Vocabulary Gains in Bilingual Narrative Intervention

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effect of bilingual narrative intervention on vocabulary gains in Hebrew (school language) and English (home language) among English–Hebrew bilinguals, using a block design (one language at a time), and to determine whether there was cross-linguistic transfer to the language that was not receiving intervention. Method Sixteen English–Hebrew bilingual children participated in the study using an adaptation of the Puente de Cuentos intervention. Vocabulary was examined using a word definition task before the intervention, post English intervention, post Hebrew intervention, and 4 weeks after the interventions ended to examine maintenance of skills. Results Repeated-measures analyses of variance revealed that children made significant gains in vocabulary in the language of intervention as expected. In addition, children made cross-linguistic gains in Hebrew during the English intervention, but made no gains in English following Hebrew intervention. Conclusion These results underscore the need to provide language support in the home language to ensure growth and that intervention in the home language does not hinder growth in the school language.

Crosslinguistic Influence (CLI) of Lexical Breadth and Depth in the Vocabulary of Bilingual Kindergarten Children – A Bilingual Intervention Study

“…Although some evidence has been found in previous studies for CLI involving lexical breadth ( Armon-Lotem et al, 2020 ), many scholars have noted that lexical items are presumed to be learned one at a time in each language ( David and Wei, 2008 ; Bialystok et al, 2010 ), and thus are unlikely to transfer automatically across languages without explicit connections being made, unless they are cognates ( August et al, 2005 ). In the current study, if explicit connections had been made across languages [e.g., by providing translations of words learned, or by pointing out associations across languages, as suggested by Lugo-Neris et al (2015) ] it is possible that the children would have learned more words in the other language.…”

“…A recent study by Armon-Lotem et al (2020) provides some evidence to support this assumption. Sixteen English-Hebrew bilingual preschoolers underwent a bilingual narrative intervention (BINARI) with vocabulary instruction, using a design similar to the one reported in the present study.…”

“…Intervention studies have generally investigated the effects of intervention on lexical growth within one of a bilingual’s languages (usually the societal language) (e.g., Carlo et al, 2004 ; Pham et al, 2018 ), but only a few have examined the effects of bilingual intervention (e.g., Restrepo et al, 2013 ; Armon-Lotem et al, 2020 ). In addition, most studies of vocabulary intervention have investigated effects on breadth of vocabulary (number of entries in a person’s lexicon), without studying growth in lexical depth (the amount of information about a word).…”

“…A number of studies of bilinguals have shown that transfer of lexical knowledge occurs across languages and word learning in bilingual children is expedited by the second language ( Ordóñez et al, 2002 ; Bilson et al, 2015 ; Goodrich et al, 2016 ; Armon-Lotem et al, 2020 ). However, most of these studies have focused exclusively on vocabulary breadth, without examining depth, leading to an incomplete understanding of lexical transfer.…”

Interdependence between L1 and L2: The case of Syrian children with refugee backgrounds in Canada and the Netherlands

“…In addition, Goodrich et al (2016) found that bilingual Spanish-English children did readily acquire translational equivalents of words known in one language but not the other, suggesting that they transfer specific concepts. Further support for transfer in the domain of vocabulary comes from a study in which a vocabulary intervention in children's home language/L1 (English) was associated with vocabulary gains in the school language/L2 (Hebrew) (Armon-Lotem et al, 2021). Studies that examined correlations between L1 and L2 grammatical outcomes report more mixed findings (Méndez et al, 2019).…”