Child L2 Research Articles

Home language environment and children's second language acquisition: the special status of input from older siblings.

Previous research suggests that increased second language (L2) input at home may not support L2 acquisition in children from migrant backgrounds. In drawing this conclusion, existing work has largely aggregated across family members. This study contrasts the effect of L2 input from older siblings with that from mothers. Participants were 113 child L2 learners of English (mean age = 5;10 [range 4;10-7;2]; mean exposure to L2 in school = 16.7 months [range 2-48 months]). All children had at least one older sibling. Using hierarchical linear regression modelling with controls for age, non-verbal reasoning and phonological short-term memory, we found that greater L2 input from siblings - but not mothers - was associated with stronger L2 abilities in narrative macrostructure, inflectional morphology, and vocabulary. Increased cumulative exposure to the L2 at school and greater maternal L2 fluency were also positively related to children's L2 inflectional morphology and vocabulary scores.

Parental Acculturation Attitudes: Direct and Indirect Impacts on Children’s Second Language Acquisition

ABSTRACT The goal of the present study was to investigate the relationship between parental acculturation attitudes and second language (L2) skills and acquisition in immigrant children and to identify the mechanisms that potentially mediate between parental acculturation attitudes and children’s L2 skills and acquisition. Our longitudinal study is based on a sample of 252 children with German as L2 (age t1: M = 41 months; t2: M = 57 months) and their parents. Research Findings: Results revealed that parental acculturation attitudes toward the country of origin negatively correlated with children’s L2 skills at t1 and at t2. Furthermore, time spent in early childcare predicted L2 skills at t1 and at t2. Parental L2 proficiency and children’s contact with German language speakers outside of childcare were related to children’s L2 skills at t1. Parental L2 proficiency mediated the relationship between parental acculturation attitudes and children’s L2 skills. Practice or Policy: The findings support the importance of early childcare attendance and parental acculturation for L2 skills and acquisition in children with an immigrant background.

Variational Learning in Child L2 Acquisition? Comprehension of Verbal Agreement in Spanish and English

ABSTRACT The Spanish verbal system offers more evidence for agreement and tense than English, where morphological evidence is less robust. With a focus on the comprehension of verbal agreement morphology by child second (L2) learners of Spanish and English, we extend the Variational Learning account to L2 acquisition to investigate whether the abundance of morphological evidence for subject agreement in the target language contributes to the rate of acquisition. Participants were 32 Spanish-speaking L2 learners of English and 32 English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish ages 7;5–10;11. The children’s comprehension of verb agreement morphology in Spanish and in English was assessed with an off-line picture-sentence matching task in each language. The results show higher accuracy comprehending agreement for the children learning L2 Spanish compared to the children learning L2 English. This finding is consistent with a probabilistic approach to morphological learning and the role of morphological typology in the rate of acquisition.

Children’s Requestive Behavior in L2 Greek: Beyond the Core Request

The study focuses on the frequency and distribution of supportive moves (SMs) produced by L2 Greek child learners to frame their requests as an index of young learners’ ability to take into account sociocultural parameters of the communicative situation (cost of the requested action, speaker–addressee relationship). It draws on a corpus of data elicited via a Cartoon Oral Production Task in order to explore the request performance among 51 learners of Greek at two intermediate levels vis a vis 37 L1 Greek children of the same age groups (8- and 11-year-olds). SMs, i.e. pre- or post-positioned modifiers to the core request, have been claimed to be an easily accessible strategy for adult L2 learners to mitigate the imposition of the request from the early stages of L2 proficiency, even if not always in a native-like fashion. Regarding child L2 requestive behavior, previous research into school-aged learners of English reveals restricted use of SMs at the more advanced level only. However, our data shows earlier signs of sociopragmatic awareness. Although the L2 participants of the study lag behind their L1 peers, they used SMs more frequently, more appropriately and in a more native-like fashion than reported in previous research. SMs are particularly preferred in high cost and low familiarity situations in both learners and native speakers, thus indicating a common developmental path on their way to producing sociopragmatically sensitive requests with increasing age and proficiency. Implications of findings for young learners’ interlanguage pragmatic development are further discussed.

