Previous studies show that bilingual infants are slower in developing phonology and tend to experience some difficulties in acquiring some grammatical rules. Furthermore, as compared to their monolingual peers, bilingual infants tend to have less vocabulary. This thesis set out to explore how bilingual infants organise the lexical information in their two languages. Specifically, we examined the lexical-semantic relationships between words within and across languages using a word-to-word priming paradigm. The thesis sought also to uncover any relationship between semantic priming effects and the size of vocabulary. Vocabulary measures such as the BPVS II, the SETK, and the Oxford CDI were used in the experiments, along with an experimental design close to that used in Styles and Plunkett (2009) and Arias-Trejo and Plunkett’s (2009) studies, based on the Intermodal Preferential Looking (IPL) paradigm. The basic design was that the infants were presented with a prime word (e.g. ‘dog’) followed by a target word which was related either semantically to the prime (e.g. ‘cat’) or not (e.g. ‘bus’). Immediately thereafter, we presented two images, depicting the target and a distracter, and monitored the looking times towards the images. In Experiment 1, we tested whether upon hearing related prime and target words, as compared to unrelated pairs, 30 month old monolingual infants preferred to look at the target more than the distracter image. This constituted a benchmark priming effect. In Experiment 2, we examined whether the presence of the target word was necessary for a priming effect to occur. The results demonstrated an effect of semantic priming in the word-word condition (Exp.1) but no semantic priming effect was found in the word-image condition (Exp.2). Experiment 3 investigated, in each of their languages, the semantic priming effect in bilingual 30-month-olds (Arabic-English). The overall result revealed a significant semantic priming effect along with a different pattern in Arabic and English. Experiment 4 was designed to investigate, in a cross-linguistic design, semantic priming in bilingual 18-month-old infants and to address the symmetry between forward (L1-L2) and backward (L2-L1) priming. The overall results showed no semantic priming effect; however, infants showed a non-significant tendency for forward (L1-L2) over backward (L2-L1) priming. As controls for the previous experiments, in Experiments 5 and 6 we examined monolingual and bilingual 18-month-olds to explore whether a priming effect could be obtained only in English. The results showed no semantic priming effect and no strong evidence of a naming effect. All the findings suggested that hearing words activated automatically some other words which, in both monolingual and bilingual infants, were related semantically around 30 months of age, but were not found at 18 months in either population. Despite what is reported often about a delay of language in bilingual children, these findings suggest that, although they show a smaller size of vocabulary in each of their languages when compared to monolingual infants, bilingual infants may build the semantic relationship between words at the same time as their monolingual peers, and with similar word-to-word relations.

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Thesis (B.A.(Hons.))-- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Psychology 1977.

This qualitative research study built on the existing research on young children’s composing. Although many researchers have examined the social nature of young children’s composing, there is little to no research that has focused on the social work of young bilingual children who are learning to write in two languages. This study explored the social activity of bilingual kindergarten writers in a two-way bilingual immersion program. Specifically, it examined (a) the face-to-face interactions of young bilingual writers, (b) the ways in which children’s interactions related to the written/drawn products that were being created at the writing center and during journal time and (c) the oral language that was being used as children engaged in writing activities. Data were collected for five months in a two-way immersion classroom in South Texas school district. Data sources, including expanded field notes, video recordings of students’ interactions, written/drawn artifacts and informal interviews with the students and the teacher were analyzed using the constant comparative method and microethnographic discourse analysis. Analysis revealed that bilingual children’s interactions were varied and complex. As they explored written language alongside their peers, the young writers in this study navigated through multiple peer worlds that were defined in part by the language and/or languages that were being spoken. In order to participate in these worlds the children had to draw on their entire linguistic repertoire, as well as differentiated social understandings that are unique to bilingual individuals. As children attempted to initiate interactions with their peers, they assumed the role of linguist; they made purposeful decisions about how and when they used both of their languages. Factors that influenced children’s oral language use included comfort level, peer culture and the out-of-classroom context. Also noteworthy is that these children drew on both languages to support their biliteracy learning. Both Spanish dominant children and those children who were balanced in their language use drew on their Spanish orally to support their writing in English while English dominant students tapped into their Spanish speaking capabilities to support their writing in English. / text

