La ville de Montréal est l’une des villes les plus multiethniques du Canada. Compte tenu de cette diversité, il y a une grande proportion d’enfants qui apprennent deux langues et donc deux phonologies ; la phonologie de leur langue maternelle et celle du français. L’interaction entre ces deux systèmes phonologiques peut influencer le développement de la phonologie de la langue seconde. Le but de cet article est de comparer les compétences phonologiques en français des enfants allophones à celles des enfants francophones unilingues issues d’études précédentes. Nous utiliserons des mesures pour évaluer le pourcentage de consonnes bien produites par les enfants dans une tâche de dénomination d’images et nous analyserons différents facteurs qui peuvent contribuer aux résultats à cette tâche.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to document evidence of phonological transfer in bilingual preschoolers. Specifically, we focus on the phonological development of bilingual children acquiring French and Arabic. Method: Nine children who spoke Arabic and French, aged three years old, participated in a picture-naming task in both languages. Three types of measurement were used to examine the interaction between the two systems: consonants accuracy; inventory of acquired consonants; and types of errors. Data and analysis: The accuracy of shared and unshared consonants between Arabic and French were compared with a repeated measures analysis of variance, and error patterns were analyzed. Conclusions: Two main results suggest that these bilingual children have two phonological systems that interacted. First, the children had an inventory of acquired consonants that differed according to language. Second, they produced shared consonants more accurately than unshared consonants, indicating positive interactions and low accuracy for unshared consonants, indicating negative interactions. Originality: This study contributes much-needed research relating to the development of bilingual children, particularly children who are acquiring Arabic and French. Implications: These findings enrich the understanding of bilingual phonological development and contribute to understanding how two phonological systems interact. This study also has clinical implications for evaluation and intervention with bilingual children.

BackgroundPriority‐setting is a way to focus research and knowledge translation (KT) efforts for community‐based research partnerships (CBRP).ObjectiveTo identify the developmental coordination disorder (DCD) research and KT priorities of stakeholders in Quebec, Canada, and their perceptions regarding the implementation of a CBRP.DesignAn advisory committee oversaw the research process including an online survey and four community forums.Setting and participantsThe survey was posted online and four community forums were organized. Participants included parents of children with DCD, adults with DCD, health professionals and school staff.Main variablesStakeholder generated research and KT priorities, and optimal CBPR conditions.Outcome measuresParticipants selected their top five priorities based on a predefined list of 16 research and 12 KT priorities determined in collaboration with the advisory committee. They also rated the importance of various CBRP conditions. Preliminary survey results were discussed during the forums.ResultsSurvey participants (n = 395) identified interwoven research and KT priorities where access to services was considered to be essential: supporting children at school; improving DCD identification and diagnosis; preventing secondary consequences; improving the organization of services and implementing effective services. Forum participants (n = 52) confirmed the relevance of these priorities and supported the establishment of a CBRP inclusive of all stakeholders to improve DCD services, research and KT.Discussion and conclusionsA general consensus emerged among all groups, but adults with DCD were more concerned with employment than were the other stakeholder groups. These findings are presently being used to shape an ongoing, online CBRP.

Since 2015, more than 58,000 Syrian refugees have settled in Canada and, at the time of the 2016 national census, more than a fifth had settled in the province of Quebec. The rising numbers of refugees and the risks associated with families’ forced displacement have underscored the need to better understand and support the language of refugee children. The article reports on the oral language of three Syrian children ages five and six years, drawing on data from parent interviews, teacher reports, measures of the children’s language, and observations of their language use in a dual-language stimulation group, StimuLER. By triangulating this data, we were able to develop a rich and realistic portrait of each child’s language abilities. For these three boys, we observed that the home language was vulnerable to delays and weaknesses, and that learning the language of school was a drawn-out process. We also documented that parents and teachers had difficulties communicating with one another, and thus had difficulty meeting the educational needs of these children. We conclude that to foster resiliency in these children who are refugees, schools must find a way to build bridges with the parents to support the children’s language learning in both the language of school and at home.

This study aims to describe the relationships between child-internal and child-external factors and the consonant accuracy of bilingual children. More specifically, the study looks at internal factors: expressive and receptive vocabulary, and external factors: language exposure and language status, of a group of 4-year-old bilingual Arabic–French children. We measured the consonant accuracy of the children by the percentage of correct consonants in a Picture-Naming Task and a Non-Word Repetition Task in each language. The results suggest a significant relationship between vocabulary and consonant accuracy. A cross-language correlation was observed between the expressive vocabulary level of the majority language (French) and the consonant accuracy of the minority language (Arabic). Also, a significant correlation was found between Arabic language exposure and Arabic consonant accuracy. Finally, consonant accuracy was significantly higher in French tasks than in Arabic, despite the individual differences of the children.