Effects of Written Versus Spoken Production Modalities on Syntactic Complexity Measures in Beginning‐Level Child EFL Learners

AbstractLearner corpus studies using syntactic complexity as a construct for characterizing learner proficiency have found that higher proficiency permits learners to produce more complex syntactic structures. However, the majority of previous studies have focused on writing, almost exclusively with adult second language (L2) learners. Given the fundamentally different mechanisms underlying speaking and writing activities, this study investigated (a) how different processes involved in writing and speaking performance affect child L2 learners’ sentence production, and (b) whether syntactic complexity is a better predictor of proficiency in a particular production type. To this end, we analyzed syntactic complexity for written and spoken corpora supplied by native Korean‐speaking child learners of English using 7 syntactic complexity indices. Results showed that learners used longer sentences, more subordination, more verb phrases per T‑unit, and less coordination in writing than in speaking. In addition, a prediction model fitted to the written corpus explained more of the variance in proficiency scores than a model based on the spoken corpus. These findings indicate that the different processes underlying writing and speaking influence the way that beginning‐level child L2 learners produce sentences in writing and speaking tasks.

Object clitic production in French-speaking L2 children and children with SLI

Abstract This study examines French object clitic production in 20 typically developing L2 children (L1 English) compared to 19 monolingual children with SLI. We collected spontaneous and elicitation data twice at a one-year interval (T1, T2) in order to better evaluate the impact of age- and time-related factors on the L2-SLI comparison, as well as the impact of proficiency and working memory on object clitic production. The data revealed considerable group overlap at T1 in both tasks, but the L2 children produced significantly more object clitics than the SLI group at T2 in spontaneous language, thus suggesting that the L2-SLI overlap decreases when the L2 children have more language exposure. In elicitation, clitic production in both groups increased from T1 to T2 when all clitic types were included, but when only 3p accusative clitics were analyzed, the L2 children outperformed the SLI group. Age played an important role in elicitation in both groups, thus suggesting that mature performance systems, including unimpaired working memory, are required for object clitic production in this task. Language-related measures were linked to both tasks, thus suggesting that object clitic production is particularly sensitive to overall language proficiency, possibly because of issues with resource allocation.

How do bilingual dyslexic and typically developing children perform in nonword repetition? Evidence from a study on Italian L2 children

AbstractNonword repetition is typically impaired in dyslexia. Conversely, native-like performance is early achieved by bilingual children whose second language has a simple phonotactic system, like Italian. Our study aimed at comparing the performance of monolingual and bilingual children with and without dyslexia in a nonword repetition task modeled after Italian. We assessed nonword repetition in 111 school-aged children: 24 Italian L2 bilingual dyslexics, 24 Italian monolingual dyslexics, 30 Italian L2 bilingual controls and 33 Italian monolingual controls. We administered an original task composed of 40 nonwords ranging from two to five syllables; the complexity of the syllables was also manipulated. Results showed that both groups of dyslexics underperformed controls at each syllable length. No differences were found between monolingual and bilingual controls. Conversely, bilingual dyslexics underperformed monolingual dyslexics only with four-syllable nonwords. The possible use of nonword repetition tasks to assist in the identification of dyslexia in bilingual children is also discussed.

Microvariation in multilingual situations: The importance of property-by-property acquisition

In this article, I argue that first language (L1), second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition are fundamentally the same process, based on learning by parsing. Both child and adult learners are sensitive to fine linguistic distinctions, and language development takes place in small steps. While the bulk of the article focuses on crosslinguistic influence in L2/Ln acquisition, I first briefly outline the Micro-cue Model of L1 acquisition (Westergaard, 2009a, 2014), arguing that children build their I-language grammars incrementally, paying attention to small distinctions in syntax and information structure from early on. They are also shown to be conservative learners, generally not producing overt elements or performing movement operations unless there is positive evidence for this in the input, thus minimizing the need for unlearning. I then ask the question how this model fares with respect to multilingual situations, more specifically L2 and L3 acquisition. Discussing both theoretical and empirical evidence, I argue that, although L2 and L3 learners are different from L1 children in that they are not always conservative learners, they are also sensitive to fine linguistic distinctions, in that transfer/crosslinguistic influence takes place on a property-by-property basis. Full Transfer is traditionally understood as wholesale transfer at the initial state of L2 acquisition. However, I argue that it is impossible to distinguish between wholesale and property-by-property transfer in L2 acquisition on empirical grounds. In L3 acquisition, on the other hand, crosslinguistic influence from both previously acquired languages would provide support for property-by-property transfer. I discuss a few such cases and argue for what I call Full Transfer Potential (FTP), rather than Full (wholesale) Transfer, within the Linguistic Proximity Model (LPM) of L3 acquisition. Thus, rather than assuming that ‘everything does transfer’, I argue that ‘anything may transfer’.

