A longitudinal study of lexical development in children learning Vietnamese and English

The Effect of Age of First Exposure on Vocabulary, Mean Length of Utterance, Morphosyntactic Accuracy, and Semantic and Sentence-Level Patterns in the First 2 Years of French Second-Language Learning by Preschool- to Adolescent-Age Mandarin Speakers

BACKGROUND

Bilingual assessment is particularly difficult in the very first period of children's second language (L2) exposure. This exploratory, longitudinal study examined L2 learning after 1 and 2 years of L2 exposure by young immigrants and how it is affected by their age at first exposure to the L2 (AoE).

METHOD

Participants were 18 immigrants ranging in age from 2;11 to 14;2 (years;months), all within their first year in Montreal at Time 1, enrolled in a French school or day care, and from a Mandarin first language background. Participants were tested again a year later. Measures included receptive and expressive French vocabulary tests and conversational language samples analyzed using traditional measures of mean length of utterance (MLU) and morphological accuracy as well as novel measures of semantic and sentence-level patterns.

RESULTS

Performance was relatively high already at Time 1 and increased significantly at Time 2 in both vocabulary and MLU. At Time 2, vocabulary scores were below normative values, whereas MLU was within expected values relative to monolingual and simultaneous bilinguals for the majority of the participants. However, higher MLUs were accompanied by more instances of both semantic errors and creative semantic strategies. French performance was strongly related to AoE; with amount of exposure equivalent, older participants outperformed the younger ones on MLU and vocabulary. Semantic errors and creative uses were strongly predicted by AoE; however, morphological accuracy and number of agrammatical utterances were not.

CONCLUSIONS

This initial period of French learning involved a rapid growth spurt for most of the participants. We argue that the pattern observed, particularly among the older children, constitutes an early stage of L2 learning characterized by long utterances that are also frequently hard to understand as speakers encounter challenges and use creative strategies in their attempt to convey meaning. Comparison with normative reference bases for monolinguals and bilinguals with greater cumulative L2 exposure who have similar MLUs should be done with much caution during this early period.

A Narrative Approach to Synthesizing Research on Vietnamese Bilingual and Monolingual Children

PURPOSE

This review article offers a narrativized synthesis of my research over the past 15+ years with Vietnamese-speaking children based on data collected from individual bilingual and monolingual children in preschool and elementary schools.

METHOD

I begin with a positionality narrative to describe who I am in relation to the research conducted. I provide an overview of the research program including tool building and how my research with bilinguals in the United States led me to international collaborations in Vietnam.

RESULTS

I present main findings from this body of work in three areas: typical bilingual development, reading performance in Vietnam, and characteristics of developmental language disorder in the Vietnamese language. Implications within each area are discussed in terms of clinical application and future research directions. Practitioners and researchers alike can freely access the Vietnamese assessment tools created and validated to date from our website, https://vietslp.sdsu.edu/.

CONCLUSIONS

This research overview aims to offer clinicians and researchers the sociocultural context for understanding the relevance of this body of research. It also serves as an invitation for new generations of scholars, particularly scholars of color, to see their own unique positionings and perspectives as valuable and necessary for scientific innovation and progress.

PRESENTATION VIDEO

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23929491.

The Bilingual Home Language Boost Through the Lens of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Usage-based accounts of language acquisition suggest that bilingual language proficiency is dynamic and susceptible to changes in language use. The COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented modifications in the language learning environment of developing bilinguals. Drawing on this unique opportunity, we analyzed existing data of two matched groups of Mandarin-English bilingual children (ages 4 to 8 years, n = 38), one tested before (pre-COVID group) and the other during (COVID group) the pandemic. The dataset comprises responses to a language environment questionnaire, and scores on a sentence comprehension task and a sentence recall task in the bilinguals’ two languages. Questionnaire data revealed a richer Mandarin language environment for children in the COVID group compared to peers in the pre-COVID group. On both comprehension and production tasks, the two groups performed comparably in English but the COVID group showed better performance in Mandarin than the pre-COVID group. Within the pre-COVID group, English was stronger than Mandarin in both comprehension and production. Within the COVID group, the two languages were balanced in comprehension and Mandarin was stronger than English in production. Moreover, language use variables were correlated with production performance in both languages. These patterns illustrate the intimate relationships between language use and bilingual language proficiency through the lens of COVID-19 induced language environment modification.

