Word spelling in monolingual and bilingual children with developmental language disorder

Background Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are reported to have word spelling difficulties. These findings concern monolingual children with DLD; little is known about bilingual children with DLD. We examined word spelling abilities of bilingual children with DLD to determine if bilingualism is an additional risk factor for spelling problems. Methods We compared word spelling outcomes of monolingual (n = 87) and bilingual children with DLD (n = 51), who attended upper elementary years (Grade 5 or 6) of special education for children with DLD. Spelling measures obtained were a standardised curriculum-based word spelling task, an experimental dictation task and word spelling in short written texts. Results Outcomes on the curriculum-based spelling test established that both the monolingual and bilingual groups of children with DLD on average showed a spelling delay. Results on this test, as well as those of the experimental dictation task and the writing task, did not indicate differences between the monolingual and bilingual groups with DLD, even when lower oral language outcomes of bilingual children in the school language were controlled for. Conclusions The results indicate that DLD is a risk factor for word spelling difficulties while bilingualism is not.