language preference

[Alcock, Katie]

I know some groups have used graded picture naming (accuracy, or speed) as a
measure of language dominance, and two students of mine have done small
projects with bilingual Urdu-English and Arabic-English children - the
technique has the advantage that it is fairly easy to adapt an existing test
to the population you are studying, and also since it is a commonly used
diagnostic test if you are interested in developing such tests for a
bilingual population it is helpful for that, too.

I wonder if some of the "children denying knowledge of their home language"
thing is misunderstanding the questions put to them - although I don't know
all the literature, it is remarkably difficult to get the concept of
"different languages" across to children who have just started school,
especially if you are not sure if their grasp of one of the languages is
good enough to answer questions in that language.
Working in a multi-home-language, one-school-language area in East Africa,
children were very confused when asked "what language do you speak at home"
and yet we could not necessarily assume they knew enough of the three or
four potential home languages to answer questions in that language - and
could not take "no answer" as lack of knowledge of that language.  One
memorable incident came when a child, asked "what language do you speak at
home" [ambiguous answers were followed up with examples that the child
almost always recognised as possible or ridiculous]  answered "we don't have
language at home"... the only time she had heard the word "lugha"
("language") was in the context of the school lesson "lugha".  Other
children answered "yes" to languages they could not possibly have spoken at
home, or "no" to all examples of languages.

I also heard an anecdote from a colleague who when she asked a bilingual
Spanish-English child "does your mommy speak to you like this?", the child
watched her face very closely and tried to copy her exact expression while
speaking to determine if, indeed, her mommy did speak to her "like this".

Katie Alcock

refs:

Kohnert, K. J., Bates, E., and Hernandez, A. E.  (1999) Balancing
bilinguals: Lexical-semantic production and cognitive processing in children
learning Spanish & English. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research
42 (6):1400-1413.

Kohnert, Kathryn J., Hernandez, Arturo E., and Bates, Elizabeth.  (1998)
Bilingual performance on the Boston Naming Test: Preliminary norms in
Spanish and English. Brain & Language 65(3): 422-440 (3):422-440.

Katie Alcock, DPhil
Lecturer
Department of Psychology
City University
Northampton Square
London EC1V 0HB
Phone (+44) (0)20 7040 0167
Fax (+44) (0)20 7040 8581
Web http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/k.j.alcock

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ann Dowker [mailto:ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk]
> Sent: 18 May 2003 19:04
> To: Roma Chumak-Horbatsch
> Cc: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
> Subject: Re: language preference
>
>
> Ellen Bialystok's books "Language Processing in Bilingual Children"
> and "Bilingualism and Cognition" may give some useful guidance.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Ann
>
> In message <3EC6F1CB.E85A2923 at acs.ryerson.ca> Roma
> Chumak-Horbatsch <rchumak at ryerson.ca> writes:
> > I am looking for ways to test
> > young bilingual (Ukrainian-English)
> > children's (ages 4-8)
> > language preference/dominance.
> > If you know of any studies please let me know.
> > Will post results.
> >
> > Roma
> >
> > Roma Chumak-Horbatsch PhD
> > School of Early Childhood Education
> > Ryerson University
> > 350 Victoria Street
> > Toronto, Ontario
> > M5B 2K3
> > CANADA
> >
> >
>
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