Thesis advisor: Curt Dudley-Marling / Federal legislation now requires that all children participate in large-scale, statewide assessments in English in an effort to increase accountability and bolster student achievement (Abedi, Hofstetter, & Lord, 2004; Hass, 2002). Students labeled as "English language learners" (ELLs) consistently score dramatically lower on English language and literacy assessments than their native speaking peers (Au & Raphael, 2000; National Center for Educational Statistics, 2011). Additionally, most mainstream teachers are not adequately prepared to meet the linguistic challenges that ELLs face in classroom settings (Lucas & Villegas, 2011). Reading aloud to bilingual students, specifically using components of a shared reading model (Holdaway, 1979), potentially provides an avenue for meaningful language and literacy development. While a corpus of research exists about reading aloud with English-speaking students, there has been limited research on its use with bilingual students in classroom settings. Drawing on a sociocultural theoretical framework (Gee, 1996; Vygotsky, 1978), the Output Hypothesis of second language acquisition (Swain, 1985), ethnographic perspectives (Heath & Street, 2008), action research (Stringer, 1999) and discourse analysis (Bloome et al., 2008), this qualitative study examined the practice of four pre-service elementary teachers reading aloud English texts (fiction, expository, and poetry) to small groups of bilingual students across four grade levels. The research was conducted to study pre-service teachers' language and literacy teaching practices and pre-service teacher-bilingual student interaction patterns in read aloud contexts to better understand their potential for bilingual student language and literacy learning. Additionally, the study provided beginning teachers with professional development geared towards helping pre-service teachers to meet the unique language and literacy needs of bilingual students. It was found that pre-service teachers consistently strived to develop students' word knowledge and support text comprehension. In doing so, teachers utilized a variety of teaching practices and linguistic patterns of interaction during read alouds which varied across teachers. The argument is made that these various teacher moves and discourse patterns led to qualitatively different types of interactions and affordances for bilingual student learning. Implications for mainstream classroom teachers and teacher education programs are provided. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Purpose: This study examined the effects of conceptual scoring on vocabulary performance of bilingual children with and without language impairment and the classification accuracy of an expressive vocabulary test across four scoring methods, single language and conceptual scoring, for bilingual (English-Spanish) children with and without language impairment. Method: Participants included English speaking monolingual children (n=14) and Spanish-English bilingual children (n=116) ages 5-11. Children completed the English and bilingual versions of the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test. Four different scores were derived representing monolingual scores in English and Spanish, and three conceptual scores. Within-test conceptual scores credited children’s other language responses during the test; and across-test conceptual scores compiled a conceptual score across Spanish and English administrations of the test. Results: Across-test conceptual scoring resulted in better overall classification, sensitivity, and specificity than within-test conceptual scoring, which resulted in better overall classification, sensitivity, and specificity than monolingual scoring; however, neither method achieved minimum standards of 80% accuracy in sensitivity and specificity. Conclusions: Results suggest that bilingual children are not always able to readily access their second language in confrontation naming tasks. Priming or inhibition may play a role in test performance. Cross-test conceptual scoring yielded the highest classification accuracy and is the recommended method for clinical practice. / text

Both long-term language knowledge and language ability affect the efficiency of the working memory system (Kohnert, Windsor, & Yim, 2006; Summers, Bohman, Peña, Bedore, & Gillam, 2009). Models of working memory (Baddeley, 2003; Cowan, 1999; Potter & Lombardi, 1990) account for variations in how memory is used in nonword repetition (NWR) and narrative retell tasks. Use of working memory varies by language ability and language experience. The current study explored the role of working memory, language ability, and language experience on narrative retell in bilingual children. Eighty bilingual first grade children participated in the study and represented a wide range of language abilities as determined by the Bilingual English Spanish Assessment (Peña, Gutiérrez-Clellen, Iglesias, Goldstein & Bedore, in preparation) and a wide range of language experiences. The participants repeated nonwords (Calderón, 2003; Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998) and retold stories in both English and Spanish. Stories were scored based on the percent of key components (KC) that were recalled based on the model story. Results revealed that Ability predicted narrative retells in both English and Spanish. Current language experience also predicted English and Spanish retells. English NWR predicted narrative retell in English only. NWR did not mediate the effect of language ability or language experience on recalling KCs. Yet, English NWR did predict English KCs. These results support memory models that account for memory tasks using longer units of language (Cowan, 1999; Potter & Lombardi, 1990). / text

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The phonological awareness development of bilingual children has been discussed from the viewpoint of whether they have an advantage compared to monolingual children. Some previous studies discovered that there were language pairs where bilingual children could have no advantage in it. However, it has not been clarified yet how bilingual children with such a language pair develop phonological awareness. The purpose of this study was to give an example of such a language pair and analyze bilingual children’s phonological awareness development in comparison with that of monolingual children.      This study examined how 3- to 7-year-old Swedish/Danish-Japanese bilingual children developed Japanese phonological awareness in comparison with the corresponding Japanese children. Forty-five children (26 bilingual children and 19 Japanese children) participated in this study. The bilingual children lived in Sweden or Denmark and had Swedish or Danish as their strong language in general but they also spoke Japanese on a daily basis. On the other hand, the Japanese children used exclusively Japanese at home as their sole first language. The children were individually tested on two types of Japanese syllables (fundamental syllables and special syllables). The fundamental syllable section had three types of tasks (segmentation task, abstraction task and identification task) and the special syllable section had one type of task (segmentation task).      The results showed no advantage for the bilingual children in Japanese phonological awareness development in comparison with the Japanese children. While the bilingual children developed Japanese phonological awareness with age and/or letter knowledge in the same way as the Japanese children, their developmental rate was generally slower than that of the Japanese children. Two factors appear to play a part in this finding: first, the fact that Swedish and Danish are phonologically different from Japanese so knowledge of these languages did not help the children to discover Japanese phonological structure. Second, the amount of exposure to Japanese for bilingual children was significantly less even though they spoke and understood the language well. Thus, this study suggests that bilingual children can have difficulty with regard to phonological awareness development in one of their languages when the other language is not conducive to the discovery of this language’s phonological structure and when exposure to this language is limited, even if they speak and understand the language well.