It is known that bilingual children have a smaller vocabulary in each of their two languages than monolingual children and also take a little longer to reach the same levels as monolinguals on various grammatical tasks. The authors of the article assessed 35 bilingual six year olds exposed to British English and an additional language and 36 British monolingual toddlers on the auditory component of the Preschool Language Scale, British Picture Vocabulary Scale and object naming measure. The results indicated that the proportion of exposure to English was the main predictor of the performance of bilingual toddlers and that typically developing toddlers who are bilingual in English and another language and who hear English 60% of the time or more, perform equivalently to their typically developing monolingual peers.
English language development in bilingual toddlers
Reviewed by Gauri Mankekar
How much exposure to English is necessary for a bilingual toddler to perform like a monolingual peer in language tests?
CONTRIBUTOR
Gauri Mankekar
Department of Otolaryngology-Head Neck Surgery, Louisiana State University Shreveport, Louisiana, USA.
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