Bilingual Welsh–English children's acquisition of vocabulary and reading: implications for bilingual education

Abstract

Previous studies have highlighted early differences in bilinguals' rate of language acquisition in comparison with monolinguals. However, these differences seem to disappear with increasing age and exposure to the language, and do so quicker in dominant community languages than in minority status languages. This study aimed to replicate these findings in relation to literacy development. Three groups of Welsh–English bilinguals (L1 Welsh, simultaneous bilinguals and L1 English) were given receptive vocabulary tasks and reading tasks in Welsh and in English. An additional group of monolingual English-speaking controls was given the English tasks. Results revealed differential performance among the bilinguals in relation to the English tasks, with the L1 English bilinguals and monolinguals performing closer to age norms than L1 Welsh and simultaneous bilinguals by the end of primary school education. No differences were found between the L1 English bilinguals and the monolinguals on either task. On the Welsh measures, performance mirrored those of previous studies, on both tasks, demonstrating higher levels of performance relative to increasing amounts of exposure to Welsh. The implications of these findings for bilingual education strategies, particularly in relation to the development of bilingual language competence in minority language situations, are discussed.

Keywords:

• bilingualism
• literacy
• vocabulary
• bilingual education
• input

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a Welsh Language Board PhD Studentship awarded to the first author. We are grateful to the Board for their support. We also wish to thank Beth Lye for her collaboration on the research. Above all, we wish to thank all the participating schools, parents and children for their time and their contribution to this study.

Notes

1. Schools in Wales are categorised as Welsh medium, dual stream, immersion, mostly English, or English medium (B. Jones 2010; Lewis 2008). All terms bar English-medium are technically ‘bilingual’ schools, but the extent to which Welsh is used varies from one school to another and from one region to another.

2. Estyn is the office of Her Majesty's Inspectorate for Education and Training in Wales.

3. The only exceptions include places of worship, which may operate in Welsh or in another language other than English. Most primary schools, even if labelled as ‘Welsh-medium’ have some wall art (usually in relation to English lessons or other subjects taught through the medium of English, such as science) and public displays/dissemination of information bilingually.