Why bilingual development is not easy

All normal children in normal environments acquire language. However, all normal children in normal bilingual environments do not acquire two languages. This chapter asks what makes the simultaneous acquisition of two languages more difficult than the acquisition of one. Focusing on children in immigrant families whose two languages are a minority language used more at home and a majority, societal language, this chapter describes common patterns and individual differences in bilingual development. The most frequently occurring outcome in that circumstance is strong skill in the majority language with more varied and weaker skills in the minority language. This chapter also reviews research that identifies factors that contribute to individual differences in order to identify the experiences and abilities that support bilingual development. Those factors include the quality and quantity of children's exposure to each language, children's use of each language, and the functional value of proficiency in each language. We conclude that two languages are more difficult to acquire than one because language acquisition requires substantial and continued environmental support. It is not easy for children to acquire strong and comparable skills levels in two languages because environments tend not to provide high and comparable levels of support for two languages.

Morphosyntactic Development in First Generation Arabic—English Children: The Effect of Cognitive, Age, and Input Factors over Time and across Languages

This longitudinal study examined morphosyntactic development in the heritage Arabic-L1 and English-L2 of first-generation Syrian refugee children (mean age = 9.5; range = 6–13) within their first three years in Canada. Morphosyntactic abilities were measured using sentence repetition tasks (SRTs) in English and Syrian Arabic that included diverse morphosyntactic structures. Direct measures of verbal and non-verbal cognitive skills were obtained, and a parent questionnaire provided the age at L2 acquisition onset (AOA) and input variables. We found the following: Dominance in the L1 was evident at both time periods, regardless of AOA, and growth in bilingual abilities was found over time. Cognitive skills accounted for substantial variance in SRT scores in both languages and at both times. An older AOA was associated with superior SRT scores at Time−1 for both languages, but at Time-2, older AOA only contributed to superior SRT scores in Arabic. Using the L2 with siblings gave a boost to English at Time−1 but had a negative effect on Arabic at Time-2. We conclude that first-generation children show strong heritage-L1 maintenance early on, and individual differences in cognitive skills have stable effects on morphosyntax in both languages over time, but age and input factors have differential effects on each language and over time.

Adolescent language outcomes in a complex trilingual context: When typical does not mean unproblematic

This study examined the long-term language outcomes of adolescents in the complex multilingual context of Iceland, where children learn Icelandic as a first (L1) or second language (L2), in a background of incidental English from internet and media sources.

METHOD

50 adolescents enrolled in grades 8, 9 and 10 in Reykjavik (Iceland) public schools (27 L1 speakers and 23 L2 speakers) participated. Standardized language tests and language samples were collected in Icelandic and English. Self-ratings and parent ratings of language proficiency were obtained in Icelandic, English and, for L2 speakers, in the home language as well.

RESULTS

As in previous studies, L2 speakers scored far below L1 speakers on formal tests of Icelandic, and also in conversation. The groups were similar in their English skills, with both groups scoring far below L1 English norms. Self-rated performance agreed well with measured performance. For the L2 speakers, self-rated performance in the home language was similar to performance in Icelandic and English. L1 speakers demonstrated much higher performance in Icelandic than English; L2 speakers' performance was more evenly distributed over their three languages.

DISCUSSION

The considerable English exposure available in Iceland leads to similar English skills for both L1 and L2 groups, but affects their overall language development in different ways. L1 adolescents maintain a clear dominance in Icelandic, whereas the proficiency of the L2 group is more equally distributed across their three languages, leading to unpredictable patterns of language dominance and at the group level, low performance compared to native speaker expectations in all three languages. These language outcomes in adolescence are of great concern as they do not equip the L2 speakers with the functional communication skills they require for further schooling and jobs. The study calls for a reconsideration of typical multilingual outcomes as necessarily implying unproblematic language skills and suggest that language policy changes are required in Iceland to ensure that children graduate compulsory education with solid language skills that allow them to pursue their goals.

Grammatical Characteristics of Vietnamese and English in Developing Bilingual Children

Purpose Defining parameters for typical development in bilingual children's first and second languages can serve as the basis for accurate language assessment. This is the first study to characterize Vietnamese and English grammatical development in a sample of bilingual children. Method Participants were 89 Vietnamese-English bilingual children, aged 3-8 years. Children completed story retell tasks in Vietnamese and English. Stories were transcribed and analyzed for grammaticality, error patterns, subordination index, and types of subordinating clauses. Of key interest were associations with age and identifying developmental patterns that were shared across languages or unique to a given language. Results Age correlated with more measures in English than in Vietnamese, suggesting that older children had higher grammaticality and greater syntactic complexity in English than younger children. Children also produced greater syntactic complexity with age in Vietnamese, but not higher grammaticality. There were a set of error patterns shared across languages (e.g., object omission) and patterns specific to each language (e.g., classifier errors in Vietnamese, tense errors in English). While children produced nominal, adverbial, and relative clauses in Vietnamese and English, the proportion of each clause type differed by language. Conclusions Results from this typically developing sample provide a reference point to improve clinical practice. Characterizing developmental patterns in sentence structure in Vietnamese and English lays the groundwork for investigations of language disorders in this bilingual population.

