Bilingual children at the transition from kindergarten to primary school: the development of their reading and writing skills.
Final Report Abstract
The number of bilingual children has grown substantially in the last decades, but there is still a fundamental research gap in establishing patterns of language acquisition trajectories of this diverse population. Given the difficulties in differentiating typically developing (td) bilingual children from bilingual children with developmental language disorder (DLD), the goal of the first project was to disentangle Russian-German speaking simultaneous and sequential bilinguals with DLD from td individuals. To so so, we planned and used use a battery of non-verbal and verbal tests, the latter parallel in both languages. Originally, a population of 100 children each in Munich Berlin was planned, to be followed for several years. However, the number of children with which the study begun was lower (n= 118) and, following the standard the drop-off rate, 62 children completed all six testing points (the last three in the follow-up project). By using a non-pre-selected population, we aimed to follow the trajectory of a typical speech pathologist in Germany when confronted with a sequential bilingual child with supposedly atypical language development. Since this methodology did not lead to a high number of children with DLD, and in fact lead to the inclusion of many simultaneous bilinguals, our results and further questions had to be amended. The study had three overarching questions: (i) Can sequential bilingual children with DLD be differentiated from td sequential bilingual children by means of tests in phonological and musical working memory? Are these tests sensitive and specific? (ii) Which linguistic features differentiate sequential bilingual children with DLD from td sequential bilingual children? (iii) Is there a correlation between linguistic features and the performance in phonological and musical working memory? In order to answer these questions, comprehension and production within the three language domains lexicon, grammar and text were investigated. Additionally, an extensive battery of standardized and self-developed or adapted tests of cognitive skills was used, including IQ and cognitive tests from Leiter-3 and CFT 20-R. Self-developed tests were for musicality and rhyme -completion with nonwords. The follow-up project traced language development of the same cohort of children (the drop-off rate was within the norm). This second project searched for early predictors of first and second grade literacy. The same domains lexicon, grammar and text were tested. Additionally, reading and writing tests were performed in both languages. Based on previous research, we concentrated on the children’s phonological and narrative skills and investigated their predictive force for literacy. In particular, we have concentrated on phonological representations tested by nonword repetition and lexical decision tasks, and plan to continue in future with the analysis of phonological awareness and rapid naming tasks. In narratives, macro- and microstructure were examined. Summary of the results for the first project: The project-developed language-specific NWRTs, SRTs and n-back memory task showed good potential in differentiating children with and without risk for DLD, as did macrostructure in storytelling using LITMUS-MAIN. However, there was high fluctuation in performance over the test times and across individuals, especially in the memory/processing tasks, which are often considered very robust. For clinicians, our most important finding was that is always advisable to include linguistic tests as well as tests of memory/processing. It is important to consider specific error patterns in this bilingual population, rather than only correct/incorrect scores. Summary of the results for the second project: The question of literacy was addressed using languagespecific NWRTs. We found correlations between NWRT and word reading, and, importantly, crosslinguistic transfer effects and what appears to be a benefit for German reading of early metalinguistic knowledge in Russian. For educators and policymakers, this is a very important finding, reinforcing the positive effects of home language literacy instruction in L2 reading acquisition. To sum up, our project produced significant added value to fundamental research on bilingualism in general, and on Russian-German bilinguals from pre-school to second grade in particular. Additionally, the outcome of our project has significant outreach value. The results and developed tests can be used by speech pathologists and professional working with bilingual children in everyday work. Finally, the project provides unique longitudinal data of a comparably high number of bilingual children in both of their languages. The main domains of language and cognition were tested over the sensitive period of the transition from kindergarten to grade school and can used for publications in the future.
Publications
- (2014). Verbale und nonverbale Indikatoren zur Identifizierung von umschriebenen Sprachentwicklungsstörungen bei sukzessiv bilingualen Kindergartenkindern. Forschung Sprache, 2, 58-68
Lindner, K., Held, J., Lomako, J., & Gagarina, N.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.2443/skv-s-2014-57020140204) - (2016). „Wo bist du kleiner Monster?" Sprachspezifische nonword repetition Tests zur Differenzierung von bilingual typisch entwickelten Kindern und entsprechenden Risikokindern mit USES. Forschung Sprache 1, 5-24
Mathieu, J., Lindner, K., Lomako, J., & Gagarina, N.
- (2020). Language proficiency and narratives: A comparison of typically developing sequential bilinguals and those at risk of SLI. In Gagarina, N. & Musan, R. (eds.), Referential and Relational Discourse Coherence in Adults and Children. (pp 85-104). Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Gagarina, N., Lomako, J., Stadtmiller, E., & Lindner, K.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501510151-005)
