Bilingualism indexes and Italian reading and writing skills. An investigation in Trentino’s primary schools

Abstract

In the first part of this article, we present the results of a questionnaire on multilingualism in children from migrant families, distributed to about 2000 families with children attending the first two years of primary school throughout the province of Trento in the 2017-18 period. In the second part, we relate some of the data obtained to the results of reading and writing tests (dictation and
non-word repetition tests) taken between 2018 and 2019 by these children. In particular, we discuss the relationship between the results of reading and writing tests and migratory status (1st or 2nd generation), country of origin, skills in the language of origin, exposure to Italian in the family.