School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Centre de Recherche Interdisciplinaire de Recherche en Réadaptation du Montréal Métropolitain, Quebec, Canada.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2024 Sep 12;67(9):3040-3063. doi: 10.1044/2024_JSLHR-23-00568. Epub 2024 Aug 8.
Bilingual assessment is particularly difficult in the very first period of children's second language (L2) exposure. This exploratory, longitudinal study examined L2 learning after 1 and 2 years of L2 exposure by young immigrants and how it is affected by their age at first exposure to the L2 (AoE).
Participants were 18 immigrants ranging in age from 2;11 to 14;2 (years;months), all within their first year in Montreal at Time 1, enrolled in a French school or day care, and from a Mandarin first language background. Participants were tested again a year later. Measures included receptive and expressive French vocabulary tests and conversational language samples analyzed using traditional measures of mean length of utterance (MLU) and morphological accuracy as well as novel measures of semantic and sentence-level patterns.
Performance was relatively high already at Time 1 and increased significantly at Time 2 in both vocabulary and MLU. At Time 2, vocabulary scores were below normative values, whereas MLU was within expected values relative to monolingual and simultaneous bilinguals for the majority of the participants. However, higher MLUs were accompanied by more instances of both semantic errors and creative semantic strategies. French performance was strongly related to AoE; with amount of exposure equivalent, older participants outperformed the younger ones on MLU and vocabulary. Semantic errors and creative uses were strongly predicted by AoE; however, morphological accuracy and number of agrammatical utterances were not.
This initial period of French learning involved a rapid growth spurt for most of the participants. We argue that the pattern observed, particularly among the older children, constitutes an early stage of L2 learning characterized by long utterances that are also frequently hard to understand as speakers encounter challenges and use creative strategies in their attempt to convey meaning. Comparison with normative reference bases for monolinguals and bilinguals with greater cumulative L2 exposure who have similar MLUs should be done with much caution during this early period.
在儿童第二语言（L2）接触的最初阶段，双语评估尤其困难。本探索性纵向研究考察了 L2 暴露 1 年和 2 年后幼儿的 L2 学习情况，以及他们 L2 接触的初始年龄（AoE）如何影响 L2 学习。
参与者为 18 名移民，年龄在 2 岁 11 个月至 14 岁 2 个月之间，均在蒙特利尔居住的第一年参加法语学校或日托中心，母语为普通话。一年后对参与者进行了再次测试。测量包括接受性和表达性法语词汇测试以及会话语言样本，使用传统的平均话语长度（MLU）和形态准确性以及新颖的语义和句子水平模式的措施进行分析。
参与者在时间 1 时的表现已经相对较高，并且在词汇和 MLU 方面都在时间 2 时显著增加。在时间 2 时，词汇得分低于标准值，而 MLU 相对于大多数参与者的单语和同时双语者处于预期值范围内。然而，较高的 MLU 伴随着更多的语义错误和创造性的语义策略。法语表现与 AoE 密切相关；对于接触量相等的参与者，年龄较大的参与者在 MLU 和词汇方面优于年龄较小的参与者。语义错误和创造性使用强烈预测 AoE；然而，形态准确性和非语法话语的数量则不然。
在这个法语学习的最初阶段，大多数参与者的法语学习经历了快速增长。我们认为，观察到的模式，特别是在年龄较大的孩子中，构成了 L2 学习的早期阶段，其特点是话语较长，同时由于说话者在尝试传达意义时遇到挑战并使用创造性策略，也经常难以理解。在这个早期阶段，与具有相似 MLU 的具有更大累积 L2 暴露的单语和双语者的标准参考基础进行比较应该非常谨慎。