Learning English Through Out‐of‐School Exposure: How Do Word‐Related Variables and Proficiency Influence Receptive Vocabulary Learning?

This study aimed to investigate which word‐related variables play a role in Dutch‐speaking children's L2 word learning through out‐of‐school exposure prior to classroom instruction in the foreign language. We used different measures to investigate the role of frequency, concreteness, cognateness, and age of acquisition (AoA) in receptive vocabulary learning. The results showed that cognateness and L1 AoA were important predictors of receptive word knowledge for all the participants. The findings confirmed that cognateness is important in vocabulary learning and that less proficient learners tend to guess the meaning of words based on their L1. The results also showed significant interactions between proficiency and cognateness, frequency, AoA, and concreteness, indicating that more proficient L2 learners are open to L2‐related variables such as L2 word frequency. This indicates that word‐related variables contribute in different ways according to learners’ proficiency levels.Open PracticesThis article has been awarded the Open Data badge. All data are publicly accessible through the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/ndr47/ and via the IRIS database at https://www.iris-database.org. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.

Language learning strategy reported choice by bilingual children in CLIL: The effect of age, proficiency and gender in L3 learners of English

Research on language learning strategies (LLS) has widely investigated the relationship between adult second language (L2) learners' choice and use of LLS and different learner factors such as proficiency, age and gender. In the present study, these three variables are investigated in relation to the choice of LLS focusing on primary school bilingual learners in a CLIL context. Using a revised version of Oxford’s (1990) survey, we collected data on the choice of LLS from Basque/Spanish bilingual learners of third language (L3) English in grades 5 and 6 primary education (age range 10–12; N = 131). Results show no differences in the amount and types of LLS chosen when proficiency and gender are considered separately. However, age seems to have a minimal effect in that grade 5 learners report using ‘Remembering’ more frequently than grade 6 ones. Additionally, proficiency seems to interact with gender in favour of males in that males in the lower beginner and beginner groups choose a wider range of LLS than females. However, this difference between males and females disappears in the upper beginner group. These findings are discussed in light of results from previous research of LLS choice by child L2 learners.

Low proficiency does not mean ab initio: A methodological footnote for linguistic transfer studies

ABSTRACTThe goal of this brief article is to highlight a specific methodological consideration pertaining to the examination of linguistic transfer in sequential language acquisition: When and how can transfer be meaningfully disentangled from issues pertaining to developmental trajectories of the target language? While this methodological issue is relevant for all transfer studies irrespective of learner type or linguistic domain of inquiry, herein we focus on a set of third language acquisition data. We examine the domain of negative quantifiers nobody/nothing and negative polarity items anybody/anything by Catalan-Spanish early bilinguals learning English as the L3 in adulthood. We offer two group analyses. The first is the superset of low beginner proficiency speakers (all participants taking part in a specially designed English course) and then a subset group (only those who were true ab initio L3 learners—that is, with no previous study of English). The analyses combine to show that exposure matters beyond proficiency—even when proficiency is held constant at very low levels, low proficiency L3 learners who have had some instruction/exposure to an L3 pattern differently from truly ab initio L3 learners. We discuss how this reality complicates isolating L3 transfer proper from effects of L3 development/acquisition and thus, by extension, to all cases of transfer such as adult and child L2.

