School-age Bilingual Children Research Articles

Heritage speaker children’s speech categorization patterns

Bi-/multilingual experiences vary widely due to differing degrees of input frequency, dominancy in languages, and societal preferences for the language(s) used. Heritage bilingualism has received notable attention over the last decade. Heritage bilinguals are those who often use or are exposed to one language at home (the heritage language) that differs from that used outside of the home (the majority language). For a long time, bilingual children’s unbalanced input was targeted as a source of deficiency in categorizing speech. However, prior studies used tasks that were not equipped to address variability in speech categorization across listeners (see Apfelbaum et al., 2022). We use the visual analogue scaling (VAS) task which can capture variability in speech categorization across listeners with more sensitivity and which can reveal new dimensions of differences such as the trial-by-trial variability in responding (Kapnoula et al., 2017; Kutlu et al., 2022). In an ongoing study, we are testing school-aged bilingual children with various heritage language backgrounds (n = 30, 6–11 years). Preliminary findings suggest that heritage speaker children are not deficient in speech categorization, and in fact, show more gradient categorization patterns, suggesting a functional adaptation to increased phonetic variation in their language environment (Kutlu et al., 2022).

The Effects of Language Experience in Both Home and School Environments for Spanish-English Bilingual Children: A Preliminary Study

ABSTRACT The amount of language input bilingual children receive influences their language acquisition. This three-year quasi-longitudinal study determined the extent home language input influences measures of expressive and receptive English vocabulary among Spanish-English school-age bilingual children. The study also determined whether a relationship exists between school of attendance and measures of expressive and receptive English vocabulary among the same group of children. One Spanish-English dual-immersion school and one English-only school in Utah participated in the study. Participants were administered two formal measures of receptive and expressive English once a year for three consecutive years. Results indicate that regardless of their home language, all children demonstrated improvements in receptive and expressive English language skills after three years. Between year one and three, the increase in English receptive language measures were statistically significant among the children who primarily heard Spanish at home. Results revealed that all children made advancements in expressive and receptive vocabulary skills, regardless of their home language and the type of school they attended. Findings suggest that exposure to a language other than English at home is not a detriment to English language development. Additionally, bilingual education is as effective as English-only education in fostering children‘s vocabulary skills in English.

Spanish copula selection with adjectives in school-aged bilingual children

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This study examined whether school-aged second-generation heritage speakers exhibit knowledge of the semantic and pragmatic constraints on Spanish copula selection with adjectives, and whether experiential factors affect copula interpretation. Design/methodology/approach: Following a between-subjects design, we administered 2 Picture Selection Tasks to 50 second-generation bilingual children (ages 5;1–14;10) and 21 first-generation adults living in the same community in central Texas. Task 1 included real adjectives and Task 2 novel adjectives. We administered a morphosyntactic proficiency test in English and Spanish (BESA/BESA-ME) to the children and obtained language exposure and use data. Data and analysis: Using generalized linear mixed models, analyses compared bilingual children to first-generation adults in their selection of the temporary picture with each copula ( ser vs. estar), and also examined the role of age, language exposure/use, and morphosyntactic proficiency. Findings/conclusions: Only children with high Spanish morphosyntactic proficiency approached adult-like sensitivity to the semantic and pragmatic distinctions between ser and estar with adjectives. Age, Spanish exposure and use, and English proficiency did not significantly influence performance on the tasks. Originality: This study provides the first detailed examination of the acquisition of copula selection with adjectives in Spanish-English school-aged heritage speakers living in the US. Significance/implications: This study offers evidence of the vulnerability of aspect, as instantiated in Spanish copula selection, among school-aged bilingual children. It also suggests low-proficiency children might be a catalyzing locus of the accelerated changes in copula use.

Bilingualism in School-Aged Children with ASD: A Pilot Study.

Preschool-aged bilingual children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can keep pace with their monolingual peers with ASD. However, can older children with ASD continue to do so as language demands become greater? Also, can they reach language levels similar to those of neurotypically developing (ND) bilingual children? The current study compares the language abilities of 3 school-aged bilingual children with ASD to those of 2 monolingual peers, and 19 ND bilingual and 12 ND monolingual peers. Using cluster analyses, we found that bilingual children with ASD had similar language to those of monolingual children with ASD and neurotypically developing bilingual and monolingual children. Results suggest that bilingual children with ASD can keep pace with their peers with similar intellectual abilities.

