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Cited by 197Language Development and DisordersNeurobiology of Language and BilingualismHearing Impairment and Communication

Language sample measures and language ability in Spanish-English bilingual kindergarteners

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Bedore, Lisa M., Peña, Elizabeth D., Gillam, Ronald B., Ho, Tsung-Han·2010·Journal of Communication Disorders
DOI 10.1016/j.jcomdis.2010.05.002PMC PMC2958172
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Abstract

Unlabelled Measures of productivity and sentence organization are useful metrics for quantifying language development and language impairments in monolingual and bilingual children. It is not yet known what measures within and across languages are most informative when evaluating the language skills of bilingual children. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how measures of language productivity and organization in two languages converge with children's measured language abilities on the Bilingual English Spanish Assessment (BESA), a standardized measure of language ability. 170 kindergarten age children who produced narrative language samples in Spanish and in English based on a wordless picture book were included in the analysis. Samples were analyzed for number of utterances, number of different words, mean length of utterance, and percentage of grammatical utterances. The best predictors of language ability as measured by the BESA scores were English MLU, English grammaticality, and Spanish grammaticality. Results are discussed in relationship to the nature of the measures in each of the languages and in regard to their potential utility for identifying low language ability in bilingual. Learning outcomes The reader will be able to identify (1) why narratives are useful for evaluating bilingual language ability, (2) which measures of productivity and sentence organization in narratives best capture language ability and development in bilingual children, (3) how a bilingual or composite language ability across two languages can be determined, and (4) what relationship exists between measures of productivity and sentence organization in each language with a bilingual language ability score.

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  • Research on cross-language cross-domain correlations has not investigated modulating effects of language distance.

    “Evidence for significant cross-language cross-domain (lexicon, grammar) correlations is limited (Bedore et al., 2010;Simon-Cereijido & Gutiérrez-Clellen, 2009), but this research has not investigated any modulating effects of language distance.”

    From Cross-language distance influences receptive vocabulary outcomes of bilingual children (2020) · cites this paper as Bedore et al., 2010

    The Discussion describes measures from Spanish and English across domains, and the study examines only that language pair; it does not investigate whether language distance modulates correlations. Results §3.1 reports correlations among measures, but the passages do not establish the cited sentence’s more specific claim of significant cross-language, cross-domain lexicon–grammar correlations. (LLM, conf=0.78)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Evidence for significant cross-language cross-domain (lexicon, grammar) correlations is limited.

    “Evidence for significant cross-language cross-domain (lexicon, grammar) correlations is limited (Bedore et al., 2010;Simon-Cereijido & Gutiérrez-Clellen, 2009), but this research has not investigated any modulating effects of language distance.”

    From Cross-language distance influences receptive vocabulary outcomes of bilingual children (2020) · cites this paper as Bedore et al., 2010

    The Introduction (§1.2; page unavailable) says earlier work generally examined measures in one language or the other rather than combining information across languages, supporting the broad point that cross-language evidence was limited. Results (§3.1; page unavailable) discusses correlations but does not establish specifically that significant cross-language, cross-domain lexicon–grammar correlations are limited. (LLM, conf=0.74)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

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Research works printed but not linked: 42

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Sorted by citations

Authors
Bedore, L. M., Peña, E. D., Gillam, R. B., & Ho, T.-H.
Affiliations
  • The University of Texas at Austin (US)
  • Utah State University (US)
Corresponding author
Bedore, Lisa M.
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Communication Disorders
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2010-11
Volume
43
Issue
6
Pages
498-510
ISSN
0021-9924 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.jcomdis.2010.05.002
PMC
PMC2958172
OpenAlex
W2048913568
Cited by
197
References
2
Citations by year
2026: 12 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 18 · 2019: 14 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 10 · 2013: 14 · 2012: 8
FWCI
15.97
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
Locations
  • Journal of Communication Disorders (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • Digital Commons - USU (Utah State University) (submittedVersion)
Funders
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (R01DC007439)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Hearing Impairment and Communication
Keywords
Spanish-English bilingual children, language ability assessment, language productivity, sentence structure, mean length of utterance, grammaticality, language development, kindergarten children
MeSH terms
Child Language, Child, Preschool, Humans, Language Development, Language Tests, Longitudinal Studies, Multilingualism

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