The linguistic environment in which a child lives is a major factor in language skills and subsequent academic success, but other socio-economic factors, for example, are also taken into account. Exposure to languages by parents is referred to as “language input”. Through early literacy activities with children, input contributes to inter-individual differences in language acquisition. In a bi-plurilingual context, the choice of languages in family language used and the degree of exposure to each language determines successful bilingual transmission. However, there are differents bilinguals configurations, sometimes conscious and other times not, associated with speakers of different socio-economic status who do not predict the same subsequent language skills.
The present study investigates the influence of socio-economic status and language use in bilingual families on the receptive vocabulary in French of their 5th grade children through three hypotheses:
- Minority language maintenance in bilingual family language practices has a positive effect on the majority language vocabulary level of a fifth grade student.
- The level of French vocabulary of bilingual fifth grade students is related to the socio-economic status of families.
- The socio-economic status of families and the choice of bilingual language practices interact on the vocabulary level of a fifth grade students.
However, 85 of fifth grade students living in bi-plurilingual settings were asked about the languages spoken by mothers at home and their receptive vocabulary levels using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Scale (Dunn, Theriault-Whalen & Dunn, 1993). A parental questionnaire was distributed to collect the socio-economic data needed to conduct the study.
The results of the ANOVA shows that disparities in receptive vocabulary are explained by the language spoken by the mothers at home. The group whose mothers speaking both French and another language perform on average for children their age and comparable to the group whose mothers speak only French in the household. Conversely, the group whose mothers speak only one or other language(s) to their children perform significantly worse than the other two groups, which place them in the lower average of children in their reference population. Furthermore, correlational analysis shows that children’s socio-economic status and vocabulary range are not related to each other. Finally, ANCOVA shows that the educational level of mothers does not interact with the language spoken by mother in the household on the children’s vocabulary level.
The results shows that there is no negative effect of speaking a minority language in the home on French language skills. It is therefore important to consider the child’s languages as much as possible with regard to the benefits of bilingualism. Overexposure to the majority, language can lead to a “slide” of the minority language or even to an “emotional gap” between the child and the members of his family. Moreover, the socio-economic status of the parents is not related to the child’s majority language skills, which is in line with equal opportunities for bilingual youth. Finally, the non-significant effect of the interaction attests that SES associated with language choice in family language practices does not have an impact on skills, so we can conclude that the effects between the variables are independent.
Bilingual exposure is not consider as a factor of risk in the development of the child’s language skills; on the contrary, positive effects are found on the linguistic, cognitive and psychological levels. Considering the child’s languages allows him to enrich a linguistic and cultural capital that constitutes his identity and positively affects his well-being, which can leads him to experience harmonious bilingualism.
Keywords : Bilingualism ; Socioeconomic status ; Family language practices ; Language exposure ; Receptive vocabulary
Words I have learned :
- Foyer = Household
- En moyenne = On average
- Surexposition = Overexposure
- Fossé émotionnel = Emotional gap
- Glissement = Slide
- Mener quelqu’un à = Lead .. to