The relationship of L1 and L2 skills in Spanish/English bilingualchildren.

[Barbara Zurer Pearson]

Dear InfoCHILDES,

In response to Claudio's questions,
I can't resist the opportunity to plug our
study "Language and Literacy in Bilingual
Children" (now a book, Oller and Eilers, Eds., 2002
from Multilingual Matters).  We were looking
for evidence of precisely the question Claudio
raises:  What support is there for the strongly
held notion that L1 skill helps learning in L2.
(We also wondered whether it was true for both
simultaneous and sequential bilinguals.)

We compared children (ages 5 to 10) with support
for L1 with those without such support
(in the home and in the school)
and found that in general, as Fred
points out, there was a common factor for
literacy skills in the 2 languages, but oral
language skills in the 2 languages loaded on
two factors, one for oral language skills in
each language.

It was our impression (way back when we were
planning the study, which we carried out
from 1994-1997, so my memory is fuzzy)
that beyond Cummins himself, there
were only sporadic empirical studies.
Or there were large scale studies, like the
UN projects of Skutnabb-Kangas in the 70s,
whose results were intriguing, but which needed
more careful controls before conclusions
could be drawn.

I'm sure I haven't done justice to the topic
with these sweeping generalizations, but I
think no one will say that the question is
closed.

We also looked for evidence of cross-language
facilitation in bilingual L1, but found very
little of it.  Ex. The toddlers we followed
did not seem to build the lexicon of one language on
their lexicon in the other, except in rare
cases.  We also did a little investigation
of children's awareness of cognates across
languages and found them generally "undetected"
in the general population.  I have heard that
Kathy Kohnert has followed up on cognates and
has different findings from ours.

It will be interesting to hear more about the
Judge Baker Children's Center research on these
questions in children with psychopathology.

All for now,

Cheers,

Barbara (Zurer Pearson)

Toppelberg Claudio wrote:
>
> Dear friends-
>
> Three questions related to the relationship of L1 and L2 skills in normally
> developing Spanish/English bilingual children have emerged in our team
> discussions:
>
> 1. There seems to be a consensus among child language researchers that there
> is a moderate to high correlation between L1 and L2 skills in
> Spanish/English bilingual children on several domains (although skill levels
> are often uneven, as Annick De Hower presented at the 2002 IASCL/SRCLD).
>
> Q: Would readers agree on this?
>
> 2. If so, I have been unable to locate references that quantify the
> magnitude of the expected correlations, both for general language competence
> and various specific domains.
>
> Q: Could the readers suggest any references?
>
> 3. One might assume that moderate/high correlations would be a
> cross-sectional indicator of L1 skills' facilitating role in L2
> acquisition --i.e., L1 skills predict L2 skills, which results from
> beneficial cross-linguistic influence or transfer. This facilitating role
> would occur both in terms of rate of L2 acquisition and final stage of L2
> proficiency.
>
> Q: Could the readers suggest empirical literature that supports the view of
> L1 skills supporting SLA?
>
> These questions are very relevant to our research on L1/L2 associations in
> bilingual children with psychopathology and we would really thank your
> input!
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Claudio O. Toppelberg, MD
> Director, Project on Language and Child Psychiatry
> Judge Baker Children's Center, Harvard Medical School
> 3 Blackfan Circle
> Boston, Massachusetts 02115-5794
> e-mail:              topi at hms.harvard.edu
> Phone:              (617) 232 8390 ext.2622
> Fax:                  (617) 232 8390 ext.2621
> Alternative Fax:  (617) 232 8399
>
> Click to view:
>
> Harvard Research: Child Language Development & Developmental Psychopathology
> <http://134.174.17.116/psych/redbook/86.htm>
>
> Judge Baker Children's Center/ Children's Hospital Academic Teaching
> Conference <http://www.jbcc.harvard.edu/lectures.htm>
>
> 2002 Risk and Resilience Conference <http://www.riskandresilience.org/>

--
************************************
Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph.D.
Research Associate, Project Manager
NIH Working Groups on AAE
Dept. of Communication Disorders
University of Massachusetts
Amherst MA 01003

413.545.5023
fax: 545.0803

bpearson at comdis.umass.edu
http://www.umass.edu/aae