Receptive Vocabulary and Listening Narrative Comprehension of Italian–English Bilingual Children between 5 to 7 Years
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. The Role of Vocabulary in Listening Narrative Comprehension in Monolinguals and Bilinguals
1.2. Crosslinguistic Correlations
1.3. The Current Study
- (1)
- To what extent do children show a different performance in L1 and L2 receptive vocabulary and listening narrative comprehension and to what extent does their performance change between 5 and 7 years? In line with the previous literature [38], although they were consistently exposed to L2 at school for at least three years, it is predicted that: (a) they will show some disadvantage of L2 over L1 in listening narrative comprehension; (b) there is a greater L2–L1 gap in receptive vocabulary between 5 and 7 years than in listening narrative comprehension.
- (2)
- To what extent are the two linguistic systems related? We expect to find high correlations between vocabulary and listening narrative comprehension in each of the two languages, as predicted from the previous literature [10] and weak correlations between the two languages, as shown in previous works using different tasks and involving different language combinations [31,61]. Based on previous studies [52], it is possible that the pattern of these relationships changes with age.
- (3)
- To what extent does L1 and L2 vocabulary contribute to listening narrative comprehension in both languages? Previous studies reported mixed results concerning this point and therefore we did not put forward specific predictions.
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Participants
2.2. Materials and Procedure
3. Results
3.1. Levels of Narrative Comprehension and Receptive Vocabulary: The Role of Age and Language
3.2. Relationship between Narrative Comprehension and Receptive Vocabulary
3.3. The Contribution of Receptive Vocabulary to Listening Narrative Comprehension
4. Discussion
4.1. Receptive Vocabulary and Listening Narrative Comprehension in Bilingual Children
4.2. The Relationship between Vocabulary and Narrative Comprehension in Each Language and between the Two Languages
5. Limitations
6. Conclusions and Implications for Education
Supplementary Materials
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
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L1 (Italian) | L2 (English) | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
PPVT | TOR | PPVT | TOR | ||
5 years (n = 30) | Raw score | 79 (14) | 6.5 (1.7) | 56 (9) | 5.2 (1.4) |
Standard score | 91.4 (11.6) | 10.5 (1.5) | 83.1 (9.5) | 9.6 (1.1) | |
6 years (n = 32) | Raw score | 90 (20) | 5.7 (2.3) | 64 (9) | 4.9 (1.7) |
Standard score | 94.1 (14.9) | 9.7 (2.1) | 87.9 (11.3) | 9.1 (1.7) |
Preschoolers | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
L1 (Italian) | L2 (English) | ||||
PPVT-R | TOR 3-8 | PPVT-R | TOR 3-8 | ||
L1 (Italian) | PPVT-R | - | 0.142 | 0.624 ** | 0.278 |
TOR 3-8 | - | 0.207 | 0.326 | ||
L2 (English) | PPVT-R | - | 0.403 * | ||
TOR 3-8 | - | ||||
First graders | |||||
L1 (Italian) | L2 (English) | ||||
PPVT-R | TOR 3-8 | PPVT-R | TOR 3-8 | ||
L1 (Italian) | PPVT-R | - | 0.534 ** | 0.273 | 0.042 |
TOR 3-8 | - | 0.426 * | 0.092 | ||
L2 (English) | PPVT-R | - | 0.434 * | ||
TOR 3-8 | - |
R2 Change | B | SE B | Β | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Step 1 | Narrative comprehension L2 | 0.036 º | ||||
Narrative comprehension L2 | 0.251 | 0.178 | 0.189 | |||
Step 2 | Age | 0.059 ºº | ||||
Narrative comprehension L2 | 0.224 | 0.165 | 0.169 | |||
Age | 0.074 | 0.038 | 0.245 | |||
Step 3 | Receptive vocabulary L1 | 0.188 ººº | ||||
Receptive vocabulary L2 | ||||||
Narrative comprehension L2 | 0.108 | 0.164 | 0.082 | |||
Age | 0.133 | 0.038 | 0.439 * | |||
Receptive vocabulary L1 | 0.045 | 0.015 | 0.387 ** | |||
Receptive vocabulary L2 | 0.032 | 0.031 | 0.153 |
R2 Change | B | SE B | Β | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Step 1 | Narrative comprehension L1 | 0.036 º | ||||
Narrative comprehension L2 | 0.142 | 0.096 | 0.189 | |||
Step 2 | Age | 0.059 ºº | ||||
Narrative comprehension L2 | 0.135 | 0.100 | 0.180 | |||
Age | 0.008 | 0.030 | 0.035 | |||
Step 3 | Receptive vocabulary L1 | 0.188 ººº | ||||
Receptive vocabulary L2 | ||||||
Narrative comprehension L2 | 0.070 | 0.106 | 0.093 | |||
Age | 0.038 | 0.033 | 0.166 | |||
Receptive vocabulary L1 | −0.013 | 0.013 | −0.151 | |||
Receptive vocabulary L2 | 0.074 | 0.023 | 0.462 * |
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Roch, M.; Dicataldo, R.; Levorato, M.C. Receptive Vocabulary and Listening Narrative Comprehension of Italian–English Bilingual Children between 5 to 7 Years. Educ. Sci. 2023, 13, 780. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13080780
Roch M, Dicataldo R, Levorato MC. Receptive Vocabulary and Listening Narrative Comprehension of Italian–English Bilingual Children between 5 to 7 Years. Education Sciences. 2023; 13(8):780. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13080780
Chicago/Turabian StyleRoch, Maja, Raffaele Dicataldo, and Maria Chiara Levorato. 2023. "Receptive Vocabulary and Listening Narrative Comprehension of Italian–English Bilingual Children between 5 to 7 Years" Education Sciences 13, no. 8: 780. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13080780