Kohnert Kathryn, Danahy Kerry
University of Minnesota, MN 55455, USA.
Clin Linguist Phon. 2007 Jul;21(7):557-69. doi: 10.1080/02699200701374231.
The teaching of an invented language rule has been proposed as a possible non-biased, language-independent assessment technique useful in differentiating young L2 learners with specific language impairment from their typically developing peers. The current study explores these notions by testing typically developing sequential bilingual children's ability to learn an invented language rule in either L1 (Spanish) or L2 (English). Participants were 20 children, age 3:6-5:8, who attended a Head Start programme. For all children, Spanish was the primary language spoken in the home and English was the primary language of instruction. Children were randomly assigned two groups. Group L1 was taught the novel language rule in Spanish; Group L2 was taught the novel language rule in English. Performance was better for the L1 group than for the L2 group. Moreover, not all of these typical language learners were able to learn the new rule, even in their strongest language. These findings suggest that even for typically developing children, specific language proficiency as well as individual differences are closely linked to performance on this novel morpheme learning task.
有人提出，教授一种人为创造的语言规则可能是一种无偏差、与语言无关的评估技术，有助于区分有特定语言障碍的二语学习儿童和发育正常的同龄人。本研究通过测试发育正常的顺序双语儿童在第一语言（西班牙语）或第二语言（英语）中学习人为创造的语言规则的能力，来探究这些观点。研究参与者为20名年龄在3岁6个月至5岁8个月之间、参加了“启智计划”的儿童。对所有儿童来说，西班牙语是家中使用的主要语言，英语是教学的主要语言。儿童被随机分为两组。第一语言组用西班牙语教授新的语言规则；第二语言组用英语教授新的语言规则。第一语言组的表现优于第二语言组。此外，并非所有这些正常语言学习者都能学会新规则，即使是在他们最强的语言中。这些发现表明，即使对于发育正常的儿童来说，特定的语言能力以及个体差异也与这项新的词素学习任务的表现密切相关。
