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The role of primary caregiver vocabulary knowledge in the development of bilingual children's vocabulary skills.

ABSTRACT: PURPOSE:The present study examined the impact of environmental factors (socioeconomic status [SES], the percent of language exposure to English and to Spanish, and primary caregivers' vocabulary knowledge) on bilingual children's vocabulary skills. METHOD:Vocabulary skills were measured in 58 bilingual children between the ages of 5 and 7 who spoke Spanish as their native language and English as their second language. Data related to language environment in the home, specifically, the percent of language exposure to each language and SES, were obtained from primary caregiver interviews. Primary caregivers' vocabulary knowledge was measured directly using expressive and receptive vocabulary assessments in both languages. RESULTS:Multiple regression analyses indicated that primary caregivers' vocabulary knowledge, the child's percent exposure to each language, and SES were robust predictors of children's English, but not Spanish, vocabulary skills. CONCLUSION:These findings indicate that in the early school ages, primary caregiver vocabulary skills have a stronger impact on bilingual children's second-language than native-language vocabulary.

SUBMITTER: Buac M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4632841 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The role of primary caregiver vocabulary knowledge in the development of bilingual children's vocabulary skills.

Buac Milijana M Gross Megan M Kaushanskaya Margarita M

Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR 20141001 5

<h4>Purpose</h4>The present study examined the impact of environmental factors (socioeconomic status [SES], the percent of language exposure to English and to Spanish, and primary caregivers' vocabulary knowledge) on bilingual children's vocabulary skills.<h4>Method</h4>Vocabulary skills were measured in 58 bilingual children between the ages of 5 and 7 who spoke Spanish as their native language and English as their second language. Data related to language environment in the home, specifically, ...[more]

PMID: 24824882

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Project description:Introduction: Research in recent years has explored the vocabulary size (lexical breadth) of bilingual children, but less is known about the richness of bilingual word knowledge (lexical depth), and about how knowledge of words in the two languages interact. This study explores how bilingual narrative intervention with vocabulary instruction in each language may modulate crosslinguistic influence (CLI) between the languages of bilingual kindergarten children, focusing on CLI of lexical knowledge, and which factors modulate performance. Methods: Forty-one typically developing English-Hebrew bilingual children (M = 64.63 months) participated. A bilingual adaptation of Story Champs narrative intervention program (Spencer and Petersen, 2012) was used to deliver vocabulary instruction in separate blocks of home language (HL) and school language (SL) sessions. Different intervention words were targeted in each language, but the children were tested on all target words in both languages. Lexical knowledge was assessed with a definition task four times throughout the study: prior to intervention, after each intervention block, and 4-6 weeks later. Learner characteristics (chronological age, age of onset of bilingualism and length of exposure) and proficiency in each language (standardized tests, familiarity with the vocabulary introduced in the intervention at baseline) were examined as possible modulators of performance. Results: Children showed growth in lexical breadth and depth in their HL/English after HL intervention and in lexical breadth in the SL/Hebrew following SL intervention, with CLI for semantic depth observed via a qualitative analysis, but not quantitatively. Better HL/English performance was correlated with later AoB (and shorter SL exposure) and higher HL language proficiency scores. Children with higher HL/English proficiency responded better to the SL/Hebrew intervention, gaining more than those with lower English proficiency. Children with SL/Hebrew vocabulary dominance at the outset of the study also gained more from the HL/English intervention. No correlations were found between learner characteristics and SL performance. Discussion: The current study indicates that bilingual narrative intervention with vocabulary instruction may be efficacious for improving the lexical breadth and depth of bilingual kindergarten children. It suggests that CLI may enhance bilingual children's language learning success, and points to the importance of strengthening both languages of bilingual children.

Project description:BackgroundStrong associations between infant vocabulary and school-age language and literacy skills would have important practical and theoretical implications: Preschool assessment of vocabulary skills could be used to identify children at risk of reading and language difficulties, and vocabulary could be viewed as a cognitive foundation for reading. However, evidence to date suggests predictive ability from infant vocabulary to later language and literacy is low. This study provides an investigation into, and interpretation of, the magnitude of such infant to school-age relationships.MethodsThree hundred British infants whose vocabularies were assessed by parent report in the 2nd year of life (between 16 and 24 months) were followed up on average 5 years later (ages ranged from 4 to 9 years), when their vocabulary, phonological and reading skills were measured.ResultsStructural equation modelling of age-regressed scores was used to assess the strength of longitudinal relationships. Infant vocabulary (a latent factor of receptive and expressive vocabulary) was a statistically significant predictor of later vocabulary, phonological awareness, reading accuracy and reading comprehension (accounting for between 4% and 18% of variance). Family risk for language or literacy difficulties explained additional variance in reading (approximately 10%) but not language outcomes.ConclusionsSignificant longitudinal relationships between preliteracy vocabulary knowledge and subsequent reading support the theory that vocabulary is a cognitive foundation of both reading accuracy and reading comprehension. Importantly however, the stability of vocabulary skills from infancy to later childhood is too low to be sufficiently predictive of language outcomes at an individual level - a finding that fits well with the observation that the majority of 'late talkers' resolve their early language difficulties. For reading outcomes, prediction of future difficulties is likely to be improved when considering family history of language/literacy difficulties alongside infant vocabulary levels.

Dataset Information

The role of primary caregiver vocabulary knowledge in the development of bilingual children's vocabulary skills.

Publications

The role of primary caregiver vocabulary knowledge in the development of bilingual children's vocabulary skills.

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