Icelandic as a second language: a longitudinal study of language knowledge and processing by school-age children

Abstract

School-age children (n=39) acquiring Icelandic as a second language were tested yearly over three years on Icelandic measures of language knowledge and language processing. Comparison with native speaker norms revealed large and significant differences for the great majority of the children. Those who scored within the normal monolingual range had a mean length of residence (LOR) of close to 8 years and had arrived to the country at an early age. Raw test scores revealed significant improvement across test times. However, the rate of learning did not occur sufficiently fast for the gap relative to native speakers to diminish over time. Effects of age at arrival and LOR were difficult to tease out. However, children arriving to the country in adolescence performed consistently less well than children with the same LOR arriving in mid childhood. In spite of low scores on standardized tests of language knowledge, the L2 learners scored uniformly high on an Icelandic test of nonword repetition. The acquisition of Icelandic as an L2 appears to occur at a slower rate than the L2 acquisition of English. This may be related to the grammatical complexity of the language as well as to the low global economic value of the Icelandic language.

Keywords:

• second language
• bilingual
• school age
• Icelandic
• language processing
• nonword repetition
• sentence imitation

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by a grant from RANNIS (The Icelandic Research Centre) awarded to Elin Thordardottir (PI) and Anna Gudrun Juliusdottir (collaborator), and by a team grant from FQRSC (Fonds québecois de recherche en société et culture) awarded to the first author as co-investigator (Lydia White, PI). The authors wish to thank the children and parents who gave of their time to participate in this study as well as school personnel who assisted.