The Impact of Non-Native Language Input on Bilingual Children’s Language Skills

Abstract

We assessed the impact of non-native language input on Spanish–English bilingual preschool-age children’s language skills. Most participants (96%) had language skills within the average range. We examined whether the number of native English speakers, the number of non-native English speakers, the strength of foreign accent in English, intelligibility (percent intelligible utterances), syntax/morphology (mean length of utterance in morphemes), and grammatical errors were related to children’s overall language skills. The results revealed that the number of native English speakers and intelligibility in English positively predicted children’s language skills while the number of non-native English speakers and the strength of foreign accent in English negatively predicted children’s language skills. None of the grammatical measures predicted children’s language skills. These findings indicate that non-native input can be associated with less robust language skills, but non-native input is not in fact detrimental to language development for neurotypical preschool-age children given their within-average language scores.