assessing 2nd language exposure

[Daniela O'Neill]

In connection with a research project of mine in which parents are being
asked about children's communicative competence, I would like to  ask
parents about their child's exposure to any other language
except English. I have found, however, that I am unsure as to the best way
to proceed with this as bilingual language development is not my area of
expertise. I would be very appreciative if anyone might be able to give me
some advice as to how best to frame the questions in a way that parents
can give an accurate picture of the level of exposure. Some issues that I
have thought would be important to address (but am not sure how to ask
about) are:

1. What is the level of exposure to the(se) other language(s): Is it best
to ask parents to estimate this as in terms of  number of hours a day?
(week?) or in terms of a percentage of the time they speak to the child?

2. Should one also consider how much time each parent spends with the
child each day? And, as above, should this be in terms of hours a day or
is there a better way to ask about this?

3. How many possible sources of exposure to another language should be
considered? (e.g, parents, grandparents, daycare etc.)

4. Should one ask about the language spoken between the parents (thus
observed by the child) even if this language is not spoken to the child?
(For example, I recently had a mother in the lab who told me she speaks
Turkish to her child, the father speaks English to the child, and she and
the father speak German to each other.)

At present, I am only familiar with the questionnaire given to parents as
part of the norming study for the  MacArthur Inventories and described in
the manual. I am wondering, however, if other researchers have developed
such questionnaires and might be willing to share them with me or might
have other suggestions as to important issues to consider in developing
such a questionnaire for parents.

Thanks!

Daniela O'Neill
Dept. of Psychology
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1
Canada