Development of reading and writing skills of heritage Russian speakers in Cyprus

Abstract

The present study focuses on the language proficiency and literacy skills of Russian–Cypriot Greek bilingual children who are Russian heritage speakers and first-generation immigrant children living in Cyprus. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal methodologies were implemented to investigate the developmental trajectory, dominant language transfer, divergent attainment, and attrition of L1 by Russian heritage speakers in Cyprus. The heritage speakers' reading and writing skills in Russian were measured every month over a one-year period. The longitudinal data consists of a written corpus of dictations and an oral corpus of reading-aloud recordings. Overall, the heritage children performed better at reading than writing, and showed stronger comprehension than production skills. Their spelling and stress assignment errors appear to be driven by L1 transfer from Cypriot Greek.