Bilingual School Children Research Articles

"Hot" executive functions are comparable across monolingual and bilingual elementary school children: Results from a study with the Iowa Gambling Task.

Past research found performance differences between monolingual and bilingual children in the domain of executive functions (EF). Furthermore, recent studies have reported advantages in processing efficiency or mental effort in bilingual adults and children. These studies mostly focused on the investigation of “cold” EF tasks. Studies including measures of “hot” EF, i.e., tasks operating in an emotionally significant setting, are limited and hence results are inconclusive. In the present study, we extend previous research by investigating performance in a task of the “hot” EF domain by both behavioral data and mental effort via pupillary changes during task performance. Seventy-three monolingual and bilingual school children (mean age = 107.23 months, SD = 10.26) solved the Iowa Gambling Task in two different conditions. In the standard task, characterized by constant gains and occasional losses, children did not learn to improve their decision-making behavior. In a reversed task version, characterized by constant losses and occasional gains, both monolinguals and bilinguals learned to improve their decision-making behavior over the course of the task. In both versions of the task, children switched choices more often after losses than after gains. Bilinguals switched their choices less often than monolinguals in the reversed task, indicating a slightly more mature decision-making strategy. Mental effort did not differ between monolinguals and bilinguals. Conclusions of these findings for the bilingual advantage assumption will be discussed.

Orthographic literacy of Russian-speaking schoolchildren in Latvia

The research is devoted to one of the current problems of speech development of Russian-speaking schoolchildren of the diaspora (grades 4, 6 and 9) - orthographic literacy and is intended to contribute to the research on this problem. The topicality of the problem is substantiated by the necessity to explore the issues related to the quality of written speech, including orthographic knowledge and skills in the Russian (native) language of bilingual schoolchildren living outside Russia. The topic has not been sufficiently studied. The aim of the research is to describe the orthographic literacy of Latvian Russian-speaking schoolchildren of grades 4, 6 and 9 in 2015-2021. The research is based on the analysis of written works of 11 938 schoolchildren that were developed by the author of the article and specia- lists of education and science of Latvia. The methods of research include comparative, statistical, focus-group discussion. The research results: 1) the level of orthographic literacy of Latvian Russian-speaking bilinguals remains low; 2) the same typical spelling mistakes are found in the speech of schoolchildren of all ages, but the mistakes rate depends on the bilingual education model; 3) schoolchildren have difficulties in spelling arguments; 4) the main reasons of schoolchildrens spelling mistakes in Russian include the low motivation of school- children to develop literacy in written speech, interlanguage interference, insufficient amount of school hours on studying spelling material of the Russian language at school; 5) the literacy in Russian is less important than in English and Latvian in the value paradigm of schoolchildren. According to the new educational reform of Latvia (Skola2030), the number of Russian language lessons in schools for national minorities is significantly reduced. It is possible to predict a further decline in the level of spelling in schoolchildren in the coming years. Therefore, understanding objective orthographic difficulties encountered of bilingual schoolchildren open prospects for further exploration of effective orthography strategies in teaching the mother tongue to bilingual schoolchildren in a changing environment.

Gender Assignment Strategies Among Simultaneous Spanish/English Bilingual Children from Miami, Florida

AbstractWe examined gender assignment patterns in the speech of Spanish/English bilingual children, paying particular attention to the influence of three gender assignment strategies (i.e., analogical gender, masculine default gender, phonological gender) that have been proposed to constrain the gender assignment process in Spanish/English bilingual speech. Our analysis was based on monolingual Spanish nominals (n = 1774), which served as a comparative baseline, and Spanish/English mixed nominal constructions (n = 220) extracted from oral narratives produced by 40 child bilinguals of different grade levels (second graders vs. fifth graders) and instructional programs (English immersion vs. two-way bilingual) from Miami Dade, Florida. The narratives, available in the CHILDES database (MacWhinney, Brian. 2000.The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk, 3rd edn. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), were collected by Pearson, Barbara Z. 2002. Narrative competence among monolingual and bilingual school children in Miami. In D. Kimbrough Oller & Rebecca E. Eilers (eds.),Language and literacy in bilingual children, 135–174. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Results revealed that in Spanish nominal constructions, children across both instructional programs and grade levels evinced native-like acquisition of grammatical gender. In mixed nominals, children overwhelmingly assigned the masculine gender to English nouns. Notably, irrespective of schooling background, simultaneous Spanish/English bilingual children used the masculine default gender strategy when assigning gender to English nouns with feminine translation equivalents. This suggests that from age seven, simultaneous Spanish/English child bilingual acquisition of grammatical gender is characterized by a predisposition towards the employment of the masculine default gender strategy in bilingual speech.

