Purpose: The Spanish and English narrative skills of young (mean age = 5.65 years) Spanish-English bilinguals were compared to functionally monolingual Spanish and English-only speakers’ narrative skills, respectively ( n = 63). Method: Spanish and English oral retellings, elicited at the beginning and end of the kindergarten year, were transcribed and coded in terms of discourse- (story structure complexity), semantic- (word diversity) and grammatical-level (lexical and grammatical errors, revisions) skills. Data and analysis: Repeated measures ANOVAs, with Time (beginning-, end-of-year) and Language Status (bilingual and either functionally monolingual Spanish or English monolingual) or Language (English, Spanish) as factors, were used to compare children’s narratives in terms of story structure complexity, word diversity, errors and revisions. Pearson correlations examined the relation of revisions to word diversity and errors. Results: Time comparisons revealed significant gains in story structure complexity, with no statistically significant difference between bilinguals’ and monolinguals’ complexity scores. Bilinguals’ stories were also not different between English and Spanish. Yet, bilinguals included more errors in English than did English monolinguals, while engaging in a comparable number of revisions. Moreover, despite comparable error rates with Spanish monolinguals, bilinguals included more lexical and grammatical revisions in Spanish. Revisions and word diversity were positively correlated; no relation was found between revisions and errors. Conclusions: The relative differences in revisions between bilinguals’ and Spanish monolinguals’ narratives, versus English monolinguals’, highlight the linguistic strengths of bilinguals. In particular, bilinguals’ tendency to engage in revisions as they attempt to increase their language complexity, suggests that revisions require advanced linguistic knowledge, not language uncertainty. Originality: The children in this study were considered language minority learners in the United States. Moving past accounts of minority learners’ “low” performance on oral language and reading comprehension, our study findings reveal evidence of “advanced” linguistic knowledge for bilingual speakers.
A B S T R A C TThis study examined the relation between exposure to shared book reading and Spanish-speaking English learners' (ELs'; n = 102) narrative production and comprehension skills in kindergarten (mean age = 6.12 years). Audio-and videotaped book-reading sessions in Spanish were coded in terms of teachers' extratextual talk and gestures. Using a silent cartoon as a prompt, ELs' fall and spring story retellings in Spanish were transcribed, coded, and compared on micro-(e.g., word tokens) and macrostructure skills (story structure); story comprehension was assessed using multiple-choice questions. Results revealed that teachers' extratextual talk predicted ELs' narrative production (story structure) gains in the spring. Narrative comprehension gains were positively associated with teachers' gestures. Findings suggest a nonuniform influence of shared book reading on ELs' narrative skills, such that different features of the shared book-reading experience target specific skills.
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