Vocabulary Growth: Dual Language Learners at Risk for Language Impairment

Purpose This research project examined the vocabulary growth patterns of typically developing (TD) Cantonese-English dual language learners (DLLs) and their peers who are at risk for language impairment. Method Two studies were done. Study 1 examined the concurrent validity of a pilot vocabulary screening measure, the Kai Ming Vocabulary Test, that was designed for Cantonese-English preschool DLLs. Participants were 53 preschool children who learned Cantonese as their first language (L1) and English as a second language (L2). Their scores on the Kai Ming Vocabulary Test were examined in relation to their language sample measures, including number of different words and mean length of utterance, in L1 and in L2. Study 2 examined the vocabulary growth patterns of 24 TD Cantonese-English DLL preschoolers and 24 DLLs who are at risk for language impairment (At-Risk group). Each child was tested 3 times during an academic year. Results Results of Study 1 showed that children's vocabulary scores (n = 53) were significantly correlated with their language sample measures in each language. In Study 2, hierarchical linear models were used to compare the TD and At-Risk groups. Results showed that children in the At-Risk group had lower L1 receptive vocabulary scores and children in the TD group had relatively higher L2 expressive vocabulary gains. Conclusions Children who are at risk are likely to continue to have lower vocabulary knowledge compared to their TD peers. The growth trajectories of DLLs provide valuable information for early identification and intervention.

Spanish-English Bilingual Children's Relative Use of English Tense and Agreement Morphemes

Best practice for bilingual speakers involves considering performance in each language the client uses. To support this practice for young clients, a comprehensive understanding of how bilingual children develop skills in each language is needed. To that end, the present work investigates relative use of English tense and agreement (T/A) morphemes - a skill frequently considered as part of a complete language assessment - in Spanish-English developing bilingual preschoolers with varying levels of language ability. Results indicate that developing bilingual children with both typical and weak language skills demonstrate greater use of copula and auxiliary BE relative to third person singular, past tense and auxiliary DO. Findings thus reveal a relative ranking of T/A morphemes in developing bilingual children that differs from that of English monolingual children, who demonstrate relatively later emergence and productivity of auxiliary BE. In turn, findings demonstrate the importance of utilizing appropriate comparisons in clinical practice.

Identifying Developmental Language Disorder in Vietnamese Children

Purpose Developmental language disorder (DLD), defined by low language performance despite otherwise normal development, can negatively impact children's social and academic outcomes. This study is the 1st to examine DLD in Vietnamese. To lay the foundation, we identified cases of DLD in Vietnam and explored language-specific characteristics of the disorder. Method Teacher ratings of 1,250 kindergarteners living in Hanoi, Vietnam, were used to recruit children with and without risk for DLD. One hundred four children completed direct measures of vocabulary and language sampling, and their parents completed in-depth surveys. We examined convergence and divergence across tasks to identify measures that could serve as reliable indicators of risk. Then, we compared performance on direct language measures across ability levels. Results There were positive associations between teacher and parent report and between report and direct language measures. Three groups were identified based on convergence across measures: DLD, some risk for DLD, and no risk. The DLD group performed lowest on measures of receptive and expressive vocabulary, mean length of utterance, and grammaticality. Although children with DLD exhibited a greater number of errors, the types of errors found were similar across DLD and No Risk groups. Conclusions Similar to rates found globally, 7% of the kindergarten population in Vietnam exhibited risk for DLD. Results highlight the importance of parent and teacher report and the value of multiple measures to identify DLD. We discuss potential clinical markers for DLD in the Vietnamese language and outline future directions.

Internal and External Factors That Support Children's Minority First Language and English

Purpose

Sequential bilingual children in the United States often speak 2 languages that have different social statuses (minority-majority) and separate contexts for learning (home-school). Thus, distinct factors may support the development of each language. This study examined which child internal and external factors were related to vocabulary skills in a minority language versus English.

