Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-11T05:54:16.512Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lexical-semantic skills in bilingual children who are becoming English-dominant: A longitudinal study*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2013

LI SHENG
LI SHENG*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at Austin
*
Address for correspondence: Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Texas at Austin, 2504-A Whitis Ave., Austin, TX 78712, USA. li.sheng@utexas.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Twenty-seven Mandarin–English bilingual children participated in picture identification and picture naming tasks at two time points, 16 months apart. The younger children (mean age = 4 years) showed greater gains over time than the older children (mean age = 6 years 10 months) in English lexical-semantic skills and neither group showed significant gains in Mandarin. At the individual level, a majority of the children showed increased accuracy for the English tasks, but only half of them did so for the Mandarin tasks. Analyses of error distribution indicated production of more advanced error types in the older children and in English, as well as different patterns of time-related changes in error types in the two languages. These findings illustrate how age and initial language proficiency are related to lexical growth among Mandarin-speaking bilingual children who are becoming English-dominant.

Keywords

picture namingpicture identificationMandarinEnglisherror analysislongitudinal method
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , July 2014 , pp. 556 - 571
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The author would like to thank the children and their families for participating in the study, Ying Lu and Brooke Lauper for collecting the data, and Dr. Carmen Silva-Corvalán and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on previous versions of this paper. This research was supported by a Grant Preparation Award from the University of Texas at Austin.

References

Barac, R., & Bialystok, E. (2012). Bilingual effects on cognitive and linguistic development: Role of language, cultural background, and education. Child Development, 83, 413–422.Google Scholar
Bohman, T. M., Bedore, L. M., Peña, E. D., Mendez-Perez, A., & Gillam, R. B. (2010). What you hear and what you say: Language performance in Spanish–English bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 13, 325–344.Google Scholar
Cobo-Lewis, A. B., Pearson, B. Z., Eilers, R. E., & Umbel, V. C., (2002). Effects of bilingualism and bilingual education on oral and written English skills: A multifactor study of standardized test outcomes. In Oller, D. K. & Eilers, R. E. (eds.), Language and literacy in bilingual children, pp. 64–97. Buffalo, NY: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Dörnyei, Z., & Kormos, J. (1998). Problem-solving mechanisms in second language communication. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 20, 349–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dörnyei, Z., & Scott, M. L. (1997). Communication strategies in a second language: Definitions and taxonomies. Language Learning, 47, 173–210.Google Scholar
Durgunoğlu, A. Y., & Goldenberg, C. (eds.) (2011). Language and literacy development in bilingual settings. New York: The Guilford Press.Google Scholar
German, D. J., & Newman, R. S. (2004). The impact of lexical factors on children's word-finding errors. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47, 624–636. Google Scholar
Goldenberg, C., Reese, L., & Rezaei, A. (2011). Contexts for language and literacy development among dual-language learners. In Durgunoğlu & Goldenberg (eds.), pp. 3–25.Google Scholar
Greene, K., Bedore, L. M., & Peña, E. D. (2012). Bilingual children's lexical strategy selection under different narrative conditions. Poster presented at the 33rd Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders, Madison, WI.Google Scholar
Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. F., & Kreiter, J. (2003). Understanding child bilingual acquisition using parent and teacher reports. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 267–288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hammer, C. S., Lawrence, F. R., & Miccio, A. W. (2008). Exposure to English before and after entry to Head Start: Bilingual children's receptive language growth in Spanish and English. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 11, 30–56.Google Scholar
Han, W.-J. (2008). The academic trajectories of children of immigrants and their school environments. Developmental Psychology, 44, 1572–1590.Google Scholar
Hao, M., Shu, H., Xing, A., & Li, P. (2008). Early vocabulary inventory for Mandarin Chinese. Behavior Research Methods, 40, 728–733.Google Scholar
Jaeger, J. J. (2005). Kids’ slips: What young children's slips of the tongue reveal about language development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Kan, P. F., & Kohnert, K. (2005). Preschoolers learning Hmong and English: Lexical-semantic skills in L1 and L2. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 48, 372–383.Google Scholar
Kohnert, K. (2002). Picture naming in early sequential bilinguals: A 1-year follow-up. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 45, 759–771.Google Scholar
Kohnert, K., Bates, E., & Hernandez, A. E. (1999). Balancing bilinguals: Lexical-semantic production and cognitive processing in children learning Spanish and English. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 42, 1400–1413.Google Scholar
Marinova-Todd, S. H., & Uchikoshi, Y. (2011). The role of first language in oral language development in English: The case of both alphabetic and nonalphabetic languages. In Durgunoğlu & Goldenberg (eds.), pp. 29–60.Google Scholar
McGregor, K. K. (1997). The nature of word finding errors of preschoolers with and without word-finding deficits. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 40, 1232–1244.Google Scholar
Morrison, C. M., Chappell, T. D., & Ellis, A. W. (1997). Age of acquisition norms for a large set of object names and their relation to adult estimates and other variables. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 50, 528–559.Google Scholar
Oller, D. K., Jarmulowicz, L, Pearson, B. Z., & Cobo-Lewis, A. B. (2011). Rapid spoken language shift in early second-language learning: The role of peers and effects son the first language. In Durgunoğlu & Goldenberg (eds.), pp. 94–120.Google Scholar
Pearson, B. Z., Fernández, S. C., & Oller, D. K. (1993). Lexical development in bilingual infants and toddlers: Comparison to monolingual norms. Language and Learning, 43, 93–120.Google Scholar
Pearson, B. Z., Fernández, S. C., & Oller, D. K. (1995). Cross language synonyms in the lexicons of bilingual infants: One language or two? Journal of Child Language, 22, 345–368.Google Scholar
Restrepo, M. A. (1998). Identifiers of predominantly Spanish-speaking children with language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 41, 1398–1411.Google Scholar
Rodríguez, J., Díaz, R., Duran, D., & Espinosa, L. (1995). The impact of bilingual preschool education on the language development of Spanish-speaking children. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 10, 475–490.Google Scholar
Sheng, L., Bedore, L. M., Peña, E. D., & Fiestas, C. E. (2013). Semantic development in Spanish–English bilingual children: Effects of age and language experience. Child Development, 84, 1034–1045.Google Scholar
Sheng, L., Lu, Y., & Kan, P.-F. (2011). Lexical development in Mandarin–English bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14, 579–587.Google Scholar
Sheng, L., & McGregor, K. K. (2010). Object and action naming in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 1704–1719.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sheng, L., Peña, E. D., Bedore, L. M., & Fiestas, C. E. (2012). Semantic deficits in Spanish–English bilingual children with language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 55, 1–15.Google Scholar
Tardif, T., Fletcher, P., Zhang, Z. X., Liang, W. L., & Zuo, Q. H. (2008). The Chinese Communicative Development Inventory (Putonghua and Cantonese versions): Manual, forms and norms. Beijing: Peking University Medical Press.Google Scholar
Uchikoshi, Y. Development of vocabulary in Spanish-speaking and Cantonese-speaking English language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, doi:10.1017/S0142716412000264. Published online by Cambridge University Press, September 11, 2012.Google Scholar
Winsler, A., Díaz, R., Espinosa, L., & Rodríguez, J. (1999). When learning a second language does not mean losing the first: Bilingual language development in low income Spanish-speaking children attending bilingual preschool. Child Development, 70, 349–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yan, S., & Nicoladis, E. (2009). Finding le mot juste: Differences between bilingual and monolingual children's lexical access in comprehension and production. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12, 323–335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar