Abstract
The goals of this research were (1) to compare bilingual and monolingual children on Korean non-word repetition performance, and (2) to examine the relations between non-word repetition and vocabulary skills in bilingual and monolingual children. Sixty children aged from 3–5 years participated in this study, including 30 Korean-English bilinguals and 30 Korean monolinguals. The Korean-English bilingual children were sequential bilinguals who spoke Korean at home and English at school. Children were tested on a non-word repetition task and their Korean and English vocabulary skills were measured by standardized tests. The results showed that bilingual children were significantly lower on standardized vocabulary scores (p < .01). However, there was no difference between bilinguals and monolinguals on non-word repetition performance. Correlation analyses showed a significant association between non-word repetition performance and vocabulary skills of the tested language in both groups, while the association between non-word repetition and age was significant in the monolingual group. These results demonstrated that the non-word repetition task measures general language learning ability and is a sensitive predictor of vocabulary skills in linguistically diverse children.
Acknowledgement
The authors wish to thank Eun Ju Lee of the Ajou Auditory Language Center for her assistance in designing this study. The basis of this research was a Masters thesis completed by the first author at the Ewha Womans University, Department of Communication Disorders.
Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.
Appendix: Non-word stimuli.