Narrative language development of Persian-English bilingual children attending an immersion preschool

Abstract

Purpose: This study aimed to provide a better understanding of the language development of bilingual children who attend a Persian immersion preschool in the United States, with a specific focus on their microstructural language skills derived from a story retell task.Methods: Participants included two groups of preschoolers: 14 Persian-English bilingual children who attended a Persian immersion preschool (2- through 5-years of age) and 16 monolingual English-speaking children who attended an English-only preschool (3- through 5-years of age). Participants completed a story retell task, and their parents completed a questionnaire regarding their child’s language environment.Results: Analyses revealed that Persian-English bilingual children produced narratives that are comparable to their same-aged, English monolingual peers with regard to measures of microstructure. Furthermore, mean length of utterance in morphemes was significantly associated with parental language input, positively with Persian input, and negatively with English input.Conclusions: Findings demonstrate that Persian-English bilingual children who attend a Persian immersion preschool develop English to a level comparable to same-age English monolingual peers based on language produced during a story retell task.

Overview Study on Language Development for Preschool Children on Scopus Database

“…There are four studies concerned with the issue of language development for bilingual children. While Páez M. Mariela et al concluded that on average, children in the bilingual sample performed below average in both English and Spanish when compared to monolingual norms (Páez et al, 2007), research by Payesteh Bita and Finestack Lizbeth (2021) demonstrated that Persian-English bilingual children attending a Persian immersion preschool develop English at a level comparable to their monolingual Englishspeaking peers based on the language produced during the retelling of the story (Payesteh & Finestack, 2021) 2018) asserted that interdependence between languages can be modulated by the quality of classroom conversation and they suggested enhancing children's experiences of using social skills when explaining the meaning of words (Grøver et al, 2018). Farangi Mohamad Reza & Mehrpour Saeed (2022) have studied the association between television platform and social status with Preschool Minority Children's Persian Vocabulary Development.…”

The role of technology in language immersion: a systematic literature review

“…Other language immersion variants are total, partial, and two-way immersion [5]. These diverse language immersion variants have widely implemented and brought positive impact to language learners, be it the aspect of linguistic [7] and cognitive [8], [9], language use [10] and proficiency [11], [12], phonological awareness [13], faster language development [14] in a shorter time and better result [2], provides a unique contribution to receptive and expressive language skills [15], multilingual attitude [16], multicultural identity [17], [18], and intercultural competence [19].…”