Bilingual development in the receptive and expressive domains: they differ

ABSTRACT

In bilingual children, more so than in monolingual children, comprehension abilities exceed production abilities. While this receptive-expressive gap in bilinguals has been well documented, little is known about its development. The present study tracked growth in the Spanish and English receptive and expressive vocabularies of 52 bilingual children from 4.5–10 years. The children’s English vocabularies grew faster than their Spanish vocabularies, more so in the expressive domain than the receptive domain. The proportion of children who were English-dominant also increased more in the expressive than the receptive domain. By age 10, the children’s expressive skills were almost always English dominant while their receptive skills were most frequently balanced. Among children who hear a heritage language at home and a societal language at school, trajectories of dual language development differs in the expressive and receptive domains. These longitudinal data suggest continuity between the receptive-expressive gap observed in bilingual children and the receptive bilingualism often observed in adults.

KEYWORDS:

• Bilingual development
• simultaneous bilingualism
• receptive-expressive gap
• receptive vocabulary
• expressive vocabulary
• passive bilingualism

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development: [Grant Number HD068421].

Notes on contributors

David Giguere

David Giguere is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at California State University, Sacramento. His research examines individual differences in language and literacy skills among individuals with early bilingual exposure. He is the author of several papers on bilingual development and cognitive effects associated with bilingualism.

Erika Hoff

Erika Hoff is Professor of Psychology at Florida Atlantic University. She is Principal Investigator of an NICHD-funded longitudinal study of Spanish-English bilingual children in South Florida. She is the author of numerous articles and chapters and the editor of multiple books on early language development, including Research Methods in Child Language and, with Peggy McCardle, Childhood Bilingualism: Research on Infancy through School Age.