Chinese L1 children's English L2 verb morphology over time: individual variation in long-term outcomes

Abstract

This study examined accuracy in production and grammaticality judgements of verb morphology by eighteen Chinese-speaking children learning English as a second language (L2) followed longitudinally from four to six years of exposure to English, and who began to learn English at age 4;2. Children's growth in accuracy with verb morphology reached a plateau by six years, where 11/18 children did not display native-speaker levels of accuracy for one or more morphemes. Variation in children's accuracy with verb morphology was predicted by their English vocabulary size and verbal short-term memories primarily, and quality and quantity of English input at home secondarily. This study shows that even very young L2 learners might not all catch up to native speakers in this time frame and that non-age factors play a role in determining individual variation in child L2 learners' long-term outcomes with English morphology.

The iPad as a Research Tool for the Understanding of English Plurals by English, Chinese, and Other L1 Speaking 3- and 4-Year-Olds

“…L1 Chinese children’s poor performance specifically in plural inflected forms, which is not shared by children speaking other L1s, reveals a specific problem with acquiring L2 inflections. This provides further support for the findings with older school aged children in Jia (2003), Jia and Fuse (2007), and Paradis et al (2016). Our results confirm that challenges in acquiring English inflections are not a general L2 learning phenomenon but is specific to Chinese-speaking children.…”

“…Several recent studies of ECL2 learners report continued challenges in using inflectional morphology after many years of exposure to English. For example, Paradis et al (2016) found that Chinese-speaking children who began learning English at the age of 4 years continue to show difficulties with inflectional morphology after 6 years of English exposure. Some of the structures tested include tense inflections, e.g., past tense ‘ she cooked ,’ and third-person singular - s , e.g., “ she cooks now.…”

“…We evaluated the usefulness of the iPad with second language (L2) learning children who have limited L2 language skills. Studies with school aged Chinese-speaking children show below native performance on English inflectional morphology despite 5–6 years of immersion (Jia, 2003; Jia and Fuse, 2007; Paradis et al, 2016). However, it is unclear whether this is specific only to children who speak Chinese as their first language (L1) or if younger preschoolers will also show similar challenges.…”

Methods for Identifying Specific Language Impairment in Bilingual Populations in Germany

“…See also Paradis et al (2016) for a description of long lasting delays in bilingual language development. If, however, such difficulties are taken as evidence for language impairment, overdiagnosis is particularly likely when monolingual norms are applied in tests of the majority language, which might be the weaker language for a child at the time of assessment.…”

Language Proficiency and Sustained Attention in Monolingual and Bilingual Children with and without Language Impairment

“…Child-internal and child-external factors can influence language outcomes in comparable ways, as is illustrated by the partially overlapping language profiles of children with an inborn primary or specific language impairment (further on called LI) and children who are raised bilingually. Profound language delays have been documented for both children with LI (Rice, 2004; Krok and Leonard, 2015; Rice and Hoffman, 2015) and bilingual children (Bialystok et al, 2010; Farnia and Geva, 2011; Paradis et al, 2016), and comparisons of these two groups of children showed strikingly similar performance on core language domains, such as vocabulary and morphology (Grüter, 2005; Paradis, 2005; Blom and Boerma, 2017). It is, however, unknown whether these similarities are temporary and limited to certain developmental stages.…”