Poster #56 - The Influence of the Home Linguistic Environment on Spanish-Speaking Bilinguals’ English Vocabulary Development

• In Event: Poster Session 13

Abstract

English vocabulary robustly predicts English reading comprehension among Spanish-Speaking dual language learners (DLLs), as it provides the background knowledge to create a global interpretation of the text and assists online inference processes. The scarce number of longitudinal studies with DLLs limits the understanding of the dependency of vocabulary on initial conditions of its development and the identification of stages of malleability and contextual targets of interventions. This study contributes to this gap by examining the development of Spanish-Speaking DLLs’ English vocabulary from pre-kindergarten to third grade and the influence of the home linguistic environment (HLE). This work capitalized on the data collected by a federally funded project and used the information of 285 DLLs from Arizona (U.S.). Informed by the social-pragmatic and the interdependence hypothesis theories, four variables characterized the HLE during pre-kindergarten: (a) frequency of shared book reading and number of books (7 items; Griffin & Morrison, 1997), (b) parent positive affect towards reading (11 items; DeBaryshe & Binder, 1994), (c) resources that facilitate reading (5 items; DeBaryshe & Binder, 1994), and the (d) amount of language that the child used at home (a 4-point Likert item that went from Spanish use all the time to Mainly English use). English vocabulary was measured five times from pre-kindergarten to third grade with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Dunn & Dunn, 2007). Bayesian analysis showed that the average rate of change in DLLs’ English vocabulary before kindergarten was 0.72 points on the logit scale and that the rate of change from kindergarten to third grade was 0.42 points less (Figure 1). That is, this rate of change from kindergarten was 0.30 points on the logit scale. Among the HLE variables, only the amount of language that children spoke at home statistically predicted their English vocabulary learning, but this relationship was non-linear. Monotonic analysis (Figure 2) showed that although more English use was significantly associated with more English vocabulary gains (Estimate = 0.09, 95% CrI = 0.06, 0.13), the strongest change –46% of total change due to the predictor– in the outcome occurred between those who used mostly Spanish and those who used equal amounts of Spanish and English. This suggested that children differed in the amount of language used at home but also in the quality of their bilingual experiences. Group comparison analysis revealed, for example, that the latter group lived in households where people significantly read more frequently and have more books than the former group (Estimate = -1.17, 95% CrI = -2.00, -0.35). The fastest growth in DLLs’ English vocabulary and the major individual differences before first grade documented in this study could be an important transition in which this domain is particularly sensitive to learning experiences. The language that DLLs use at home is a potential target of language-boosting interventions, but future work should use better measures of bilingual linguistic environments to disentangle the role of the quantity and quality factors in children’s development and design interventions that leverage bilingual families’ communicative repertoires.

Authors

• Johana Chaparro-Moreno, Boston University
  Presenting Author

• Laura M. Justice, Ohio State University

• James O. Uanhoro, University of North Texas