Reading to bilingual preschoolers: An experimental study of two book formats

Abstract

Reading stories to children provides opportunities for word learning. Bilingual children encounter new words in each of their languages during shared storybook reading, but the way in which they encounter them can vary. We compared learning from two types of bilingual book materials: typical single-language books (i.e., two copies of the same book, each in a different language), and bilingual books (i.e., one copy of the book, with text in both languages on each page). Five-year-old French-English bilinguals (n = 67) who were either proficient or second-language learners were randomly assigned to hear an original story from a balanced bilingual experimenter in one of the two book formats. Children’s learning of French and English labels for five novel objects embedded in the story was assessed via a pointing task. Children were successful at learning words in both languages, and performance was not affected by either book format nor by children's language proficiency. Children neither favoured nor avoided learning translation equivalents (i.e., cross-language synonyms) in either format. These results suggest that children are flexible word learners and that shared bilingual book reading — regardless of book format — is an effective way to teach bilingual children new words in two languages.

Effects of language dominance on home reading practices of bilingual families

“…Oral language abilities influence literacy development for bilingual children (Bialystok, 2002), and it is possible that stronger oral skills in the dominant language impact children’s ability to learn new words in this language, as well as their interest in stories. However, recent experimental work that has directly tested word learning during shared storybook reading found that children were equally successful at learning dominant and non-dominant language words, suggesting that parents’ perception may not be accurate (Brouillard et al, 2020). Little research has directly compared bilingual children’s interest in being read to in each of their languages, but perceived or real differences could contribute to why families spend more time reading in the dominant than in the non-dominant language.…”

“…Demographic characteristics of the sample are presented in Table 1. Participants were recruited through government birth lists, daycares, and community events, and completed the questionnaire as part of an experimental study of word learning in bilingual children (Brouillard, Dubé, & Byers-Heinlein, 2020). The sample size was determined based on the data available from that study.…”

“…Although the impact of book format (i.e. monolingual vs. bilingual) on bilingual children’s word-learning abilities has been examined in our laboratory in a related study (Brouillard et al, 2020), here we only report data on single-language English or French books, given that, on average, families did not own many bilingual books ( M = 3 books, SD = 3.4), and they did not spend a significant amount of time reading these types of books ( M = 0.80 times per week, SD = 1.39). In addition, we focused on home reading behaviors in English and French (and not in any additional languages spoken in the family) since only English–French bilingual families were included, and our interest was in comparing practices in the dominant and non-dominant language, while controlling for the sociolinguistic status of the languages.…”

Tres formas: Shared reading practices with three types of Spanish and English dual-language learning preschoolers

“…As described by parents in their open-ended responses, there are numerous approaches to the use of both languages while reading aloud that range from strict adherence to the language of the text of a book, to translating certain challenging words and phrases for the child, to changing the language of a story based on the comfort of the reader or the complexity of the extra-textual dialog that emerges. In previous research, we have found that predictable structured code-switching in the text of children's bilingual stories was helpful for older (5-year-old) DLLs in learning new vocabulary from stories (Read et al, 2020), while another recent study found DLL children were equally able to learn new vocabulary from full-translation bilingual books compared to monolingual books (Brouillard et al, 2020). However, neither of these recent bilingual storybook studies in which the books were read aloud by trained researchers tested the kinds of spontaneous extra-textual code-switching or translating that some parents in our sample reported using in their at-home shared reading.…”

Mixed-language input and infant volubility: Friend or foe?

“…Indeed, a subset of preschool-age children performed better in identifying target objects (Kremin et al, 2022b) and learning novel words (Kaushanskaya et al, 2022) when the information was provided in mixed sentences. Preschoolers also benefit from language bridging in the classroom (use translation in children's first language to teach new words in the second language) and reading mixed-language books to acquire a second language (Brouillard et al, 2020;Read et al, 2021). In addition, children whose parents mixed languages frequently might become accustomed to language mixing and develop skills to navigate this linguistic situation.…”