Measuring Bilingual Children's Receptive Vocabularies

Abstract

Receptive vocabulary of Hispanic children in Miami was tested in both English and Spanish with complementary standardized tests, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-R) and the Test de Vocabulario en Imágenes Peabody (TVIP-H). 105 bilingual first graders, of middle to high socioeconomic status relative to national norms, were divided according to the language(s) spoken in their homes. Both groups, whether they spoke only Spanish in the home (OSH) or both English and Spanish in the home (ESH), performed near the mean of 100 in Spanish receptive vocabulary (TVIP-H means 97.0 and 96.5); in contrast, ESH group children scored more than 1 SD higher in English than OSH group children (PPVT-R means 88.0 and 69.7, respectively). It appears, therefore, that learning 2 languages at once does not harm receptive language development in the language of origin, while it does lay the groundwork for superior performance in the majority language. Furthermore, an analysis of translation equivalents, items shared by both tests, shows that a statistically significant portion of bilingual children's lexical knowledge does not overlap in their 2 languages and is therefore not reflected in single-language scores.

Parent and teacher rating of bilingual language proficiency and language development concerns

“…For ELL children, these different contexts additionally occur in different languages. Thus, the situation specific language that children learn may be encoded in two different languages (Pearson and Fernández 1994; Peña et al 2002; Umbel et al 1992). If the teacher does not speak the home language and the parent does not speak the school language it is more critical to gather information from multiple sources.…”

Conceptual Scoring of Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Measures in Simultaneous and Sequential Bilingual Children

“…Bilingual children have repeatedly been found to score below their monolingual peers (e.g., Ben-Zeev, 1977; Bialystok, Luk, Peets, & Yang, 2010; Hemsley, Holm, & Dodd, 2006; Leseman, 2000) or below monolingual norms (e.g., Fernandez, Pearson, Umbel, Oller, & Molinetmolina, 1992; Mancilla-Martinez et al, 2011; Teoh et al, 2012; Uccelli & Paez, 2007; Uchikoshi, 2006; Umbel, Pearson, Fernandez, & Oller, 1992) on single-language vocabulary measures in one or both of their languages. Oller and colleagues (2007) highlight the distributed nature of lexical knowledge in bilinguals as a key contributor to their lower single-language vocabulary scores when compared to monolinguals.…”

“…In the United States, it is a demographic reality that bilingual children from immigrant families often have lower SES than their monolingual peers and than the children included in the standardization samples for test norms (e.g., Mancilla-Martinez et al, 2011; Uccelli & Paez, 2007; Umbel & Oller, 1994). However, some studies that have controlled for SES have still found vocabulary discrepancies between bilingual and monolingual children (e.g., Fernandez et al, 1992; Hemsley et al, 2006; Leseman, 2000; Umbel & Oller, 1994; Umbel et al, 1992). When conceptual scoring was used with parent checklists to examine the vocabulary growth of Spanish-English bilingual toddlers from low-SES homes, their conceptual scores were below both English and Spanish monolingual norms (Mancilla-Martinez & Vagh, 2013).…”

Multilingualism and speech-language competence in early childhood: Impact on academic and social-emotional outcomes at school

“…Umbel, Pearson, Fernández, & Oller, 1992 showed that, for 105 first-grade children who spoke Spanish and English, "learning two languages at once does not harm receptive language development in the language of origin" (p. 1012). They indicated that children's receptive vocabulary consisted of a significant number of words that did not overlap in both languages.…”

“…Studies that consider the impact of multilingualism on typically developing children's speech and language acquisition have shown that when skills in both languages are considered, children who speak more than one language are not at greater risk for speech and language impairment than monolingual children (De Houwer, 2009;Goldstein & Bunta, 2012;Goldstein & McLeod, 2012;Hambly, Wren, McLeod, & Roulstone, 2013;Umbel, Pearson, Fernández, & Oller, 1992). Umbel, Pearson, Fernández, & Oller, 1992 showed that, for 105 first-grade children who spoke Spanish and English, "learning two languages at once does not harm receptive language development in the language of origin" (p. 1012).…”