Resumen de Differentiated bilingual vocabulary assessment reveals similarities and differences compared to monolinguals: Conceptual versus single-language scoring and the relation with home language and literacy activities

Birgit Ehl, Gunnar Bruns, Michael Grosche

• Purpose:

  As bilingual students often achieve lower scores than monolinguals in single-language vocabulary assessments, a deficit-oriented view of bilingualism is widespread in educational institutions. This study examined whether this alleged difference remains when the conceptual vocabulary scores of bilingual primary students are considered, and when home language and literacy activities are taken into account.

  Methods:

  Extensive expressive vocabulary measures were administered in both the environmental language (German) and the heritage language (Turkish) to simultaneous and sequential bilingual students, and to their monolingual peers. Their parents provided information about the frequency of home language and literacy activities.

  Data:

  The study included 302 students (5;9–10;9 years). 83 were simultaneous bilingual, 55 sequential bilingual and 164 monolingual. Comparisons on vocabulary were conducted via separate multiple regression analyses with frequency of home language and literacy activities as a control variable.

  Findings:

  In single-language vocabulary scores of the environmental language, simultaneous and sequential bilingual students scored lower than monolinguals. In contrast, and most importantly, there were no differences between either bilingual group and monolinguals with regard to conceptual vocabulary and the relationship between conceptual vocabulary and frequency of home language and literacy activities. Controlling for frequency of home language and literacy activities did not change these findings.

  Originality:

  This study compared the expressive single-language and conceptual vocabulary scores of simultaneous and sequential bilinguals with the scores of monolinguals in a large sample of primary students, for the first time additionally controlling for home language and literacy activities, with the German and Turkish languages.

  Implications:

  Because bilingual students have the same conceptual vocabulary scores as monolinguals, lower single-language vocabulary scores do not reflect a language deficiency.