Reading, vocabulary and language preference in 7- to 8-year-old bilingual Asian children

Background. Children who have a second language at home and report more usage of this language in various contexts ought reciprocally to be less proficient in English as frequency of exposure to English is reduced. Similarly there should be a two‐way directional influence between oral vocabulary and reading development. Samples. A group of 40 bilingual Asian children was compared with an age‐matched mixed race (but with only one Asian child) monolingual group of 24 children. Mean age was 8 years for both groups (range 7; 6 to 8; 6 years) and socioeconomic status was low. Group allocation was based on a specially devised Language Preference Questionnaire (LPQ) examining different contexts of language use (e.g., during numerical analysis). Method. Standardised tests of non‐verbal intelligence, vocabulary, basic reading, reading comprehension and the LPQ were given. Results. Controlling for non‐verbal intelligence, there was a marked difference in receptive oral vocabulary and a weaker difference in reading ability between the two groups. The LPQ showed that bilingual children who reported thinking in their parental language had poorer English vocabulary development than bilingual children who preferred to think in English. Conclusions. These findings are discussed in terms of either an effect of frequency of exposure to language or in terms of differences in phonological development between the two groups. The contrasting differences in the effects of bilingualism on vocabulary and reading suggest that in this particular socioeconomic setting parents of both groups do not have substantial impact on reading, but they do have an influence on the development of English oral vocabulary.