Method

Participants included 69 children, aged 5-8 years, who lived in Southern California, spoke Vietnamese as the home language, and received school instruction in English. All participants had at least 1 foreign-born parent, and most mothers reported limited English proficiency. Parents completed a telephone survey, and children completed measures of receptive and expressive vocabulary in each language. Using correlations and stepwise regression, we examined predictors of vocabulary skills in each language that were internal to the child (age, gender, analytical reasoning, phonological memory) or that pertained to the surrounding environment (cumulative exposure, quantity and quality of input/output).

Results

Vietnamese vocabulary outcomes were related to multiple external factors, of which input and enrichment activities were the best predictors. In contrast, English vocabulary outcomes were related to internal factors, of which age and phonological memory were the best predictors. Parental use of Vietnamese contributed to children's Vietnamese vocabulary outcomes but was not related to children's English vocabulary outcomes.

Conclusions

Vietnamese exposure does not hinder English development. Children from immigrant families are learning English with or without familial support. Rich and frequent exposure and opportunities for practice are essential for the continued development of a minority first language.

Learning Words and Definitions in Two Languages: What Promotes Cross-Language Transfer?

This study used a brief vocabulary training paradigm to examine two factors for cross-language transfer: how similar the first language (L1) is to the second language (L2) and L1-L2 proficiency levels. Fifty-four sequential bilingual children (aged 6-8) with similar L2 English proficiency levels were assigned to three equal groups: a Vietnamese-English group with low L1 proficiency, a Spanish-English group with low L1 proficiency, and a Spanish-English group with high L1 proficiency. Individual training consisted of two mediated learning experiences conducted in the L1 targeting eight vocabulary items using narrative-based activities. Four of eight target words were cognates between Spanish and English. Pre- and posttesting measured definition quality in the L1 and L2. All groups showed improvement in the L1 following training, but only the Spanish-English group with high L1 proficiency improved in L2 English, revealing a degree of spontaneous cross-language transfer among children with high L1-L2 proficiency.

Bilingual Development in Children of Immigrant Families

Early exposure to two languages is widely thought to guarantee successful bilingual development. Contradicting that belief, children in bilingual immigrant families who grow up hearing a heritage language and a majority language from birth often reach school age with low levels of skill in both languages. This outcome cannot be explained fully by influences of socioeconomic status. In this article, I summarize research that helps explain the trajectories of observed dual language growth among children in immigrant families in terms of the amount and quality of their language exposure as well as their own language use.

Noun and verb knowledge in monolingual preschool children across 17 languages: Data from Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT)

This article investigates the cross-linguistic comparability of the newly developed lexical assessment tool Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT). LITMUS-CLT is a part the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) battery (Armon-Lotem, de Jong & Meir, 2015). Here we analyse results on receptive and expressive word knowledge tasks for nouns and verbs across 17 languages from eight different language families: Baltic (Lithuanian), Bantu (isiXhosa), Finnic (Finnish), Germanic (Afrikaans, British English, South African English, German, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Swedish), Romance (Catalan, Italian), Semitic (Hebrew), Slavic (Polish, Serbian, Slovak) and Turkic (Turkish). The participants were 639 monolingual children aged 3;0-6;11 living in 15 different countries. Differences in vocabulary size were small between 16 of the languages; but isiXhosa-speaking children knew significantly fewer words than speakers of the other languages. There was a robust effect of word class: accuracy was higher for nouns than verbs. Furthermore, comprehension was more advanced than production. Results are discussed in the context of cross-linguistic comparisons of lexical development in monolingual and bilingual populations.

Pathways for learning two languages: lexical and grammatical associations within and across languages in sequential bilingual children

This study examines the strength and direction of lexical-grammatical associations within and between first and second languages (L1 and L2) in a longitudinal sample of sequential bilinguals. Thirty-three children who spoke Vietnamese (L1) and English (L2) completed picture-naming and story-telling tasks in each language at four yearly intervals. Hierarchical linear modeling across Years 1-4 revealed bidirectional within-language associations and a unidirectional cross-language association from the L1 to L2. Results suggest a conditional relationship between languages in which the L1 supports L2 growth, but not vice versa. Findings contribute to defining pathways for L1 and L2 learning across domains and languages.

