Expressive Morphological Skills of Dual Language Learning and Monolingual German Children: Exploring Links to Duration of Preschool Attendance, Classroom Quality, and Classroom Composition.

Lilly-Marlen Bihler,Katja Schneller,Jessica A Willard,Alexandru Agache,Birgit Leyendecker

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00888

Lilly-Marlen Bihler, Katja Schneller + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00888

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Abstract

A growing body of research has been documenting environmental factors that support preschoolers’ vocabulary skills. However, less is known about how environmental factors are related to morphological skills of dual language learners (DLLs) and single language learners (SLLs). We examined connections with preschool experiences by investigating the effects of duration of preschool attendance, classroom quality, and classroom composition variables (percentage of DLLs and percentage of children from families with a low socio-economic status) on preschoolers’ expressive morphological skills. Several multilevel regression models were estimated using cross-sectional data from 835 children (n = 255 DLLs) aged 30–47 months. These children were nested in 169 preschool classrooms in Germany. As a control task, we also investigated children’s phonological processing abilities, for which we found, as expected, no differences between DLLs and SLLs. Our main finding was that DLL children scored lower in expressive morphological skills than their German monolingual peers, but this difference was considerably smaller in classrooms that scored high in instructive teacher–child interactions (measured by the Classroom Assessment Scoring System for pre-kindergarten children; CLASS Pre-K). Taken together, these results support the notion that supportive teacher–child instructive interactions have a positive impact on the development of DLLs’ morphological skills.

Highlights

According to a German saying, language is the key to the world (Wilhelm von Humboldt)
Based on research showing that morphological skills are generally sensitive to environmental effects (Unsworth, 2016), we examined whether the (a) duration of preschool attendance, (b) classroom quality, and (c) classroom composition are related to expressive morphological skills of dual language learners (DLLs) and single language learner (SLL) children
Mean Comparisons We investigated whether the mean scores of our examined variables differed between DLLs and SLLs

Summary

Introduction

According to a German saying, language is the key to the world (Wilhelm von Humboldt) Studies of environmental supports for children’s language skills often focus on vocabulary, and somewhat neglect grammatical skills. This is the case despite grammatical skills holding considerable predictive power for children’s further language development (Carlisle et al, 2010; Kirby et al, 2012; Berendes et al, 2013). Grammatical skills contribute to lexical learning and reading skills, and are a prerequisite for the acquisition of the so-called cognitiveacademic language proficiency (Berendes et al, 2013), which, in turn, has been found to be especially important for children’s later school success (Cummins, 2008). We focus on German plural marking as a morphological skill

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