Comprehension skills of Chinese-English dual language learners: relations across languages and associations with language richness at home

ABSTRACT

Chinese-English dual language learners (Chinese DLLs) are a growing population in the US. Existing studies of preschool-aged Chinese DLLs mostly focused on single-word vocabulary and rarely explored other skills important for school readiness. In the current study, we examined Chinese DLLs’ development of receptive vocabulary and comprehension of semantic concepts (i.e. spatial and quantification expressions) in both English and Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese) during a preschool year. Results indicated that while semantic concept comprehension in both English and Chinese showed significant growth during the year, only English, but not Chinese, receptive vocabulary showed a significant increase. Furthermore, DLLs’ semantic comprehension, but not receptive vocabulary, showed cross-language transfer. Finally, the richness of DLLs’ language experiences (e.g. frequency of book reading, multimedia exposure) at home was a significant predictor of Chinese DLLs’ receptive vocabulary and semantic concept comprehension in the respective language. Supporting families to provide rich language experiences in both English and the home language may hold key to fostering successful dual language development.

KEYWORDS:

• Dual language learners (DLLs)
• Chinese
• language richness
• vocabulary
• spatial terms
• quantifiers

Acknowledgements

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Spencer Foundation. The authors thank Eva Liang, Molly Ye, David Wong, and Yingying Lao for their assistance with data collection and Danyang Wang for test preparation. We greatly appreciate the support of the directors and staff at the participating early childhood programs. Finally, we are deeply grateful to the children, parents, and teachers, whose generous participation made the study possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The first author was supported by the Spencer Foundation Small Grant 201800084, PSC-CUNY Research Foundation of The City University of New York Award 60612-00 48, and the Crow Professorship from Brooklyn College. The second author was supported by a Spencer Foundation Small Grant 201900085.

Notes on contributors

Lulu Song

Lulu Song, associate professor of early childhood education, conducts research on dual language/multilingual development and early childhood education. She has published on longitudinal studies with Latino and Chinese dual language learners, focusing on both the family and preschool contexts.

Li Sheng

Li Sheng, professor of speech therapy and Chinese and bilingual studies, conducts research on dual language/multilingual development and childhood language disorders. She has published on typical and atypical language development, and assessment of monolingual and multilingual language disorders.

Rufan Luo

Rufan Luo, assistant professor of psychology, studies parent-child interactions, home and classroom learning environment, and language and school readiness development. Her recent publications focused on factors contributing to language outcomes in children from linguistically, culturally, and socioeconomically diverse families.