A longitudinal analysis of sentence interpretation in bilingual children

This longitudinal study used sentence interpretation tasks to consider growth in language processing among school-aged children learning Vietnamese and English. Thirty-two children participated yearly over three time points. Children were asked to identify the agent of sentences that manipulated linguistic cues relevant to Vietnamese (animacy) and English (word order). Hierarchical linear modeling was used to examine change in cue use over time as well as the relation between cue use and proficiency in each language. Findings include exclusive reliance on word order by the end point, nearly identical group-level cue-use patterns across languages with individual variation, and positive relationships between language proficiency and cue use. Findings are discussed within the unified competition model (MacWhinney, 2004) and the literature on sequential bilingualism.

Bilingual children with primary language impairment: 3 months after treatment

BACKGROUND

Evidence on the treatment effectiveness for bilingual children with primary language impairment (PLI) is needed to advance both theory and clinical practice. Of key interest is whether treatment effects are maintained following the completion of short-term intense treatments.

AIMS

To investigate change in select language and cognitive skills in Spanish-English bilingual children with PLI 3 months after children have completed one of three experimental treatment conditions. There are two main study aims. First, to determine if skills in Spanish, English and cognitive processing decline, improve or are maintained after treatment has been completed. Second, to determine if differential rates of change are a function of the type of treatment children received.

METHODS & PROCEDURES

Participants were 48 children, aged 5:6-11:3, who spoke Spanish and English and were diagnosed with moderate to severe PLI. Participants received 6 weeks of treatment focused on English only (EO), bilingual skills in Spanish and English (BI) or nonlinguistic cognitive processing (NCP). Treatment effects reported in a previous study were determined by comparing pre- and post-treatment performance on a variety of language and cognitive measures. Here we re-administered each measure 3 months after completion of the experimental treatments. Hierarchical linear models were calculated for each measure using pre-, post- and follow-up testing scores to estimate change trajectories and compare outcomes between treatment conditions.

OUTCOMES & RESULTS

Participants in all three treatment conditions either maintained skills or showed improvement even after treatment was discontinued for 3 months. Main findings included (1) comparable, positive rates of change on all English language outcomes for EO and BI conditions; (2) maintenance of Spanish language skills, and (3) modest improvements in NCP following the discontinuation of treatment.

CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS

This study is the first to examine longer-term treatment effects for bilingual school-age children with PLI. Differences in rates of change between languages and between treatment conditions are discussed in terms of social and cognitive processes that impact children's language systems. The main findings have at least two implications for clinical practice: (1) therapy that emphasizes focused practice in language and cognitive processing skills may promote gains in children's language learning abilities; and (2) bilingual treatment does not detract from outcomes in English, the language of the majority community for study participants.

Lexical profiles of bilingual children with primary language impairment

This study used lexical tasks to examine associations between languages, tasks, and age in bilingual children with primary language impairment. Participants (n = 41, mean age 8;8 years) lived in the United States, spoke primarily Spanish (L1) at home and English (L2) at school, and were identified with moderate to severe impairments in both languages. A total of eight tasks (four in each language) measured breadth of vocabulary knowledge (receptive and expressive vocabulary) and aspects of lexical processing (rapid automatic naming and nonword repetition). Correlational analyses revealed older children outperformed younger children on lexical tasks in L2 but not L1, as well as relative L2 dominance for most individuals and tasks. Positive associations were found between languages on processing-based tasks but not vocabulary measures. Findings were consistent with literature on typical bilingual learners, albeit with a notable increased risk of plateau in L1 growth. Results are interpreted within a Dynamic Systems framework.

Three treatments for bilingual children with primary language impairment: examining cross-linguistic and cross-domain effects

PURPOSE

This study examines the absolute and relative effects of 3 different treatment programs for school-age bilingual children with primary or specific language impairment (PLI). It serves to expand the evidence base on which service providers can base treatment decisions. It also explores hypothesized relations between languages and cognition in bilinguals with PLI.

METHOD

Fifty-nine school-age Spanish–English bilingual children with PLI were assigned to receive nonlinguistic cognitive processing, English, bilingual (Spanish–English), or deferred treatment. Participants in each of the 3 active treatments received treatment administered by nationally certified speech-language pathologists. Pre- and posttreatment assessments measured change in nonlinguistic cognitive processing, English, and Spanish skills, and analyses examined change within and across both treatment groups and skill domains.

RESULTS

All active treatment groups made significant pre- to post-treatment improvement on multiple outcome measures. There were fewer significant changes in Spanish than in English across groups. Between-group comparisons indicate that the active treatment groups generally outperformed the deferred treatment control, reaching statistical significance for 2 tasks.

CONCLUSION

Results provide insight into cross-language transfer in bilingual children and advance understanding of the general PLI profile with respect to relationships between basic cognitive processing and higher level language skills.