Phonological vulnerability for school-aged Spanish-English-speaking bilingual children

ABSTRACT This study examined accuracy on syllable-final (coda) consonants in newly-learned English-like nonwords to determine whether school-aged bilingual children may be more vulnerable to making errors on English-only codas than their monolingual, English-speaking peers, even at a stage in development when phonological accuracy in productions of familiar words is high. Bilingual Spanish-English-speaking second-graders (age 7–9) with typical development (n = 40) were matched individually with monolingual peers on age, sex, and speech skills. Participants learned to name sea monsters as part of five computerized word learning tasks. Dependent t-tests revealed bilingual children were less accurate than monolingual children in producing codas unique to English; however, the groups demonstrated equivalent levels of accuracy on codas that occur in both Spanish and English. Results suggest that, even at high levels of English proficiency, bilingual Spanish-English-speaking children may demonstrate lower accuracy than their monolingual English-speaking peers on targets that pattern differently in their two languages. Differences between a bilingual’s two languages can be used to reveal targets that may be more vulnerable to error, which could be a result of cross-linguistic effects or more limited practice with English phonology.

Design and Standardization of a Speech and Language Screening Tool for Use among School-Aged Bilingual Children in a Minority Language Setting

AbstractThis study investigated the psychometric properties of a speech and language screening tool “Profil de la langue, du langage et de la parole” (Speech and Language Profile) (PLLP-SLP) used with franco-dominant and anglo-dominant children aged forty-six to fifty-eight months who had entered the school system in kindergarten. All kindergarten students (1092 boys and 1080 girls) enrolled in a French-language school board in Northern Ontario in 2004, 2005, 2009, and 2010. They were assessed using the PLLP-SLP and formed the standardization sample for this norm-referenced language assessment tool. Reliable data is now available for this new speech and language screening tool to be used with French-English bilingual students entering kindergarten in a minority language setting. Scores for receptive and expressive language, as well as initial speech sounds and clinical judgment are available. An independent samples t-test revealed significant differences between groups on 4/10 subtests. In these instances, girls outperformed boys, though the difference was always slight (between .13 and .28), and anglophones outperformed francophones on one subtest, with the difference being less than .25. Speech-language pathologists working in minority language settings face particular challenges with respect to the absence of norms available for this population. Norms specific to language and gender should be observed when using this tool, as significant differences between girls’ and boys’ results, as well as between anglo-dominant and franco-dominant students living in a minority-language setting was observed.

Amount trumps timing in bilingual vocabulary acquisition: Effects of input in simultaneous and sequential school-age bilinguals

Objectives: This study examined the extent to which the language performance of school-age bilingual children is impacted by the amount of language exposure they have received in each language versus the timing of this exposure in terms of the age of first exposure (AoE). Methods: Receptive and expressive vocabulary and word morphology measures were administered in both languages to school-age simultaneous and sequential learners of French (other language English), and to their monolingual counterparts. Data and analysis: The study included 64 children in first grade and 68 children in third grade in French schools in Montreal. Within each grade level, simultaneous bilinguals, sequential bilinguals, and monolinguals were equivalent in age, nonverbal cognition and socio-economic status (maternal education). Detailed information on previous language exposure was gathered by parent report. Conclusions: Simultaneous bilinguals performed somewhat better than sequential bilinguals; however both groups overall performed significantly more poorly than monolinguals. Differences in performance between simultaneous and sequential bilinguals were mediated by differences in amount, not timing, of exposure. Sequential learners in grade 1 required lower amounts of input to reach high French scores than did their simultaneous counterparts; sequential and simultaneous learners in grade 3 did not differ in this respect. This finding suggests that the recency of bilingual exposure is a significant determiner of the rate of second language learning. The amount of exposure to each language since birth predicted performance in each language of the bilingual children. Originality: Bilingual children with different AoEs were compared while also controlling for differences in amount of exposure. Significant implications: The results call into question the traditional separation between simultaneous and sequential bilinguals and shows that an early start of bilingualism does not in and of itself predict better performance or performance within the monolingual range. Better performance was more strongly related to amount than timing of exposure.

