Acceso usuarios
Sharon Malki-Levy
, Carmit Altman, Shlomit Shnitzer-Meirovich, Iris BenDavid-Hadar
Vocabulary plays a crucial role in bilingual language developmentand education, with SES significantly influencing linguisticcompetencies and academic trajectories. Despite proven bilingualintervention benefits for language proficiency, the interplaybetween low SES and bilingualism has hardly been addressed.This study focuses on the impact of bilingual vocabularyintervention among low SES bilinguals. Forty-two fourth and fifth-grade bilingual Arabic-Hebrew students participated. Halfreceived 12 sessions of bilingual intervention, six sessions foreach language, while the others followed conventional formalvocabulary curriculum. Vocabulary gains were measured pre,during, and post-intervention. Three-way mixed ANOVA wereused for vocabulary growth patterns analysis; hierarchical regressionwas carried out for the examination of background characteristics’contributions. Results showed significant improvement in bothlanguages for the intervention group compared to the controlgroup.
Despite better performance in the heritage language atbaseline compared to societal language, vocabulary growth wasmore pronounced in the societal language. No cross-linguisticinfluence was observed, but higher heritage language proficiencycorrelated with better performance in both languages. Thesefindings underscore heritage language proficiency importance forbilingual children in non-heritage language environments, withimplications for educational policymakers and educators.
