Variation in Creole Papiamento and Dutch spelling development in a post-colonial context

Children in post-colonial contexts can start developing literacy in the mother tongue (L1) or in the (ex)colonial language (L2). The present study aims to examine the individual variation in Creole Papiamento and Dutch spelling development of 146 children in the Dutch Caribbean as a function of the initial instruction language and L1 and L2 kindergarten precursors (phonological awareness, rapid naming, short-term memory, letter knowledge) in the first two primary grades. We found an instruction language effect: L1 Papiamento-instructed children performed better on Papiamento spelling and L2 Dutch-instructed children better on Dutch spelling. For grade 2 Papiamento spelling, kindergarten letter knowledge was the main predictor when instructed in L1, while kindergarten RAN was the main predictor when instructed in L2. For grade 2 Dutch spelling, grade 1 Dutch spelling was the main predictor when instructed in L2, while kindergarten word decoding and vocabulary were the main predictors when instructed in L1. The mismatched instruction groups also made more interlingual errors than the matched instruction groups. In conclusion, children’s L1 and L2 spelling development benefits from a match with instruction language and is predicted by both kindergarten precursors and first-grade decoding.