Heritage language development: Connecting the dots

To date, the vast majority of research on the linguistic abilities of heritage speakers has focused on young adults whose heritage language is no longer developing. These adults began their journey as bilingual children acquiring the heritage language with the majority language simultaneously since birth or sequentially, as a second language. If longitudinal studies are not always feasible, linking research on the structural development of bilingual pre-school children with research on young adult heritage speakers adds a much needed perspective to understand the initial state and the end state of heritage language development. The purpose of this study is to connect the beginning of heritage language development with its ultimate attainment by comparing the expression of subjects in Spanish in 15 school-age bilingual children and 29 young adult heritage speakers, all of them simultaneous bilinguals with English as the dominant language and Spanish as the weaker language. The oral production of null and overt subjects by child and adult heritage speakers was compared to that of age-matched monolingual speakers in Mexico (20 children, 20 adults). To provide a wider context the study includes a group of 21 adult immigrants, who could also potentially influence the input to the heritage speakers. The results confirm that discourse pragmatic properties of subject expression in Spanish are vulnerable to incomplete acquisition and permanent optionality in child and adult bilingual grammars.

Interlocutor differential effects on the expressive language skills of Spanish-speaking English learners

Purpose: The primary objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between language use with different interlocutors, maternal education level and the expressive language skills of US English learners (ELs) in Spanish and English.Method: Two hundred and twenty-four Spanish-speaking ELs in kindergarten provided narrative language samples in Spanish and English. Parents completed a questionnaire of maternal education level and language use with parents, older siblings and peers.Result: Multiple linear regression analyses demonstrated that language used with different interlocutors and maternal education level had unique effects on participants’ expressive language skills. ELs’ expressive language skills in English were predicted by interactions with older siblings, peers and maternal education level; Spanish expressive language skills were predicted by interactions with older siblings.Conclusion: The findings from this study suggest that the determination of language experience of school-age bilingual children should examine differential language use with multiple interlocutors, particularly interactions with older siblings and peers.

Differential Object Marking in Child and Adult Spanish Heritage Speakers

We report the results of two studies that investigate the factors contributing to non-native-like ability in child and adult heritage speakers by focusing on oral production of Differential Object Marking (DOM), the overt morphological marking of animate direct objects in Spanish. In study 1, 39 school-age bilingual children (ages 6–17) from the United States and 20 monolingual children from Mexico completed a Story Retelling Task and a Picture Description Task. In study 2, 64 young adult heritage speakers (ages 18–25), 23 adult immigrants to the United States (ages 40–60), and 40 native speakers from Mexico (ages 18–60) completed the same oral tasks. Results showed significant rates of omission of DOM in animate direct objects in all the experimental groups from the United States and ceiling performance in the groups from Mexico (both children and adults). We discuss how the combined effects of reduced input, potential attrition in the first generation of immigrants, incomplete acquisition in the second generation, and transfer from English may account for the persistent patterns of DOM omission with animate and specific direct objects in child and adult Spanish heritage speakers.

Semantic deficits in Spanish-English bilingual children with language impairment.

To examine the nature and extent of semantic deficits in bilingual children with language impairment (LI). Thirty-seven Spanish-English bilingual children with LI (ranging from age 7;0 [years;months] to 9;10) and 37 typically developing (TD) age-matched peers generated 3 associations to 12 pairs of translation equivalents in English and Spanish. Responses were coded as paradigmatic (e.g., dinner-lunch, cena-desayuno [dinner-breakfast]), syntagmatic (e.g., delicious-pizza, delicioso-frijoles [delicious-beans]), and errors (e.g., wearing-where, vestirse-mal [to get dressed-bad]). A semantic depth score was derived in each language and conceptually by combining children's performance in both languages. The LI group achieved significantly lower semantic depth scores than the TD group after controlling for group differences in vocabulary size. Children showed higher conceptual scores than single-language scores. Both groups showed decreases in semantic depth scores across multiple elicitations. Analyses of individual performances indicated that semantic deficits (1 SD below the TD mean semantic depth score) were manifested in 65% of the children with LI and in 14% of the TD children. School-age bilingual children with and without LI demonstrated spreading activation of semantic networks. Consistent with the literature on monolingual children with LI, sparsely linked semantic networks characterize a considerable proportion of bilingual children with LI.

Assent of School-Age Bilingual Children

This article discusses the issue of assent of school-age bilingual children to participate in a research study. The article reviews cognitive, cultural, and linguistic factors influencing verbal and nonverbal concept formation in bilingual children. At the applied level, the focus of the article is on methodological considerations in using this information to obtain assent from a child who is bilingual and speaks English as a second language. Recommendations for the assessment of the child's language dominance, language proficiency, and the development of the assent form are provided. Language diversity and its potential effects on the assent process need to be formally acknowledged and appropriately addressed.