A Review of Studies on Bilingual Children’s Word Awareness Development

Abstract

Bilingual children's word awareness can reflect the impact of bilingualism on language cognition from the aspect of psycholinguistics. The current studies on bilingual children's word awareness both at home and abroad show that there exist quite opposite points of views: bilingual disadvantage and bilingual advantage. The interpretation mechanisms of interference effect, word frequency, and mutual exclusivity constraint are used to support the bilingual disadvantage; while the interpretation mechanisms of bilingual advantage include sound coding, short-term memory, and inhibitory control. In effect, there is no negative impact of bilingualism on children's word awareness, and the so-called negative effects only exist on the theoretical aspect of research. The development of children's word awareness is influenced by many factors including age of acquisition, learning environment, and bilingual proficiency, etc.

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

“…Picture naming is affected by abilities other than articulation, including memory, visuospatial skills, vocabulary, visual perception, and lexical-semantic abilities (Yochim, Kane, & Mueller, 2009). Wen-Hui (2016) found that a picture-naming task slows the EL2 learner down and demonstrates a high rate of errors in this population. During a picture-naming task, EL2 learners produce words at a slower rate and therefore have reduced word output.…”

“…If the sounds of the target words in the second language are similar to those of the first language, the ability to name pictures in the second language will be reduced (Hermans, Bongaerts, De Bot, & Schreuder, 1998; Lee & Williams, 2001). This phenomenon is referred to as cross-linguistic interference, which purports that the activation of the first language affects the processing of the second language (Wen-Hui, 2016). The disadvantage of word output can be attributed to this competition between the two languages (Gollan et al, 2008).…”

“…The disadvantage of word output can be attributed to this competition between the two languages (Gollan et al, 2008). Wen-Hui (2016) stated that the phoneme inventory/sound repertoire of the first language will have a greater impact on the second language than vice versa.…”