Children's Language Proficiency Research Articles

Language Proficiency in Children with Cleft Palate

Language Proficiency in Children with Cleft Palate

Quality and quantity of infant-directed speech by maternal caregivers predicts later speech-language outcomes in children with cochlear implants

Caregivers speaking to children often adjust segmental and suprasegmental qualities of their speech relative to adult-directed (AD) speech. The quality and quantity of infant-directed (ID) speech has been shown to support word learning and word segmentation by normal-hearing infants, but the extent to which children with cochlear implants (CIs) benefit linguistically from ID speech is unclear. The present study investigated the extent to which the quantity and quality of ID speech produced in the lab by each of 40 mothers to her child with a CI predicted the child’s speech-language outcome measures at two years post-implantation. Multiple measures of ID and AD speech for each mother were taken, including ID speech quantity in one minute, and several measures of ID speech quality, including fundamental frequency characteristics, speech rate, and the area of the vowel triangle formed by corner vowels in F1-F2 space. Forward stepwise regression showed that both quantity and quality of speech significantly predicted language outcomes measured by the Preschool Language Scales, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and the Reynell Developmental Language Scales. These results support the hypothesis that hearing more ID speech that has acoustic modifications typical of IDS promotes language proficiency in children with CIs.

Deconstructing deficit perspectives on minority youth: a longitudinal analysis of South Korean adolescents’ Korean and English proficiency

ABSTRACT Drawing on ecological perspectives, this study examined the foundational assumption behind the negative stereotypes that surround children of mixed parentage in South Korea; namely, that their alleged deficiency in the Korean language will cause numerous issues for Korean society. The data used for this study came from a panel study of Korean adolescents that included such variables as their Korean and English proficiency as well as other explanatory variables at the individual, family, school, and community level. This study revealed that the longitudinal trajectories of Korean and English proficiency for mixed parentage adolescents were comparable to those of peers who had ethnically Korean parents. This suggests that the ‘multicultural’ label attached to this group of minority youth has served as a means of managing growing economic inequality exacerbated by globalization; in particular, the delusion of the label is highlighted by the strong bond between children's language proficiency and their socioeconomic status. The findings of this study urge researchers and educators to assess more critically the lives of minority children.

An elicited imitation test for measuring preschoolers' language development.

The present article describes a new Persian elicited imitation test (EIT) developed for assessing the overall language proficiency of Persian-speaking preschoolers. It reports a study that investigated the power of the EIT in discriminating children's linguistic abilities through having them repeat sentences of varying lengths and morphosyntactic complexity. The study also explored the relationship between children's performance on the EIT and their free speech. A total of 119 three- to- six-year-old Iranian monolingual children participated in the study by completing the EIT and an oral narrative task. Results showed that the new EIT can discriminate children with different levels of language abilities. Moreover, positive correlations were found between children's scores on the EIT and their performance on the oral narrative task. Results suggest that the EIT provides a reliable measure of overall language development, and it can be effectively used to evaluate children's language proficiency in various contexts.

Child-Robot Interactions for Second Language Tutoring to Preschool Children.

In this digital age social robots will increasingly be used for educational purposes, such as second language tutoring. In this perspective article, we propose a number of design features to develop a child-friendly social robot that can effectively support children in second language learning, and we discuss some technical challenges for developing these. The features we propose include choices to develop the robot such that it can act as a peer to motivate the child during second language learning and build trust at the same time, while still being more knowledgeable than the child and scaffolding that knowledge in adult-like manner. We also believe that the first impressions children have about robots are crucial for them to build trust and common ground, which would support child-robot interactions in the long term. We therefore propose a strategy to introduce the robot in a safe way to toddlers. Other features relate to the ability to adapt to individual children’s language proficiency, respond contingently, both temporally and semantically, establish joint attention, use meaningful gestures, provide effective feedback and monitor children’s learning progress. Technical challenges we observe include automatic speech recognition (ASR) for children, reliable object recognition to facilitate semantic contingency and establishing joint attention, and developing human-like gestures with a robot that does not have the same morphology humans have. We briefly discuss an experiment in which we investigate how children respond to different forms of feedback the robot can give.

