Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T23:43:22.817Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Exploring minority language input sources as means of supporting the early development of second language vocabulary and grammar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2017

NIA WILLIAMS  and
ENLLI MÔN THOMAS
NIA WILLIAMS*
Affiliation:
Bangor University
ENLLI MÔN THOMAS
Affiliation:
Bangor University
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Nia Williams, School of Education, Bangor University, Safle'r Normal, Ffordd Caergybi, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2PZ, Wales. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Exposure to a minority language is largely limited in terms of frequency, and often delivered by nonnative speakers in certain domains. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of two types of native-language input sources (story telling and minority language children's television) in providing 4- and 5-year-old native English-speaking children with beginning awareness of Welsh. Results revealed that exposure to Welsh via television programs was equally as beneficial, if not more so in some cases, as listening to Welsh stories in developing children's vocabulary, particularly within the context of social interaction. These results suggest a useful and potentially effective role for the use of native-language television within a carefully designed language curriculum to aid early second language development in minority language contexts.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , July 2017 , pp. 855 - 880
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Al-Seghayer, K. (2001). The effect of multimedia annotation modes on L2 vocabulary acquisition: A comparative study. Language Learning & Technology, 5, 202–232.Google Scholar
Aram, D., & Aviram, S. (2009). Mothers’ storybook reading and kindergartners’ socioemotional and literacy development. Reading Psychology, 30, 175–194.Google Scholar
Barker, T. A., & Torgesen, J. K. (1995). An evaluation of computer-assisted instruction in phonological awareness with below average readers. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 13, 89–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, E., & Goodman, J. (1999). On the emergence of grammar from the lexicon. In MacWhinney, B. (Ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition (pp. 29–79). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Benasich, A. A., & Tallal, P. (2002). Infant discrimination of rapid auditory cues predicts later language impairment. Behavioural Brain Research, 136, 31–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bordet, L., & Jamet, D. (2010). Are English prepositions grammatical or lexical morphemes? Cercles, Occasional Papers Series, 2010, 1–26.Google Scholar
British Psychological Society. (2010). Code of human research ethics. Retrieved from http://www.bps.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/code_of_human_research_ethics.pdf Google Scholar
Burgess, S. (1997). The role of shared reading in the development of phonological awareness: A longitudinal study of middle to upper class children. Early Child Development and Care, 127, 191–199.Google Scholar
Burrowes, E., Bryer, N., Bryer, H., Campbell, C., & Charles, E. (2011). Review of the Welsh language support service for schools (Report No. 07/2011). Retrieved from http://gov.wales/docs/caecd/research/110701athrawonbroen.pdf Google Scholar
Calvert, S. L., Kotler, J. A., Murray, W. F., Gonzales, E., Savoye, K., Hammack, P., . . . Hammar, M. (2001). Children's online reports about educational and informational television programs. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 22, 103–117.Google Scholar
Cameron-Faulkner, T., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2003). A construction based analysis of child directed speech. Cognitive Science, 27, 843–873.Google Scholar
Cameron-Faulkner, T., & Noble, C. (2013). A comparison of book text and child directed speech. First Language, 33, 268–279.Google Scholar
Carrier, M., & Pashler, H. (1992). The influence of retrieval on retention. Memory & Cognition, 20, 633–642.Google Scholar
Chambers, B., Cheung, A. C., Madden, N. A., Slavin, R. E., & Gifford, R. (2006). Achievement effects of embedded multimedia in a success for all reading program. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 232–237.Google Scholar
Chera, P., & Wood, C. (2003). Animated multimedia “talking books” can promote phonological awareness in children beginning to read. Learning and Instruction, 13, 33–52.Google Scholar