Development and validation of a Chinese character acquisition assessment for second-language kindergarteners

Demand for second-language (L2) Chinese education for kindergarteners has grown rapidly, but little is known about these kindergarteners’ L2 skills, with existing studies focusing on school-age populations and alphabetic languages. Accordingly, we developed a six-subtest Chinese character acquisition assessment to measure L2 kindergarteners’ abilities to make associations among the forms, sounds, and meanings of 40 Chinese characters, and administered it to 173 five- and six-year-old L2 kindergarteners in Hong Kong. We found a high model-to-data fit using the two-parameter logistic item response theory model ( MSinfit = .87 to 1.07, ps > .41). Of the 40 items, 36 exhibited a range of difficulty and good discrimination. Internal consistency reliability and inter-rater reliability were also high. The children scored highest in the category of meaning-sound associations, followed by mapping from meaning to form. The results demonstrate that the instrument is adequately valid and reliable for assessing L2 kindergarteners’ character acquisition and imply that child L2 learners may develop abilities to map meanings and sounds prior to their development of form-related mapping. With minor modifications, the developed instrument can be used in various child Chinese L2 programs around the world.

Cohesive Devices and Writing Quality : Singapore Learner Corpus Research

Little published research studies examined the relationship between cohesion and writing quality of L2 children’s narrative texts using scientific tools such as Automatic Analysis of Text Cohesion (TAACO) and Coh-Metrix. To fill the research gap, this study investigates the development of cohesive devices and writing quality of 59 ESL grade four students over one semester using TAACO and Coh-Metrix. The corpus for the current study contained 177 narrative texts. Results show that L2 grade four children’s use of cohesive devices and the quality of writing has improved over one semester. Low proficiency group of students tends to use more cohesive devices than high proficiency group. Multi-dimensional assessment of writing quality shows that referential cohesive devices would be positive predictors of complexity by length and subordination. The study has contributed new knowledge in the field of second language writing in terms of research, theory, and pedagogy.

Syntactic development in early foreign language learning: Effects of L1 transfer, input, and individual factors

AbstractThis study explores parallels and differences in the comprehension ofwh-questions and relative clauses between early foreign-language (FL) learners and monolingual children. We test for (a) effects of syntactic first-language (L1) transfer, (b) the impact of input on syntactic development, and (c) the impact of individual differences on early FL syntactic development. We compare the results to findings in child second language (L2) naturalistic acquisition and adult FL acquisition. Following work on adult FL acquisition, we carried out a picture-based interpretation task with 243 child FL learners in fourth grade at different regular, partial, and high-immersion schools in Germany plus 68 monolingual English children aged 5 to 8 years as controls. The child FL learners display a strong subject-first preference but do not appear to use the L1 syntax in comprehension. Input differences across different schools affect overall accuracy, with students at high-immersion FL schools catching up to monolingual performance within 4 years of learning. Finally, phonological awareness is implicated in both early FL learning and naturalistic child L2 development. These findings suggest that early FL development resembles child L2 acquisition in speed and effects of individual factors, yet is different from adult FL acquisition due to the absence of L1 transfer effects.

The Use of Nonword Keywords in the Speech Assessment of English Second Language Learners

Use of nonwords is a potentially more appropriate method of assessment for English second language (EL2) learners. A mixed comparative design was used to compare the effects when using nonwords instead of picture-based stimuli to assess articulation of EL2 learners. Subaims were to compare results between two tests and age groups. In all, 16 Setswana L1 children assigned to two age cohorts were assessed using the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation–second edition (GFTA-2), and nonword list was created via a registered Speech Motor Learning website. Results of the two assessments differed significantly, indicating that lack of semantic information may yield different outcomes for articulation assessments of EL2 learners. Speech sound differences on the GFTA-2 were sounds not found in L1. This agrees with previous research indicating incorrect diagnosis due to speech and language differences. There was no significant difference between the two age cohorts. This research forms the basis for investigations into nonwords as a more accurate method for assessment of EL2 learners.

The advantages of jointly considering first and second language vocabulary skills among emergent bilingual children

ABSTRACT This cross-sectional study investigated first (L1) and second (L2) language receptive and expressive vocabulary in a sample of 542 typically developing bilingual children of immigrants (age range 6–13), coming from six different L1 backgrounds in Norway. Results demonstrated that children’s L1 and L2 vocabulary skills increased with age. From a deficit perspective, the study confirms that in each age group, there is a vocabulary gap between the ranges of Norwegian vocabulary known by Norwegian monolinguals and by Norwegian L2 children. At the same time, when an additive, conceptual scoring approach (taking into account bilingual children’s known L1 and/or L2 vocabulary) was used, the persistent gap in vocabulary knowledge diminished or disappeared altogether. This finding is most evident in older age groups. Conceptual scoring provides a more sensitive and positive picture of bilingual children’s overall range of vocabulary. The findings demonstrate a need for more nuanced assessment procedures of semantic knowledge across children’s’ L1 and L2.