조기영어학습이 유아의 영어능력에 미치는 영향: 인지, 성격, 부모요인을 통제한 전향적 연구

조기 영어교육이 필요한 것인지, 그리고 효과가 있는 것인지에 대해서는 2000년대 이후 많은 연구들이 실시되어 왔으나, 상당수 연구들은 통제집단의 부재, 관련변인 통제의 실패, 혹은 간이검사의 사용 등으로 인해 해석의 어려움이 존재했다. 본 연구는 8개월간의 영어학습 프로그램이 유아의 영어능력에 유의미한 효과를 미치는 지를 알아보기 위해 미국에서 공식 언어검사로 가장 많이 사용되고 있는 WIDA검사를 사용하여 개입집단과 통제집단의 영어능력치를 3회에 걸쳐 측정하였다. 또 영어학습이 본격화 되기 이전의 아동의 한국어 능력, 지능, 성격변인, 그리고 부모의 사회경제적 변인 및 영어교육에 대한 태도를 측정하고 이를 통제하여 영어학습만의 고유효과를 알아보고자 하였다. 3차 검사를 완료한 39명의 유아들의 영어능력을 분석한 결과, 개입집단은 수용언어 발달과 표현언어 발달에 있어 관련변인의 효과를 통제한 후에도 여전히 통제집단 유아에 비해 우수하였다. 하지만 이러한 효과는 영어검사의 정답문항 수에 근거하였을 때에만 유의미하였으며, 집단간 질적인 측면에서 유의미한 변화는 발견되지 않았다. 본 연구의 결과는 단순 노출교육이라 하더라도 조기영어교육은 최소한 단기간 효과가 있음을 시사한다. Although a number of studies have been conducted in Korea since 2000 on the impact of early English education, their interpretation is still not conclusive, due to their lack of control groups and failure to control for third factors and use valid measurements. The present study was designed to examine the effect of an English education program on young children's English proficiency after 8 months using the most well-known official English proficiency measure, the WIDA for kindergarteners. In addition, the children's Korean language proficiency, cognitive abilities, personality, parents' SES, and parents' attitudinal variables before the education were measured and controlled. The results indicated that the intervention group performed better than the control group in both listening and speaking skills, even when all relevant factors were considered. This effect, however, was only found in the item-level analyses.

Does Preschool Boost the Development of Minority Children?: The Case of Roma Children

Summary Does universal preschool constitute an effective policy tool to promote the development and integration of children from minority groups? We address this question for the children of the Roma—the largest and most disadvantaged minority group in Europe. To tackle the issue of non-random selection into preschool, we exploit variation in the individual distance to the nearest preschool facility. Non-parametric instrumental variable estimations reveal significant short-term gains in terms of children's literacy. Preschool attendance also increases the prevalence of vaccinations but has no effect on other observed health outcomes. Overall, preschool also does not seem to enhance integration measured by children's language proficiency or social–emotional development, at least not in the short term.

Executive control in bilingual children

Abstract While findings on the bilingual advantage in adults are mixed, the data from children are more consistent but still show variations. A number of factors influence the outcomes, such as individual bilingual characteristics, variations in target functions, and differences in task type. Our goal is to demonstrate that there is a complex relationship among these variables and that the outcomes of executive function (EF) studies depend on the interactions among these factors. Performance on EF is influenced by children's language proficiency, language use, age, socioeconomic status, and culture. These individual features show different interactions with different executive components. Bilingual and monolingual children differ in some EFs but not in others. Variations in tasks and other measurement issues further increase the differences in the results. We may better understand the nature of the bilingual advantage in children if we combine aspects of developmental science and language processing with hypotheses about bilingualism.