Chonchaiya, W., & Pruksananonda, C. (2008). Television viewing associates with delayed language development. Acta Paediatrica, 97, 977–982.Google Scholar
Chondrogianni, V., & Marinis, T. (2011). Differential effects of internal and external factors on the development of vocabulary, tense morphology and morpho-syntax in successive bilingual children. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1, 318–345.Google Scholar
Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2011). Research methods in education (7th ed.) London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Collins, M. F. (2005). ESL preschoolers’ English vocabulary acquisition from storybook reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 40, 406–408.Google Scholar
De Houwer, A. (1995). Bilingual language acquisition. In Fletcher, P. & MacWhinney, B. (Eds.), The handbook of child language (pp. 219–250). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Durkin, K., & Conti-Ramsden, G. (2014). Turn off or tune in? What advice can SLTs, educational psychologists and teachers provide about uses of new media and children with language impairments? Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 30, 187–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, N. C., O'Dochartaigh, C., Hicks, W., Morgan, M., & Laporte, N. (2001). Cronfa Electroneg o Gymraeg (CEG). A 1 million word lexical database and frequency count for Welsh. Retrieved from http://www.bangor.ac.uk/canolfanbedwyr/ceg.php.en Google Scholar
Farrant, B. M., & Zubrick, S. R. (2012). Early vocabulary development: The importance of joint attention and parent-child book reading. First Language, 32, 343–364.Google Scholar
Farrant, B. M., & Zubrick, S. R. (2013). Parent-child book reading across early childhood and child vocabulary in the early school years: Findings from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. First Language. Advance online publication.Google Scholar
Ferguson, C. J., & Donnellan, M. B. (2014). Is the association between children's baby video viewing and poor language development robust? A reanalysis of Zimmerman, Christakis, and Meltzoff (2007). Developmental Psychology, 50, 129.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fletcher, K. L., & Reese, E. (2005). Picture book reading with young children: A conceptual framework. Developmental Review, 25, 64–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gathercole, V. C. M., Laporte, N., & Thomas, E. M. (2005). Differentiation, carry-over, and the distributed characteristic in bilinguals: Structural “mixing” of the two languages. In Cohen, J., McAlister, K. T., Rolstad, K., & MacSwan, J. (Eds.), ISB4: Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism (pp. 838–851). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Gathercole, V. C. M., & Thomas, E. M. (2005). Minority language survival: Input factors influencing the acquisition of Welsh. In Cohen, J., McAlister, K. T., Rolstad, K., & MacSwan, J. (Eds.), ISB4: Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism (pp. 852–874). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Gathercole, V. C. M., & Thomas, E. M. (2009). Bilingual first-language development: Dominant language takeover, threatened minority language take-up. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12, 213–237.Google Scholar
Gathercole, V. C. M., Thomas, E., & Hughes, E. (2008). Designing a normed receptive vocabulary test for bilingual populations: A model from Welsh. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 11, 678–720.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Good, A. J., Russo, F. A., & Sullivan, J. (2014). The efficacy of singing in foreign-language learning. Psychology of Music. Advance online publication.Google Scholar
Hammersley, M., & Traianou, A. (2012). Ethics and educational research, British Educational Research Association on-line resource. Retrieved from https://www.bera.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Ethics-and-Educational-Research.pdf Google Scholar
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.Google Scholar
Hindman, A. H., Connor, C. M., Jewkes, A. M., & Morrison, F. J. (2008). Untangling the effects of shared book reading: Multiple factors and their associations with preschool literacy outcomes. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 23, 330–350.Google Scholar
Hoff, E. (2006). How social contexts support and shape language development. Developmental Review, 26, 55–88.Google Scholar
