Half of multilingual respondents in a National Literacy Trust survey read daily, against 29% of English-only peers

Both gaps are wide. Enjoyment differs by 28 percentage points ^[1] and daily reading by 21 ^[2]. As a ratio, multilingual respondents were about 1.7 times as likely as English-only ones to read every day ^[3].

The figures reach the public through an article by the hosts of a University of Reading festival on translation and linguistic diversity in children's books ^[9]. The article reports each group's percentages from the National Literacy Trust survey ^[3]. It does not give the sample size, the respondents' ages or how the survey decided who counted as multilingual.

The definitions matter. The 23.8% figure is a school-records category: pupils in English primary schools recorded as having a first language other than English ^[2]. The authors note that the label does not mean those pupils lack fluent English ^[14]. The survey's split is between multilingual respondents and those who use only English at home ^[3]. The two groups overlap, but they are different counts, so the survey does not show that a quarter of primary pupils are unusually keen readers.

A comparison between two groups also cannot say what causes the gap. Families who read in two languages may differ from English-only families in other ways that shape reading. Children who already enjoy books may be the ones who go looking for them in a second language. The authors draw their own inference from the finding that almost two in five read in their home language to stay connected to culture or family ^[5]. "Sometimes the barrier may therefore be the language or material offered, rather than the child's relationship with reading," they wrote ^[6]. Testing that would mean offering home-language books to children who rarely read and measuring what changes.

The authors' explanation runs through talk. Much of the value of sharing a book, they argue, comes from explaining unfamiliar words, asking questions and linking the story to the child's life, and parents often do this more fluently in a language they know well ^[8]. The study they cite measured that input: bilingual books prompted Latine parents to use more Spanish, and a wider variety of Spanish words, than English-only books did ^[7]. As reported, the finding concerns the parents' speech during book sharing, an outcome separate from children's enjoyment or later literacy.

Supply is the practical limit. Translated and bilingual books are a comparatively small part of publishing ^[11]. For young readers, graphic novels and picture books lead the translated market, and French and Japanese are the languages most often translated into English in the UK ^[11]. Data from World Kid Lit and Outside in World show a long tail of languages that are barely translated, including many heritage languages spoken in the UK ^[12]. One workaround presented at the festival had a third-grade class and its teacher produce a creative translation of a Portuguese picture book, though none of them spoke Portuguese ^[10].

The National Year of Reading is asking people to "go all in" on reading ^[1]. I think the survey supports the authors' case that linguistic diversity should be central to reading-for-pleasure schemes ^[13], on a narrow ground. A sizeable group of respondents already reads keenly, partly in languages the translation market barely covers ^{[5] [12]}. Whether home-language books would turn reluctant readers into daily ones is a question for a study that compares children offered them with children who are not.