Cognitive-linguistic skills and vocabulary knowledge breadth and depth in children’s L1 Chinese and L2 English

Abstract

This study examined the correlates of different aspects of vocabulary knowledge in L1 Chinese and L2 English in Hong Kong bilingual children (N = 481, age = 6–12 years old). Their nonverbal IQ, cognitive-linguistic skills, receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge breadth, and vocabulary knowledge depth in Chinese and English were measured. Results demonstrated that morphological awareness was uniquely correlated with different aspects of vocabulary knowledge across Chinese and English. Phonological processing skills played different roles in vocabulary knowledge in L1 and L2. In addition, receptive vocabulary breadth uniquely contributed to expressive vocabulary breadth across languages. Moreover, both receptive and expressive vocabulary breadth contributed to vocabulary knowledge depth in L1 Chinese and L2 English. The findings highlight some shared and unique aspects of different vocabulary constructs across languages.

Quantity and quality of vocabulary knowledge in Greek-speaking university students

“…The rationale behind the study is that we often detect differences in academic performance of monolingual university students. Although plenty of studies (Li & Kirby, 2015;Luo et al, 2021;Pan et al, 2023) have tested the vocabulary knowledge in the second or foreign language, little we know about vocabulary knowledge in the first language in healthy adults and more specifically in high-educated ones (Dourou et al, 2020), since some studies focus on the low-educated adults (Tran et al, 2020). Another area of interest is the examination of vocabulary knowledge in individuals with neurogenerative diseases (Cuetos et al, 2017;Kavé, 2022).…”