Non-nativelike outcome of naturalistic child L2 acquisition of Japanese: The case of noun–verb collocations

Abstract Many second language (L2) studies have shown that naturalistic L2 acquisition beginning from childhood leads to nativelike proficiency. The current study investigated whether the acquisition of such proficiency would be guaranteed, by examining a potential gap in the seemingly nativelike L2 proficiency of child L2 starters. At issue was the productive knowledge of noun–verb collocations by child L2 starters of Japanese (n=74, age 13–18) whose age of arrival (AOA) was between 0 and 11 and whose length of residence (LOR) was between 5 and 18 years. The collocation test included only items that were easy for native speakers (NSs) (n=162, age 13) age-matched for the youngest L2 participants. About one-third of the L2 participants, including the earliest arrivals, scored below the NS range on the collocation test. The current study concludes that early L2 onset does not guarantee nativelike productive knowledge of collocations, even when the collocations in question are very easy for NSs. The study also discusses pedagogical implications for child L2 starters, who are generally believed to become nativelike with ease.

Present tense verb morphology of Spanish HL and L2 children in dual immersion

AbstractWe provide a snapshot of childhood morphology development in our investigation of two profiles of bilinguals (age 9–10) in an English-Spanish dual immersion academic setting: Spanish heritage language (SHL,n = 21) and second language (SL2,n = 41) children. Three tasks were given to the 62 bilinguals and 15 age-matched controls (Spanish first language, SL1): oral comprehension of 20 singular-plural present verbs, written sentence production of 10 similar verbs, and a meaning-focused writing task. SHL children were comparable to controls in production of number agreement, and showed no asymmetry between comprehension and production. SL2 learners showed lower accuracy than both SHL and SL1 children. A similar pattern was observed when person agreement and tense, aspect, mood and vowel errors were considered. The most common error among SHL and SL2 children was overregularization of stem vowels, a typical developmental error. The Feature Reassembly model of grammar can accommodate the range of possibilities represented by the data we present.

“Say ‘What happened?’ in Hebrew. He does not speak Arabic!” Early language awareness as expressed in verbal and nonverbal interactions in the preschool bilingual classroom

The aim of this longitudinal ethnographic study was to explore how children's verbal and nonverbal behavior reflects their language awareness at a bilingual Arabic–Hebrew-speaking preschool in Israel. We adopted the perspective that children's L2 acquisition is situated within the social events and interactional practices of the classroom community. We took a close look at six bilingual 3-year-old children—three L1 Arabic-speaking children and three L1 Hebrew-speaking children. To enhance the credibility of our study, we triangulated the collected observations of the children's talk via teachers and parents’ testimonies. The analysis revealed that children applied diverse verbal and nonverbal mediating cues to solve their interlocutors’ communicative troubles. Their pragmatic awareness of the interlocutors’ communicative troubles was encouraged by a unique classroom context where the teachers stimulated children's language mediation and peers’ backup. The study is beneficial for language teachers’ understanding of how they can support children's language awareness.

TERMINOLOGY MATTERS ON THEORETICAL GROUNDS TOO!

AbstractHerein, we provide counterargumentation to some of Domínguez, Hicks, and Slabakova's claims that the termincomplete acquisitionis conceptually necessary on theoretical grounds for describing the outcome grammars of heritage language bilingualism. Specifically, we clarify their claim that previous challenging of the term in our and others’ work is primarily based on a misconceived belief that incompleteness is intended to describe heritage speakers. We contextualize and problematize their appropriation of descriptive constructs in the adjacent fields of child L1, child 2L1, and adult L2 acquisition as a basis for supporting their general thesis. Relatedly, we conclude that a fundamental blurring of development and ultimate attainment issues is at the core of what, in our view, is flawed reasoning. While we empathize with the well-intentioned spirit of Domínguez et al.’s article—to provide a forum for respectful discussion—we invite the field to engage more directly with the inherent quandary of labeling the coherent grammars of heritage bilinguals in their own right as “incomplete” on the basis of differences to standard varieties.