The present study explored gender differences in emerging language skills in 13,783 European children from 10 non-English language communities. It was based on a synthesis of published data assessed with adapted versions of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) from age 0.08 to 2.06. The results showed that girls are slightly ahead of boys in early communicative gestures, in productive vocabulary, and in combining words. The difference increased with age. Boys were not found to be more variable than girls. Despite extensive variation in language skills between language communities, the difference between girls and boys remained. This suggests that the difference is caused by robust factors that do not change between language communities.
The aim of this article is to study the development of Basque L2 by Spanish L1 children who attend school in a total immersion programme where Basque is the vehicular language. Narratives based on an adult model produced at ages 5 and 8 are analysed in order to better understand the acquisition process of Basque L2 in an immersion school context. Basque L1 children who are also educated in Basque from preschool age constitute a reference group. The same subjects participate in the research at both ages, which gives a longitudinal as well as a cross-sectional approach to the study. The degree of narrative autonomy, the organisation of the narrative structure and features of nominal and verbal cohesion and some metalinguistic strategies are analysed. The results show similar skills in both groups, and the differences are not always in favour of the L1 subjects. On the whole, L2 subjects seem to reproduce the adult model more closely. This study contributes to a better understanding of L2 development in a school context, focussing on the positive effects of Basque immersion programmes.
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