Narrative comprehension by Croatian-Italian bilingual children 5–7 years old

Abstract

Objective. This study compares L1 and L2 receptive vocabulary, receptive grammar and narrative comprehension skills in Croatian-Italian bilingual children. Moreover, the study aims to find out to what extent receptive vocabulary and receptive grammar (sentence comprehension) predict narrative comprehension skills. Method. Thirty Croatian-Italian bilinguals 5–7 years old were assessed in L1 (Croatian) and L2 (Italian) narrative comprehension (MAIN), receptive vocabulary (PPVT) and sentence comprehension (TROG). Results. Children performed better in their L1 than in their L2 on all three measures of comprehension. Narrative comprehension correlated with the two linguistic skills in L1 but weakly in L2. Each measure correlated only with itself between L1 and L2. Regression analyses showed that sentence comprehension contributed substantially to narrative comprehension in L1 and L2, while receptive vocabulary contributed substantially only in L1. Conclusions. Narrative comprehension is differently predicted by language skills in L1 and in L2. The contribution of language skills is monolingual-like in L1 narrative comprehension (cf. Florit, Roch, & Levorato, 2011); in L2 narrative comprehension vocabulary provides a weak contribution. The results are discussed both theoretically, in terms of the possible mechanism underlying narrative comprehension in bilingual speakers and practically, in terms of bilingual language development.