Academic discourse: Dissociating standardized and conversational measures of language proficiency in bilingual kindergarteners

Peets, Kathleen F.; Bialystok, Ellen

doi:10.1017/s0142716413000301

Cited by 18 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…That is, whereas the standardized vocabulary assessment used in this study reflects children's knowledge of word labels, the measure of word diversity reflects children's productivity with language, specifically, skill in using words. Previous study findings also show asymmetrical performance by bilinguals on standardized and narrative-elicited vocabulary, albeit only assessed in English (Peets & Bialystok, 2015). Thus, we extend this previous literature by including a measure of bilinguals' Spanish skills, in addition to English skills, and providing evidence to support the view that narrative contexts may tap into an aspect of lexical development that is not measured by standardized assessments.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

A comparison of narrative skill in Spanish-English bilinguals and their functionally monolingual Spanish-speaking and English-only peers

Gámez

González

2017

International Journal of Bilingualism

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Purpose: The Spanish and English narrative skills of young (mean age = 5.65 years) Spanish-English bilinguals were compared to functionally monolingual Spanish and English-only speakers’ narrative skills, respectively ( n = 63). Method: Spanish and English oral retellings, elicited at the beginning and end of the kindergarten year, were transcribed and coded in terms of discourse- (story structure complexity), semantic- (word diversity) and grammatical-level (lexical and grammatical errors, revisions) skills. Data and analysis: Repeated measures ANOVAs, with Time (beginning-, end-of-year) and Language Status (bilingual and either functionally monolingual Spanish or English monolingual) or Language (English, Spanish) as factors, were used to compare children’s narratives in terms of story structure complexity, word diversity, errors and revisions. Pearson correlations examined the relation of revisions to word diversity and errors. Results: Time comparisons revealed significant gains in story structure complexity, with no statistically significant difference between bilinguals’ and monolinguals’ complexity scores. Bilinguals’ stories were also not different between English and Spanish. Yet, bilinguals included more errors in English than did English monolinguals, while engaging in a comparable number of revisions. Moreover, despite comparable error rates with Spanish monolinguals, bilinguals included more lexical and grammatical revisions in Spanish. Revisions and word diversity were positively correlated; no relation was found between revisions and errors. Conclusions: The relative differences in revisions between bilinguals’ and Spanish monolinguals’ narratives, versus English monolinguals’, highlight the linguistic strengths of bilinguals. In particular, bilinguals’ tendency to engage in revisions as they attempt to increase their language complexity, suggests that revisions require advanced linguistic knowledge, not language uncertainty. Originality: The children in this study were considered language minority learners in the United States. Moving past accounts of minority learners’ “low” performance on oral language and reading comprehension, our study findings reveal evidence of “advanced” linguistic knowledge for bilingual speakers.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

A comparison of narrative skill in Spanish-English bilinguals and their functionally monolingual Spanish-speaking and English-only peers

Gámez

González

2017

International Journal of Bilingualism

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“…Nonetheless, there was no disadvantage for academic vocabulary among the bilingual group but, instead, lower scores only in vocabulary related to home life, most likely learned by children in their L1. These findings are in line with research that found that bilingual children are not disadvantaged in academic and literacy achievement (Bialystok et al 2005), nor in academic uses of spoken language (Peets and Bialystok 2015). Furthermore, when taken together, the bilingual children's vocabularies in their two languages could be larger than the vocabulary of monolingual children (Bialystok et al 2010).…”

Section: Lexical Knowledge Of Monolingual and Bilingual Childrensupporting

confidence: 89%

The Lexical Development of Canadian-Born Romanian L1 Bilingual Kindergarteners

Petrescu

Helms-Park

2018

Languages

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This study charts the lexical development of three sequential bilingual kindergarteners whose first language, Romanian, was acquired naturalistically at home, and whose second language, English, was acquired in kindergarten. The children’s lexical development in English and Romanian was assessed at five different points over a two-year period via the PPVT-4 (peabody picture vocabulary test 4) and a specially adapted PPVT-4 for Romanian. The children’s lexical repertoires were further analyzed to uncover home versus school and cognate versus non-cognate acquisitional differences. In addition, because there is no database of lexical items acquired by monolingual Romanian children, the PPVT-4 adapted for Romanian was administered to 22 monolingual six-year-old Romanian children in Sibiu, Romania. The findings indicate the following: (i) the three bilinguals’ receptive vocabulary in English was below average when they joined kindergarten, and at or above average two years later; (ii) their lexical growth in Romanian was steady; (iii) the bilinguals’ scores for words belonging to a home register reflected ceiling effects in English and Romanian (i.e., were very well known); (iv) academic words were known to an equal extent in English and Romanian, but scores were lower than for the home register; and (v) there was no definitive evidence of cognate facilitation. A comparison of the monolingual and bilingual Romanian repertoires reflects the following: (i) equally high scores for home items; (ii) differences in scores in the academic register in favour of the Romanian monolinguals; and (iii) important lifestyle and cultural differences between the groups. The Romanian children, for example, were more familiar than their Canadian counterparts with items related to home maintenance, such as șmirghăluiește (‘sanding’) and mistrie (‘trowel’), or items probably learned in school, such as foca (‘walrus’) and broască țestoasă (‘tortoise’).

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“…Arguably, since language production requires both language knowledge (e.g., vocabulary & syntax) and the engagement of executive control processes to manipulate these representations, bilingual executive control ability may compensate for poorer language proficiency. Work by Peets and Bialystok (in press) highlights the dissociation between formal measures of language proficiency and conversational measures. Peets and Bialystok found that although bilingual kindergarten students were less proficient in English than their monolingual counterparts according to standardized measures, analyses of bilinguals’ academic narratives revealed no differences in their vocabulary and grammar use.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Proficiency and control in verbal fluency performance across the lifespan for monolinguals and bilinguals

Friesen

Luo

Luk

et al. 2014

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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101

131

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The verbal fluency task is a widely used neuropsychological test of word retrieval efficiency. Both category fluency (e.g., list animals) and letter fluency (e.g., list words that begin with F) place demands on semantic memory and executive control functions. However letter fluency places greater demands on executive control than category fluency, making this task well-suited to investigating potential bilingual advantages in word retrieval. Here we report analyses on category and letter fluency for bilinguals and monolinguals at four ages, namely, 7-year-olds, 10-year-olds, young adults, and older adults. Three main findings emerged: 1) verbal fluency performance improved from childhood to young adulthood and remained relatively stable in late adulthood; 2) beginning at 10-years-old, the executive control requirements for letter fluency were less effortful for bilinguals than monolinguals, with a robust bilingual advantage on this task emerging in adulthood; 3) an interaction among factors showed that category fluency performance was influenced by both age and vocabulary knowledge but letter fluency performance was influenced by bilingual status.

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Academic discourse: Dissociating standardized and conversational measures of language proficiency in bilingual kindergarteners

Cited by 18 publications

References 42 publications

A comparison of narrative skill in Spanish-English bilinguals and their functionally monolingual Spanish-speaking and English-only peers

A comparison of narrative skill in Spanish-English bilinguals and their functionally monolingual Spanish-speaking and English-only peers

The Lexical Development of Canadian-Born Romanian L1 Bilingual Kindergarteners

Proficiency and control in verbal fluency performance across the lifespan for monolinguals and bilinguals

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