Hoff, E. (2013). Interpreting the early language trajectories of children from low-SES and language minority homes: Implications for closing achievement gaps. Developmental Psychology, 49, 4–14.Google Scholar
Hoff, E., Core, C., Place, S., Rumiche, R., Señor, M., & Parra, M. (2012). Dual language exposure and early bilingual development. Journal of Child Language, 39, 1–27.Google Scholar
Hulk, A. J., & Cornips, L. (2006). The acquisition of definite determiners in child L2 Dutch: Problems with neuter gender nouns. In Unsworth, S., Parodi, T., Sorace, A., & Young-Scholten, M. (Eds.), Paths of development in L1 and L2 acquisition (pp. 107–134). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Huttenlocher, J., Haight, W., Bryk, A., Seltzer, M., & Lyons, T. (1991). Early vocabulary growth: Relation to language input and gender. Developmental Psychology, 27, 236.Google Scholar
Jones, A., Phillips, C., & Roberts, G. (2013). Datblygu'r Gymraeg yn y cyfnod sylfaen. Retrieved from file://fs-home-j/home-004/eds211/Windows_Data/Downloads/Datblygur_Gymraeg_yn_y_Cyfnod_Sylfaen_-_Ionawr_2013%20(2).pdf Google Scholar
Jones, B., & Lewis, W. G. (2014). Translanguaging in bilingual education. In Thomas, E. M. & Mennen, I. (Eds.), Advances in the study of bilingualism (pp. 141–170). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Kaufman, A. S., & Kaufman, N. L. (1990). K-BIT: Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.Google Scholar
Lam, Y. (2009). Applying cognitive linguistics to teaching the Spanish prepositions por and para. Language Awareness, 18, 2–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, W. G. (2008). Current challenges in bilingual education in Wales. Aila Review, 21, 69–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Linebarger, D. L. (2000). Summative evaluation of Between the Lions: A final report to WGBH Educational Foundation. Kansas City, KS: University of Kansas, Juniper Gardens Children's Project.Google Scholar
Linebarger, D. L., & Piotrowski, J. T. (2009). TV as storyteller: How exposure to television narratives impacts at-risk preschoolers’ story knowledge and narrative skills. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 27, 47–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Linebarger, D. L., & Piotrowski, J. T. (2010). Structure and strategies in children's educational television: The roles of program type and learning strategies in children's learning. Child Development, 81, 1582–1597.Google Scholar
Linebarger, D. L., & Walker, D. (2005). Infants’ and toddlers’ television viewing and language outcomes. American Behavioral Scientist, 48, 624–645.Google Scholar
Lonigan, C. J., Anthony, J. L., Bloomfield, B. G., Dyer, S. M., & Samwel, C. S. (1999). Effects of two shared-reading interventions on emergent literacy skills of at-risk preschoolers. Journal of Early Intervention, 22, 306–322.Google Scholar
Lorincz, K., & Gordon, R. (2013). Difficulties in learning prepositions and possible solutions. Linguistic Portfolios, 1, 1–14.Google Scholar
Maratsos, M. (2000). More overregularizations after all: New data and discussion on Marcus, Pinker, Ullman, Hollander, Rosen & Xu. Journal of Child Language, 27, 183–212.Google Scholar
Marchman, V. A., Martínez-Sussmann, C., & Dale, P. S. (2004). The language-specific nature of grammatical development: Evidence from bilingual language learners. Developmental Science, 7, 212–224.Google Scholar
Mares, M., & Pan, Z. (2013). Effects of Sesame Street: A meta-analysis of children's learning in 15 countries. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 34, 140–151.Google Scholar
McLaughlin, B. (1985). Second language acquisition in childhood. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Mol, S. E., Bus, A. G., de Jong, M. T., & Smeets, D. J. (2008). Added value of dialogic parent-child book readings: A meta-analysis. Early Education and Development, 19, 7–26.Google Scholar
Montrul, S. A. (2008). Incomplete acquisition in bilingualism: Re-examining the age factor (Vol. 39). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Murray, A., & Egan, S. M. (2014). Does reading to infants benefit their cognitive development at 9-months-old? An investigation using a large birth cohort survey. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 30, 303–315.Google Scholar
Newman, R., Ratner, N. B., Jusczyk, A. M., Jusczyk, P. W., & Dow, K. A. (2006). Infants’ early ability to segment the conversational speech signal predicts later language development: A retrospective analysis. Developmental Psychology, 42, 643–655.Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E. (2008). Bilingualism and language cognitive development. In Altarriba, J. & Heredia, R. R. (Eds.), An introduction to bilingualism: Principles and processes (pp. 167–181). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Ohgi, S., Loo, K. K., & Mizuike, C. (2010). Frontal brain activation in young children during picture book reading with their mothers. Acta Paediatrica, 99, 225–229.Google Scholar
