2025-05-17
Abstract:
The present study concerns 39 samples out of 150 in total produced by one
bilingual student of a primary school in Germany and including both simple and short sentences
as well as more complex or in some cases complete paragraphs. The language of writing is
German, while the mother tongue is Greek. The purpose of the research is to highlight the ease
or difficulties that a bilingual student faces in producing written language and which factors
(e.g. vocabulary, grammar, syntax, level of text difficulty) influence the final result. Tableau
Public was used for the statistical analysis, while all 39 samples were first digitized manually in
Word format. They were then analyzed with the Flesch-Kincaid and Gunning Fog Readability
formulas, the results of which were carefully transferred to an Excel spreadsheet. The final
results showed that there is a relative comfort in the use of more advanced vocabulary as well as
the use of subordinate clauses compared to the age of 8-11. The creation of a database would
perhaps contribute even more to the academic and educational community in terms of a more
fair evaluation of texts produced by bilingual primary school students.
Keywords:
Readability, bilingualism, assessment, primary school.