Case Study of Communication Issues Influence on Self-Esteem in Learners with ID

Nowadays, the lack of knowledge of bilingualism due to the changed volume ratio in the teaching of writing is becoming more and more obvious, especially to learners with intellectual disabilities. The emergence of complex processes marks this fact as interference and convergence of speech, which are better speaking and writing sources in bilingualism.
 The purpose of the study is to identify the specific difficulties of teaching writing to younger bilingual schoolchildren with ID and to develop a productive speech therapy system for the prevention and correction of violations of higher mental functions that they have.
 The object of research is the features of teaching children with speech deficiency and with ID to writing in bilingual conditions.
 The research subject is the process of preventing and overcoming problems in the bilingual conditions of teaching children with speech and ID function deficiency.

Особенности проявлений дисграфии у младших школьников-билингвов

The presented article is devoted to the problem of writing disorders in elementary bilingual schoolchildren in the Russian-language learning environment. The aim of the study is to identify the dysgraphia manifestations peculiarities in elementary bilingual schoolchildren. The concepts of «dysgraphia», «bilingualism», and «transfer» are clarified in the article. Particular attention is paid to the transfer of the native language in the process of learning the Russian language as a second language. Analysis of the study results showed that 100% of children have both spelling and dysgraphic errors. When testing the ability to write at dictation, children made various types of dysgraphic errors. Methods. A comparative analysis of linguistic differences at the phonetic and grammatical levels is given on the examples of Khakass, Azerbaijani and Russian speech. As part of the study, a methodology was conducted for examining written speech among bilingual schoolchildren of Khakass and Azerbaijan nationalities studying in Russian in the 2nd grade of the city of Abakan. Result. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data showed the presence of specific writing errors of all types of dysgraphia in this category of children. The applicable scope of results. The materials of the article can be used by speech therapists and teachers in the analysis and classification of the identified violations of written speech in elementary bilingual schoolchildren. The authors come to the conclusion that it is necessary to develop more effective scientifically-based methodological system for teaching Russian as a second language.

Bilingual Myth-Busters Series Language Confusion in Bilingual Children

This article is the first in a series that will attempt to deconstruct myths about bilingualism. Language confusion is the popularly held belief (or myth) that children are incapable of becoming bi...

Phenomena of Discourse Marker Use of Bilingual Children and Implications for Heritage Language Education

ABSTRACT The present study explores the use of a discourse marker (DM) in dyadic talks of Korean-American bilingual schoolchildren. Using a corpus-driven analysis, this study demonstrates that the core function of the DM is to convey thinking processes, which is different from that of Korean monolingual children's data. That is, bilingual children use the DM for their own communicative needs in bilingual conversation. In-depth analysis further reveals evidence of incomplete first language acquisition that may result from an imbalance between L1 and L2 language education. Therefore, this study calls attention to how educators can best assist heritage language learners in developing pragmatic competence in the home language. Implications for heritage-language development and education are further discussed.