Oller, D. K. (2005). The distributed characteristic in bilingual learning. In Cohen, J., McAlister, K. T., Rolstad, K., & MacSwan, J. (Eds.), ISB4: Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism (pp. 1744–1749). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Oller, D. K., & Eilers, R. E. (Eds.). (2002). Language and literacy in bilingual children (Vol. 2). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paquette, K. R., & Rieg, S. A. (2008). Using music to support the literacy development of young English language learners. Early Childhood Education Journal, 36, 227–232.Google Scholar
Paradis, J. (2010). Bilingual children's acquisition of English verb morphology: Effects of language exposure, structure complexity, and task type. Language Learning, 60, 651–680.Google Scholar
Paradis, J., Nicoladis, E., Crago, M., & Genesee, F. (2011). Bilingual children's acquisition of the past tense: A usage-based approach. Journal of Child Language, 38, 554–578.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paradis, J., Tremblay, A., & Crago, M. (2014). French-English bilingual children's sensitivity to child-level and language-level input factors in morphosyntactic acquisition. Input and Experience in Bilingual Development, 13, 161–180.Google Scholar
Place, S., & Hoff, E. (2011). Properties of dual language exposure that influence 2-year-olds’ bilingual proficiency. Child Development, 82, 1834–1849.Google Scholar
Reese, E., & Cox, A. (1999). Quality of adult book reading affects children's emergent literacy. Developmental Psychology, 35, 20–28.Google Scholar
Rhys, M., & Thomas, E. M. (2013). Bilingual Welsh-English children's acquisition of vocabulary and reading: Implications for bilingual education. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 16, 633–656.Google Scholar
Rice, M. L., Huston, A. C., Truglio, R., & Wright, J. (1990). Words from “Sesame Street”: Learning vocabulary while viewing. Developmental Psychology, 26, 421–428.Google Scholar
Richert, R. A., Robb, M. B., Fender, J. G., & Wartella, E. (2010). Word learning from baby videos. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 164, 432–437.Google Scholar
Robbins, C., & Ehri, L. C. (1994). Reading storybooks to kindergartners helps them learn new vocabulary words. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 54–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roseberry, S., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Parish-Morris, J., & Golinkoff, R. M. (2009). Live action: Can young children learn verbs from video? Child Development, 80, 1360–1375.Google Scholar
Ruangdaraganon, N., Chuthapisith, J., Mo-suwan, L., Kriweradechachai, S., Udomsubpayakul, U., & Choprapawon, C. (2009). Television viewing in Thai infants and toddlers: Impacts to language development and parental perceptions. BMC Pediatrics, 9, 9–34.Google Scholar
Sénéchal, M., & Cornell, E. H. (1993). Vocabulary acquisition through shared reading experiences. Reading Research Quarterly, 28, 360–374.Google Scholar
Sénéchal, M., LeFevre, J., Hudson, E., & Lawson, E. P. (1996). Knowledge of storybooks as a predictor of young children's vocabulary. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88, 520.Google Scholar
Simonsen, H. G., Kristoffersen, K. E., Bleses, D., Wehberg, S., & Jørgensen, R. N. (2014). The Norwegian Communicative Development Inventories: Reliability, main developmental trends and gender differences. First Language, 34, 3–23.Google Scholar
Singer, J., & Singer, D. (1998). Barney & Friends as entertainment and education: Evaluating the quality and effectiveness of a television series for preschool children. In Asamen, J. & Berry, G. (Eds.), Research paradigms, television, and social behavior (pp. 305–367). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Suggate, S. P., Lenhard, W., Neudecker, E., & Schneider, W. (2013). Incidental vocabulary acquisition from stories: Second and fourth graders learn more from listening than reading. First Language, 33, 551–571.Google Scholar
Thomas, E. M. (2001). Aspects of gender mutation in Welsh (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Bangor University).Google Scholar
Thomas, E. M., Apolloni, D., & Lewis, W. G. (2014). The learner's voice: Exploring bilingual children's selective language use and perceptions of minority language competence. Language and Education, 28, 340–361.Google Scholar
