The Complex Relationship between Bilingual Home Language Input and Kindergarten Children's Spanish and English Oral Proficiencies
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This study examined how emergent bilingual children’s English and Spanish proficiencies moderated the relationships between Spanish and English input at home (Bilingual Home Language Input, or BHLI) and children’s oral language skills in each language. The sample comprised over 1,400 Spanish-dominant kindergartners in California and Texas. BHLI was estimated by parental report of what language adults (mother, father, and other adults) and peers (older and young siblings and friends) usually speak to the child at home and the language in which the child watches TV programs. Spanish and English oral proficiencies were measured by Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery-Revised (WLPB-R). Although a "time-on-task" model suggests straightforward linear associations between language use at home and oral skills within the same language, we found far more complex cross-linguistic relationships even when controlling for school-level random effects and individual level confounds: (a) children’s proficiency in one language (English or Spanish) moderates the relationship between BHLI and proficiency in the other language; and (b) BHLI moderates the relationship between children's Spanish and English oral proficiencies. The results suggest that among this population of children, bilingual home language environments that maintain high levels of Spanish use are associated with additive bilingualism while bilingual home language environments with high levels of English use are associated with subtractive bilingualism. However, the cross-sectional and correlational design of the present study requires caution in drawing simple conclusions about the relationship between bilingual home language input and children's oral language skills.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | 2014 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Cha, Kijoo |
|---|---|
| Author | Goldenberg, Claude |
Subjects
| Subject | home language environment |
|---|---|
| Subject | cross-language influences |
| Subject | linguistic interdependence |
| Subject | threshold hypothesis |
| Subject | additive and subtractive bilingualism |
| Genre | Article |
Bibliographic information
| Related item | |
|---|---|
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/tk524yj7275 |
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Cha, Kijoo and Claude Goldenberg (in press). The Complex Relationship between Bilingual Home Language Input and Kindergarten Children's Spanish and English Oral Proficiencies. Journal of Educational Psychology.
Collection
Graduate School of Education Open Archive
View other items in this collection in SearchWorksContact information
- Contact
- kijoocha@stanford.edu
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