Second language literacy is the ability to read and write in the native language of a person’s adopted country. For example, learning to read and write in English in the USA when English is not one’s first language is considered second language literacy.
Without achieving second language literacy, children will perform worse in school, will have more problems communicating, and will have lower career prospects, so it is important to examine interventions that may be helpful in improving second language literacy.
Acquiring languages that have distinct scripts appears to be difficult, as it seems to take more work and effort for children to learn and master the different scripts. Bilingual children must:
a) differentiate the sounds, rhythms, and phonological patterns for their two languages;
b) develop vocabularies for both languages.
For instance, alphabetic scripts and logographic scripts are very different from each other. Examples of alphabetic scripts are English and German. Examples of logographic scripts (featuring “characters”) are Chinese and Japanese.
The answer is: Not necessarily! Studies have found very inconsistent results in the domain of how much acquiring languages with two different scripts put a strain on children's cognitive resources. This shows that "script similarity" does not affect a child’s learning of the languages.
Studies show that children who only learn a logographic script are just as aware of subtle mispronunciations and are able to discriminate sounds just as well as those who learn an alphabetic script.
The conclusion: do not be afraid to encourage language learning of different scripts. The acquisition of languages with different scripts will not hinder your child’s language learning.