Association Between Parental Education, Occupation, Income, Language Activity, and Language Proficiency in Children

Background : Language proficiency should be mastered by children before school admision. The process of language development was affected by cognitive and neurologic maturity. Language proficiency determine communication foundation, social and academic interaction. Children with retardation in language proficiency may encounter problem in the social and academic relationship. This study investigated the association between parental education, occupation, income, language activity, and language proficiency in children. Sub jects and Method: This was an analytic observational study with cross sectional design. This study was conducted in Gondangrejo sub-district, Karanganyar, Central Java. A total sample of 102 children aged 4 to 5 years were selected for this study. The dependent variable was language proficiency. The independent variables were parental education, occupation, income, and language activity. The data were collected by a set of questionnaire and analyzed by multiple logistic regression. Results : Parental education ≥ senior high school (OR= 2.95; 95% CI= 1.03 to 8.39; p= 0.043), employed parents (OR= 3.45; 95% CI= 1.27 to 9.39; p= 0.015), family income ≥ regional minimum wage (OR= 6.35; 95% CI= 2.02 to 19.93; p= 0.002), and intense language activity (OR= 4.32; 95% CI= 1.61 to 11.51; p= 0.003) were associated with better language proficiency. Conclusion : Parental education ≥ senior high school, employed parents, family income ≥ regional minimum wage, and intense language activity are associated with better language proficiency. Keywords: parental education, occupation, language activity, language proficiency, children Correspondence: Hafidz Triantoro Aji Pratomo. School of Health Polytechnics, Poltekkes Surakarta. Email: hafidzpoltekkes@gmail.com Indonesian Journal of Medicine (2016), 1(3): 152-159 https://doi.org/10.26911/theijmed.2016.01.03.02

Language proficiency and metacognition as predictors of spontaneous rehearsal in children.

Despite decades of research on fundamental memory strategies such as verbal rehearsal, the potential underlying skills associated with the emergence of rehearsal are still not fully understood. Two studies examined the relative roles of language proficiency and metamemory in predicting rehearsal use, as well as the prediction of metamemory performance by language proficiency. In Study 1, 59 children, 5 to 8 years old, were administered a serial recall task, 2 language measures, a nonverbal cognitive measure, and a rapid automatized naming (RAN) task. Language proficiency, RAN, and age were significant individual predictors of rehearsal use. In hierarchical regression analyses, language proficiency mediated almost completely the age → rehearsal use relation. In addition, automatized naming was a strong but partial mediator of the contribution of language proficiency to rehearsal use. In Study 2, 54 children were administered a metamemory test, a language measure, and a serial recall task. Metamemory skills and, again, language proficiency significantly predicted rehearsal use in the task. The predictive strength of metamemory skills was mediated by the children's language proficiency. The mutually supportive roles of automatized naming, language, and metamemory in the emergence of spontaneous cumulative verbal rehearsal are discussed in the context of the resulting model, along with the minimal roles of age and aspects of intelligence.

Academic discourse: Dissociating standardized and conversational measures of language proficiency in bilingual kindergarteners.

This study examined the relationship between performance on standardized measures of language proficiency and conversational measures of the same features used in academic discourse among 24 monolingual and 25 bilingual kindergarteners. Academic discourse performance was considered for both its linguistic and its genre features in two discourse forms: narrative and explanation. Bilinguals performed more poorly than monolinguals on standardized measures of language proficiency, yet they performed similarly to monolinguals in the discourse-based linguistic and genre features. Moreover, genre features were more strongly related to linguistic features assessed through discourse than to standardized tests of these same features. These findings indicate that standardized measures of language proficiency underrepresent the abilities of bilingual children and that children's second language proficiency may be more accurately reflected in conversation.

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...

Bilingualism and socioemotional well-being

Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study — Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), this paper examines Latino children's socioemotional trajectories from kindergarten to fifth grade, paying particular attention to children's language proficiency. Results from the growth-curve analysis indicate that most Latino children who spoke a non-English language were doing as well as, if not better than, their White English Monolingual peers on socioemotional well-being. By fifth grade, Fluent Bilingual and Non-English-Dominant Bilingual children were surpassing every other group with the highest levels of approaches-to-learning, self-control, and interpersonal skills and the lowest levels of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. English-Dominant Bilingual children had similar levels and trajectories of socioemotional well-being as those of White English Monolingual children. Non-English Monolingual children, however, had the lowest self-control and interpersonal skills and the highest level of internalizing problems by fifth grade, as rated by their teachers.

