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ABSTRACT
Differences between monolingual and multilingual vocabulary development have been observed but few studies provide a longitudinal perspective on vocabulary development before and following school entry. This study compares vocabulary growth profiles of 106 multilingual children to 211 monolingual peers before and after school entry to examine whether: (1) school entry coincides with different rates of vocabulary growth compared to prior to school entry, (2) compared to monolingual peers, multilingual children show different vocabulary sizes or rates of vocabulary growth, (3) the age of onset of second-language acquisition for multilingual children is associated with vocabulary size or rate of vocabulary growth, and (4) the sociolinguistic context of the languages spoken by multilingual children is associated with vocabulary size or rate of vocabulary growth. Results showed increases in vocabulary size across time for all children, with a steeper increase prior to school entry. A significant difference between monolingual and multilingual children who speak a minority language was observed with regards to vocabulary size at school entry and vocabulary growth prior to school entry, but growth rate differences were no longer present following school entry. Taken together, results suggest that which languages children speak may matter more than being multilingual per se.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Fred Genesee for his input during the development of the bilingualism measure, the Institut de la Statistique du Québec and its partners, the children and their families for participation in the longitudinal study, and Amélie Rivest and Charles-Édouard Giguère for data management.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Dr Andrea A. N. MacLeod’s, Ph.D, research explores the early language development of bilingual children with typical and disordered language acquisition. In collaboration with her colleagues and students, she seeks to better understand bilingual development to help children reach their potential.
Dr Natalie Castellanos Ryan’s, Ph.D., research explores cognitive, personality and biological risk factors for drug abuse and other externalized problems during adolescence. In particular, she is interested in understanding how deficits in self-regulation are associated with the development of behavior problems across childhood and adolescence.
Dr Sophie Parent’s, Ph.D., research focuses on the study of mother-child interactions and their association with cognitive development and difficulties adapting to the school context. In particular, she is interested in the transition from preschool to elementary school.
Dr Sophie Jacques’, Ph.D., research interests include the development of three aspects of self-control, namely, cognitive control, behavioural control and emotion regulation. Her work uses multiple methods with typically developing preschool and school-aged children, as well as children at risk. She does both targeted cross-sectional experimental research and large-scale longitudinal intervention-based research.
Dr Jean R. Séguin's, Ph.D., research explores the cognitive and emotional aspects of mental and physical health development from pregnancy to young adulthood. One of the main cross-cutting interests is in the roles of the social and physical environments as they will help understand developmental processes and enhance prevention and intervention.
Notes
1 Separate analysis of variances were conducted for each time-point to investigate whether the trilingual children were different from the bilingual children on vocabulary scores. The results of these analyses showed a significant group difference only at the 6 year-old measurement point (F(1, 99) = 5.14, p < .025), indicating that trilinguals had smaller vocabularies than bilinguals. Because the groups were otherwise not significantly different, the bilinguals and trilingual children were combined to create the ‘multilingual’ group.