Assessing L2 use by parents

[Tiiu Salasoo]

Dear Daniela,

The very first thing to remember is to ask the parents about their
children in as simple and uncomplicated everyday language as possible,
e.g do not use such terms as "level of exposure", etc.

Secondly, the questions should be phrased as unambiguously as possible,
i.e. that it cannot be read by someone as meaning something that was not
intended.

So, re :

   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?

I would ask them for a rough estimation of the PROPORTION of the time
the child is spoken to in another language than English. I might give
them as a range: all the time, about 3/4 of the time, about half of the
time, about a quarter of the time, hardly at all, never. They might say,
it varies from day to day. Perhaps you should ask them to estimate it
for, say, a week. And then I would ask them to estimate roughly about
HOW
MANY HOURS PER WEEK would that make

Then I would like to try to find out WHO speaks to the child in the
other language, WHICH LANGUAGE and HOW MUCH.


   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?

Does it matter for what you want to find out?

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

See 1. above.

   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.)

Yes, you need to estimate all the input.

   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.

It is best, if you develop your own, because only you know what you want
to find out. This should be clarified first, and the next consideration
should be regarding the best way to obtain the information you need. The
method of analysis should be decided before questions are phrased. It is
very difficult to analyse large numbers of free-prose answers, although
they are the most telling!

Someone else should try to answer the questions before going into print.
If you send me a copy on E-mail, I'd be very happy to do so and comment.

Good luck!
Tiiu Salasoo