Second Language Acquisition: Success Factors in Sequential Bilingualism

Second Language Acquisition: Success Factors in Sequential Bilingualism

Spanish-Speaking Children's Social and Language Development in Pre-Kindergarten Classrooms

The current study examined the social and language development of 345 Spanish-speaking pre-kindergartners who attended pre-kindergarten programs that varied widely in how much Spanish was spoken in the classroom by the teacher. Previous studies on English language learners have focused on how the language of instruction impacts children's language proficiency, ignoring the context in which children are learning. The current study found better social skills and closer teacher—child relationships in classrooms where teachers spoke some Spanish. Teacher ratings of children's peer social skills and assertiveness were positively associated with increased amounts of Spanish being spoken. More Spanish language use in the classroom was also related to a decrease in children's likelihood of being victims of aggression as rated by independent observers. The findings have implications for better understanding how policy decisions regarding language of instruction impact children in the social domain. As early education programs are faced with the challenging task of developing best practices for English language learners, it is essential that programs are attentive to the social implications of language. The Multi-State Study of Pre-Kindergarten was supported by Educational Research and Development Center Program PR/Award R307A60004, administered by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. The State-Wide Early Education Programs Study was supported by the National Institute for Early Education Research, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Foundation for Child Development. However, the contents of this article do not necessarily represent the positions or policies of the funders, and endorsement by the federal government or other funding agencies should not be assumed. The National Center for Early Development and Learning is grateful for the help of the many children, parents, teachers, administrators, and field staff who participated in this study.

Chinese Language Maintenance: A Study of Chinese-American Parental Perceptions and Activities

This study focuses on Chinese-American parents' perceptions of their children's Chinese language use and proficiency. The sites for this study were weekend Chinese schools in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. A self-administered survey was conducted by using a random sample of 209 parents from different backgrounds. Results have indicated that these Chinese-American parents had high expectations of their children's Chinese language proficiency and tried to maintain their unique Chinese heritage and culture. When comparing parental perceptions of different groups, significant differences were found between parents of different income levels. Significant differences were also found in parental activities related to Chinese language proficiency between parents of gifted/talented students and those of average students. No significant differences were found in other groups. Bivariate Correlation analyses indicated that parental perceptions and activities were highly positively-correlated.

Chinese Language Maintenance: A Study of Chinese-American Parental Perceptions and Activities

AbstractThis study focuses on Chinese-American parents' perceptions of their children's Chinese language use and proficiency. The sites for this study were weekend Chinese schools in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. A self-administered survey was conducted by using a random sample of 209 parents from different backgrounds. Results have indicated that these Chinese-American parents had high expectations of their children's Chinese language proficiency and tried to maintain their unique Chinese heritage and culture. When comparing parental perceptions of different groups, significant differences were found between parents of different income levels. Significant differences were also found in parental activities related to Chinese language proficiency between parents of gifted/talented students and those of average students. No significant differences were found in other groups. Bivariate Correlation analyses indicated that parental perceptions and activities were highly positively-correlated.

