Vocabulary assessment in bilingual children

[Annick De Houwer]

Dear Leher,

I would strongly advise using the CDI. I know it is not usually used
to measure receptive vocabulary, but the Dutch CDI (Toddler form) does
include receptive vocabulary and the parents in our study of Dutch-
French bilingual toddlers had no trouble ticking those Dutch words
they thought their 20-month-old understood. Of course, you're dealing
with older children, but I think that if the main purpose is to have a
rough idea of comparative vocabulary size in each language it is OK to
use the CDI as suggested. However, there are some methodological
issues involved in collecting the data. A description of how we did
this for a group of bilingual children can be found in

De Houwer, A., M.H. Bornstein & S. De Coster, 2006. Early
understanding of two words for the same thing: A CDI study of lexical
comprehension in infant bilinguals. International journal of
bilingualism 10(3): 331-348.

Good luck!

Annick
De Houwer

On Jul 19, 9:52 am, Leher Singh <leher.si... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> We are looking for ways to assess receptive vocabulary in bilingual children
> (30 and 36 months) in each of their languages (Mandarin Chinese and
> English). We are looking for a way to administer a vocabulary test to
> estimate vocabulary sizes in each language. Essentially, we want to
> compare receptive vocabulary across languages to get a sense of dominance
> with which to associate our experimental data on word recognition. One idea
> we have considered is to administer the PPVT version A in English/Mandarin
> and version B in the other language, but any other ideas would be much
> appreciated.
>
> Thanks, Leher

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