Work

Measuring Growth in Bilingual and Monolingual Children’s English Productive Vocabulary Development: The Utility of Combining Parent and Teacher Report

Year: 2009

Type: article

Abstract: This longitudinal study examined growth in the English productive vocabularies of bilingual and monolingual children between ages 24 and 36 months and explored the utility and validity of supplementing parent reports with teacher reports to improve the estimation of children's vocabulary. Low-income, English-speaking and English/Spanish-speaking parents and Early Head Start and Head Start program teachers completed the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory, Words and Sentences for 85 children. Results indicate faster growth rates for monolingual than for bilingual children and larger vocabularies for bilingual children who spoke mostly English than mostly Spanish at home. Parent-teacher composite reports, like parent reports, significantly related to children's directly assessed productive vocabulary at ages 30 and 36 months, but parent reports fit the model better. Implications for vocabulary assessment are discussed.

Source: Child Development

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01350.x

Authors: Shaher Banu Vagh, Barbara Alexander Pan, Jeannette Mancilla-Martinez

Institution: Harvard University

Language: English

Topic: Language Development and Disorders

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: bronze

Funder: Harvard Graduate School of Education