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- Title
Vocabulary skills of bilingual children: The evidence for context‐dependent performance.
- Authors
Gómez Franco, Ligia E.; Vasilyeva, Marina
- Abstract
Most bilingual children often display greater proficiency and preference for one of their two languages. Researchers refer to this asymmetry as language dominance. However, despite being possible to determine the overall language dominance in bilinguals, there may be substantial flexibility in their language use. In particular, the relative ease of using each language may depend on the sociolinguistic context and the language of the interlocutor which may affect the ease of accessing words in a given language. In the present work, we investigate whether and how the sociolinguistic context in an International English medium school influences bilingual children's vocabulary production. Specifically, we examine whether bilingual first‐grade children's expressive vocabulary skills vary as a function of the linguistic context (Home/School) and the language (English/Spanish) of their conversational partner. Results showed that contextual factors interacted with child's language performance. The participants' ability to name objects in Spanish was affected by the conversational partner's language, and their ability to name Home‐context words varied by language. The findings of this investigation highlight the importance of considering sociolinguistic factors when evaluating bilingual children's language skills. Practitioner points: The language spoken by the interlocutor had an influence in the children's vocabulary performance. Children's vocabulary scores were better in Spanish or English, when the adult was a Spanish speaker.Children knew more words associated with the School context versus Home context independent of the language.Bilingual children's vocabulary is distributed between the two languages; therefore, a single language vocabulary assessment only partially captures the child's word knowledge.
- Subjects
DOMINANT language; CHILDREN'S language; VOCABULARY; LINGUISTIC context; LANGUAGE ability testing
- Publication
Psychology in the Schools, 2023, Vol 60, Issue 12, p4857
- ISSN
0033-3085
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1002/pits.22958