Editorial Note

Editorial Note Ng Chin-Keong and Tan Chee Beng This issue begins with an insightful article by Prof. Edgar Wickberg, a renowned scholar on Chinese overseas. His discussion of Chinese overseas and their negotiation of identity is testimony to his experience of life-long research on the Chinese in Southeast Asia and North America. Using Vancouver as an example, Prof. Wickberg discusses the local sources of Chineseness; his inclusion of the internet on identity formation is both interesting and relevant. Much has been written about major Chinese community leaders in Chinese overseas studies. But there are others — no less worthy in their contributions to the community — who have remained relatively unknown. Jason Lim writes about Lim Keng Lian (1893–1968), a tea merchant and a Kuomintang supporter as well as a Hokkien community leader in Singapore. The article describes his political and other activities in Singapore and Malaya and his concern with events in China. Above all, the author believes that it is on the reform of Chinese education in Singapore that he has left a lasting influence. In his article on Chinese language maintenance based on his study of weekend Chinese schools in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York, Wenzhong Yang assesses the influence of Chinese-American parents' perceptions and activities on their children's Chinese language use and proficiency. The study confirms the prevalent view that speaking Chinese regularly at home is crucial to Chinese language maintenance. As Yang points out, proficiency in Chinese is difficult "once English becomes the dominant home language." The Chinese-American parents in the survey expect their children to be both proficient in English and Chinese, not just to be well-prepared for the job market, but also to know Chinese heritage and culture. Although the study takes place in the US, many parents in Singapore and Malaysia will probably concur with the findings. Ann Heylen writes about the life of Cai Peihuo in colonial Taiwan. Cai's experience under Japanese rule is relevant to the study of the lives of educated Chinese elites in other colonial societies, hence our decision to carry the article. Cai's promotion of romanized Taiwanese and his careful dealings with the Japanese colonial authorities reflect the class interest of elitist Chinese concerned with both the ambiguities and modernity of Chinese culture and identity. Other than the usual Book Reviews section, we introduce in this issue a new feature, namely, Book News. Unlike some other journals which have a section on Books Received, our section provides news on books recently published and lists [End Page 5] books that are useful to researchers but are not widely known because of the languages or venues of publication. For instance, publications by Chinese organizations or local museums may not be known to researchers in other parts of the world. Readers are encouraged to submit to the Review Editor details of items that may be of interest or useful to others. For information about the Journal of Chinese Overseas, please visit <http://www.chineseheritagecentre.org>. The Chinese Heritage Centre gratefully acknowledges the Lee Foundation's sponsorship of the publication of the journal. Copyright © 2007 Singapore University Press

Second Language Acquisition in Pre-School Playgroups and its Relation to Later School Success

Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, the authors focused on the relation between pre-school classroom experiences and the development of later comprehension skills in ethnic minority children whose first language is different from the language they learn in (pre-)school. In Study 1, the relation between pre-school playgroup participation and later comprehension skills (some two to four years after playgroup participation) was investigated. The results did not reveal any effect of playgroup participation. At least two explanations for this lack of effect are possible: (i) taking part in playgroups did not contribute to comprehension skills at all; (ii) taking part in playgroups did affect comprehension skills, but this effect diminished. Aiming to find support for either of these hypotheses, in Study 2 the authors took a closer, qualitative, look at what actually happens in preschool playgroups. The findings provided some indications of the acquisition of comprehension skills toward the end of the playgroup period, but this proved to be highly dependent on children's general language proficiency. The combined outcomes of these studies suggest that, if ethnic minority children are to benefit from taking part in playgroups, they need to have at least a basic proficiency in the second language, or playgroups need to change their current practice. However, as many of these children presumably arrive in playgroups without such a basic proficiency, they will probably fail to profit sufficiently from the stimulating environment provided there.

Individual differences in young children's suggestibility: Relations to event memory, language abilities, working memory, and executive functioning

In this paper, two empirical studies are presented in which an attempt was made to explain individual differences in two different aspects of 4-year-olds’ suggestibility, that is, their ability to resist false suggestions and memory impairments due to prior misinformation. As sources of individual differences cognitive skills along the information processing pathways were chosen: executive functioning (Study 1) and working memory (Study 2). Additionally, memory for the observed event and language proficiency were included in the studies. The results revealed that overall individual differences in language skills made a significant and consistent contribution to individual differences in the included measures of children's susceptibility to suggestions. Executive function and working memory skills were not directly related to children's tendency to yield false suggestions and their memory impairments in a recognition test after being misled. However, both executive function and working memory were related to children's language proficiency pointing to a possible indirect effect and underlining the importance of language competencies in early childhood.