Odelya Ohana & Sharon Armon-Lotem
Bar Ilan University, Israel
Background: The lexica knowledge of bilingual children should be tested
in both languages to get a comprehensive picture, but this is not always
feasible due to lack of access to the home language (HL). The availability
of the MacArthur-Bates CDI: Words and Sentences [1] in many languages has a
potential of overcoming this challenge. The present study explores an
alternative by comparing the use of one multicultural questionnaire in the
societal language (SL) to the use of two monolingual questionnaires (in the
SL and the HL), to explore the potential of such a tool for assessing
bilingual children.
*Research question*: How reliable is the design of reporting two languages
using one multicultural language questionnaire?
*Methods*: MacArthur-Bates CDI: Words and Sentences and its Hebrew
adaptation [2] were used for testing 38 English-Hebrew bilingual children
ages 24-48 months. A multicultural adaptation of the Hebrew CDI developed
for this study was tested with additional 30 English-Hebrew bilingual
children ages 24-48 months. The multicultural questionnaire was created
based on the Hebrew CDI, with the addition of culturally- specific words
from other languages (for ex. peanut butter (English), baguette (French),
and cabbage (Russian)). In the multicultural adaptation parents were
asked about both languages. For all children English is the HL and Hebrew
is the SL. Both production and comprehension were tested. For each child a
calculation of the words he/she produced and comprehended in each language
was done, as well as conceptual vocabulary from both languages.
*Results*: A mixed design ANCOVA performed on the data showed no
significant differences between the mean percentage of words of the two
samples in English for both production and comprehension abilities. Similar
results, with no significant differences between the two samples, were
demonstrated for Hebrew production and comprehension. Similarly, there was no
significant difference between the two samples in conceptual vocabulary
comprehension. However, in conceptual vocabulary production, there was a
significant difference between the two samples, with higher vocabulary
levels reported on the multilingual questionnaire.
*Conclusion*: The similar vocabulary levels demonstrated by both samples as
well as the high conceptual vocabulary production rates reported by the
multilingual questionnaire, can serve as a validation tool for the method
of using a single multicultural questionnaire to report on two languages
and to enable further use of this questionnaire to assess the vocabulary of
children in other bilingual communities.
*References*
[1] Fenson, L., Marchman, V., A., Thal, D., J., Dale, P., H., Reznick, J.,
S., & Bates, E. (1991). MacArthur- Bates CDI Words and Sentences.
Baltimore: Brookes Publishing.
[2] Maital, S. L., Dromi, E., Sagi, A., & Bornstein, M. H. (2000). The
Hebrew Communicative Development Inventory: language specific properties
and cross-linguistic generalizations. *Journal of Child Language*, 27,
43-67.