The Social and Private Worlds of Speech: Speech for Inter‐ and Intramental Activity

During a study designed to examine the processes of learning English as an additional language as manifest in the interactive behaviour of small groups of bilingual school children playing specially designed board games, several instances of private speech were captured. Private speech is commonly described as speech addressed to the self for intramental purposes. Unlike many studies, this research was not specifically aimed at eliciting private speech. Indeed, the overtly social nature of game playing probably acted to limit the production of speech for intramental purposes. In effect, therefore, interest lies in the fact that private speech was produced within this context. The article presents an examination of the functions of the private speech produced and the consequences of such outward verbalisation within this interactive group activity. As a result, a heuristic model of the relationship between speech for social and private purposes is proposed.

D. KIMBROUGH OLLER & REBECCA E. EILERS (eds), Language and literacy in bilingual children. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters, 2002. Pp. vii+310. ISBN 1-85359-571-3 (hbk), 1-85359-570-5 (pbk).

Section A: Background 1. Assessing the Effects of Bilingualism - D. K. Oller and B.Z. Pearson 2. An Integrated Approach to Evaluating Effects of Bilingualism in Miami School Children - D. K. Oller and R. E. Eilers. Section B: Overall Results on Language use and Standardized Test Performance 3. Bilingualism and Cultural Assimilation in Miami Hispanic Children -R. E. Eilers, D. K. Oller and A. B. Cobo-Lewis 4. Effects of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education on Oral and Written English Skills -A. B. Cobo-Lewis, B. Z. Pearson, R. E. Eilers, and V. C. Umbel 5. Effects of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education on Oral and Written Spanish Skills - A. B. Cobo-Lewis, B. Z. Pearson, R. E. Eilers, and V. C. Umbel 6. Interdependence of Spanish and English Knowledge in Language and Literacy among Bilingual Children - A. B. Cobo-Lewis and R. E. Eilers. Section C: Probe Studies on Complex Language Capabilities 7. Narrative Competence among Monolingual and Bilingual School Children in Miami -B. Z. Pearson 8. Command of the Mass/count Distinction in Bilingual and Monolingual Children -V. C. Mueller Gathercole 9. Grammatical Gender in Bilingual and Monolingual Children - V. C. Mueller Gathercole 10. Monolingual and Bilingual Acquisition -V. C. Mueller Gathercole 11. The Ability of Bilingual and Monolingual Children to Perform Phonological Translation - D. K. Oller and A. B. Cobo-Lewis. Section D: A Retrospective View of the Research 12. Balancing Interpretations Regarding Effects of Bilingualism - D. K. Oller and R. E. Eilers

Accelerated metalinguistic (phonological) awareness in bilingual children

Pre‐school children (mean age 4.8 years) in matched monoglot English and bilingual Italian‐English kindergarten classes were given tests of (lexical and sublexical) metalinguistic awareness in English. Bilingual schoolchildren were superior to monolingual children at a task of spoken morpheme deletion (RAINBOW → BOW). They were also superior at detecting the odd‐one‐out from sets of pictured words when detection was meaning‐based and when it was initial‐phoneme based. The advantage to the bilingual group persisted for morpheme‐deletion and phonological sorting after partialling out performance on the meaning‐based task.Exposure to the second language (Italian) at a pre‐literate stage may improve metalinguistic skills. In particular, speech‐sound awareness, which is implicated in reading mastery, benefits from this support.

One Method for Producing Automatic Control of English Phonology and Structure

The bilingual Mexican-American child represents one of the most vexing educational problems in Texas and other states in the Southwest. He represents problems that are only superficially similar to those posed by bilingual school children in the immigrant centers of the United States-European and Cuban immigrants, for example. He is unlike the European in that generally his ancestors lived in the area long before it was settled by the Englishspeaking society; he is unlike the European in that he has generally resisted total assimilation but, like the Puerto Rican, maintains a strong traditional pride in his cultural and linguistic heritage, however meager his knowledge of them might be. He is unlike the Cuban immigrants in that his parents usually are unskilled or semi-skilled laborers and farmers, with limited education and low socio-economic status.

W.I.S.C. patterns of a selective sample of bilingual school children.

W.I.S.C. patterns of a selective sample of bilingual school children.