Thomas, E. M., Cantone, K. F., Davies, S., & Shadrova, A. (2014). Cross-linguistic influence and patterns of acquisition: The emergence of gender and word order in German-Welsh bilinguals. In Thomas, E. M. & Mennen, I. (Eds.), Advances in the study of bilingualism (pp. 41–62). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Thomas, E. M., & Gathercole, V. C. M. (2007). Children's productive command of grammatical gender and mutation in Welsh: An alternative to rule-based learning. First Language, 27, 251–278.Google Scholar
Thomas, E. M., Gathercole, V. C. M., & Hughes, E. K. (2013). Sociolinguistic influences on the linguistic achievement of bilinguals: Issues for the assessment of minority language competence. In Gathercole, V. C. Mueller (Ed.), Solutions for the assessment of bilinguals (pp. 175–193). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, E. M., Lewis, W. G., & Apolloni, D. (2012). Variation in language choice in extended speech in primary schools in wales: Implications for teacher education. Language and Education, 26, 245–261.Google Scholar
Thomas, E. M., & Mayr, R. (2010). Children's acquisition of Welsh in a bilingual setting: A psycholinguistic perspective. In Morris, D. (Ed.), Welsh in the 21st century (pp. 99–117). Cardiff: Cardiff University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, E. M., & Roberts, D. B. (2011). Exploring bilinguals’ social use of Welsh inside and out of the minority language classroom. Language and Education, 25, 89–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, E. M., Williams, N., Jones, L. A., Davies, S., & Binks, H. (2014). Acquiring complex structures under minority language conditions: Bilingual acquisition of plural morphology in Welsh. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17, 478–494.Google Scholar
Thordardottir, E. (2011). The relationship between bilingual exposure and vocabulary development. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15, 426–445.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2000). First steps toward a usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cognitive Linguistics, 11, 61–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2012). A usage-based approach to child language acquisition. In Good, J. & Yu, A. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 26th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp. 305–320). Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M., & Farrar, M. J. (1986). Joint attention and early language. Child Development, 57, 1454–1463.Google Scholar
Trivette, C. M., Dunst, C. J., & Gorman, E. (2010). Effects of parent-mediated joint book reading on the early language development of toddlers and preschoolers. Center for Early Literacy Learning, 3, 1–15.Google Scholar
Unsworth, S. (2013). Assessing the role of current and cumulative exposure in simultaneous bilingual acquisition: The case of Dutch gender. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16, 86–110.Google Scholar
Unsworth, S. (2014). Comparing the role of input in bilingual acquisition across domains. In Input and experience in bilingual development (pp. 181–301). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Weizman, Z. O., & Snow, C. E. (2001). Lexical output as related to children's vocabulary acquisition: Effects of sophisticated exposure and support for meaning. Developmental Psychology, 37, 265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Government, Welsh. (2011). Welsh speakers by local authority, gender and detailed age groups, 2011 census. Retrieved from https://statswales.wales.gov.uk/Catalogue/Welsh-Language/WelshSpeakers-by-LocalAuthority-Gender-DetailedAgeGroups-2011Census Google Scholar
Wright, J. C., Huston, A. C., Murphy, K. C., Peters, M. St., Pinon, M., Scantlin, R., & Kotlin, J. (2001). The relations of early television viewing to school readiness and vocabulary of children from low-income families: The early window project. Child Development, 72, 1347–1366.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, F. J., Christakis, D. A., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2007). Associations between media viewing and language development in children under age 2 years. Journal of Pediatrics, 151, 364–368.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, F. J., Gilkerson, J., Richards, J. A., Christakis, D. A., Xu, D., & Gray, S. (2009). Teaching by listening: The importance of adult-child conversations to language development. Pediatrics, 124, 342–349.Google Scholar