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Predictors of language proficiency in school-age Spanish–English bilingual children with and without developmental language disorder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2021

Kerry Danahy Ebert Open the ORCID record for Kerry Danahy Ebert [Opens in a new window]  and
Madeline Reilly
Kerry Danahy Ebert*
Affiliation:
Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Madeline Reilly
Affiliation:
Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
*
Address for correspondence: Kerry Danahy Ebert, Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, 115 Shevlin Hall, 164 Pillsbury Dr. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, kebert@umn.edu
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Abstract

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have impairments in their language-learning abilities that may influence interactions with environmental opportunities to learn two languages. This study explores relationships between proficiency in L1 and L2 and a set of environmental and personal variables within a group of school-age Spanish–English bilingual children with DLD and a group of typically-developing peers. Within each group, current usage in the home, length of L2 exposure, gender, maternal education, analytical reasoning, and number of L1 conversational partners were used to predict proficiency in each language. Results showed that home language environment, particularly home L2 usage, strongly predicted L1 proficiency but had less influence on the L2. Female gender predicted L1 skills in both groups, whereas analytical reasoning predicted both L1 and L2 but only for children with DLD. This study expands the limited literature on how children with DLD interact with their environment to learn two languages.

Keywords

exposuregendermaternal educationoutcomeslanguage disorderdual language learners
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , March 2022 , pp. 296 - 306
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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