The development of narrative skills in learners of Basque as a second language

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse some aspects of development of Basque as a second language (L2) in children for whom Spanish is their first language (L1) who attended immersion school in Basque in a Spanish-speaking sociolinguistic context. Data consist of oral story retellings produced in a classroom setting where the same children participated at ages 5, 8 and 11. Another group of children for whom Basque was the L1 and who lived in a strong Basque-speaking environment also took part in the study. Two aspects are analysed in the stories: lexical difficulties and the production of text organisers. According to the results, the Basque L2 children seemed to have acquired a linguistic competence quite comparable to L1 capacity: the lexical aspects studied show a clear development in L2, since lexical gaps were frequent at age 5, diminished at age 8 and were practically non-existent at age 11. The production of text organisers also shows a clear developmental pattern and, with increasing age, the children produced a higher variety of text organisers, providing precise temporal links to different segments of the story. It is concluded that Basque immersion seems to foster the development of Basque L2 in contexts where the use of Basque is quite reduced.

• Basque L2 development
• immersion
• storytelling
• lexical difficulties
• text organisers

Notes

1. This work has been carried out thanks to financial support granted by the Basque government (IT676- 13) and the Spanish government (FFI2012-37884-C03-01). We are grateful to Eva Lindgren and to the anonymous reviewers for their contributions to previous versions of this work.

2. Since the letter c is not included in the Basque alphabet, there is no C model.

3. In the examples, initials corresponding to the child's name and surname are given, followed by age and language status.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ibon Manterola

Margareta Almgren is a former teacher of foreign languages in secondary education and of Swedish at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Since 2002 she has been collaborating with the Language Acquisition and Use research group (UPV/EHU), with a focus on language acquisition in Basque–Spanish bilinguals.Ibon Manterola holds a PhD in linguistics at UPV/EHU. He is member of the Language Acquisition and Use research group and the UNESCO Chair of World Language Heritage (UPV/EHU). His main research interests include child bilingualism, immersion education and language didactics.