The Relationship between Parental Language Dominance of Heritage Spanish-speaking Children and Child Performance in Normative Language Assessments

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between parental language dominance in Spanish and heritage language (HL) child performance on receptive vocabulary and emergent literacy skills in English through two norm-based assessments. We used the Bilingual Language Profile (BLP) (Birdsong, Gertken, & Amengual, 2012) to assess parental language dominance in a quantifiable and structured way. Kindergarten HL children (n = 58) were tested on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, PPVT-4 (Dunn & Dunn, 2007), as a receptive measure of English vocabulary. They were also tested on three sub sets of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test, Third Edition (WRMT-III) (2011), as measures of emergent literacy skills. BLP scores indicated that parents were mostly Spanish dominant. Correlations conducted between parent BLP scores and child receptive vocabulary (PPVT-4) showed a negative relationship. In contrast, parental BLP scores were positively related to two of the WRMT-III subsets (letter identification and rapid automatic naming). We argue that parental dominance had a different role influencing child reading readiness in English (WRMT –III) versus child receptive vocabulary acquisition (PPVT-4). These results support the domain specific nature of language (Grosjean, 2016). We suggest the use of the BLP as a tool that provides a holistic view of linguistic dominance.