Effects of language dominance on home reading practices of bilingual families

Abstract

Aims and objectives: Many children grow up in bilingual families; however, little is known about how these families use their two languages in their home reading practices. The goal of this study was to examine the effect of language proficiency on the shared storybook reading practices of bilingual families. Methodology: We gathered questionnaire data about home reading activities in French–English bilingual families with 5-year-old children ( n = 66) who had different proficiency levels in each language. Data and analyses: We compared home reading environment, parent reading practices, and child learning and interest in books across the families’ dominant and non-dominant languages using a series of 2-way mixed analyses of variance. Findings: Families gave more emphasis to reading practices in the family’s dominant language: they owned more books, read more often, spent more time, and started reading to the child at an earlier age in the dominant than in the non-dominant language. Dominance also affected parent reading behaviors: parents reported more often translating words and switching from their non-dominant to their dominant language. Parents reported that children enjoyed being read to and readily learned new words in both languages, but ratings were higher for the dominant language. Effects of dominance were strongest in families with less balanced language dominance. Originality: This study compares bilingual families’ home reading practices in both of their languages, providing a clearer picture of how families navigate early dual-language literacy in a bilingual community where both languages are spoken in everyday life and have similar sociolinguistic status. Significance: Results suggest that even in bilingual communities, family home reading practices may exacerbate uneven development across children’s two languages. These findings highlight the importance of identifying strategies to support enriched home reading practices in bilingual families’ non-dominant language.

Tres formas: Shared reading practices with three types of Spanish and English dual-language learning preschoolers

“…While in our current study, we had an economically and educationally diverse group of parent respondents in both languages, we still observed effects of differing language statuses and the dominance of English within the wider community. Differences in language status collide with social factors like immigration and origin, and also the socio-cultural "status" of bilingualism or bilingual education for children, which can vary not only from country to country but region to region within a country (e.g., Gonzalez-Barrero et al, 2020). We see this reflected in the diverse (and sometimes contradictory) open-ended responses from our participants on questions of language mixing and language preferences during shared book reading.…”

“…In recent studies of language use in French/English bilingual families, Byers-Heinlein et al ( 2020) have emphasized the importance of considering the diversity of family characteristics and cultural values that have to be navigated even when "simply" trying to quantify a bilingual infant's relative exposure to each of their two languages. Within a similar French/English bilingual population, Gonzalez-Barrero et al (2020) found that language dominance in a household impacts a variety of reading choices and behaviors ranging from how many books families own in each language to how often parents translate or switch from one language to another while reading aloud with their young children, and that the less balanced in dominance the two languages are within a household the more of an impact the dominant language has on shared reading practices. Thus, understanding what influences language dominance in different families and communities will help us better understand home literacy practices for different kinds of dual-language learners.…”

“…English bilingual families of Montreal surveyed in a recent study fromGonzalez-Barrero et al (2020). On the other hand, even when frequency of shared reading may differ dramatically between different types of bilingual families, findings from Boyce et al's study suggest that the reading quality that children experience is not necessarily determined by household type.…”

“…On the other hand, even when frequency of shared reading may differ dramatically between different types of bilingual families, findings from Boyce et al's study suggest that the reading quality that children experience is not necessarily determined by household type. In their study, low-income Latina mothers were still demonstrating supportive extra-textual dialogic practices, regularly drawing their children's attention to the text, and promoting their children's interaction with the books through conversation and elaborating on their children's ideas as they read -strategies known to be positively related to children's language development.Of course, comparing findings such as those ofBoyce et al (2004) with those ofGonzalez-Barrero et al (2020) raises the question of what other factors beyond language dominance in the household impact children's experience of shared reading. Clearly, low-income Spanish dominant households in Utah differ from French/English bilingual households in…”

Bilingual language development in infancy: What can we do to support bilingual families?

“…However, some research suggests that families may tend to emphasize one language over the other in their home literacy practices, leading to unbalanced exposure to each of the child's languages (Gonzalez-Barrero et al, 2021), and parents often lack access to literacy materials in heritage languages and bilingual formats (Ahooja et al, in prep. ).…”