Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-rkxrd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T08:04:13.706Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Subject-specific and task-specific characteristics of metalinguistic awareness in bilingual children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Sylvia Joseph Galambos  and
Kenji Hakuta
Sylvia Joseph Galambos*
Affiliation:
Yale University
Kenji Hakuta*
Affiliation:
Yale University
*
Board of Studies in Education, Merrill College, UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
Board of Studies in Education, Merrill College, UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The relationship between bilingualism and metalinguistic awareness was explored in Puerto Rican Spanish- and English-speaking children. All subjects were from low-income backgrounds and were enrolled in a transitional bilingual education program in the United States. Two longitudinal studies were conducted. The first study examined the abilities to note and correct ungrammatical sentences in Spanish. Subjects were 104 children in first and second grade at the beginning of the study. They were followed over a period of 2 years. The second study looked at the ability to detect ambiguity in sentences, and to paraphrase the different meanings. There were 107 subjects who were in fourth and fifth grades, and were also followed over a 2-year period. The results from both studies indicated that native language proficiency as well as the degree of bilingualism affected metalinguistic awareness. The results also indicated that these effects interacted with the types of items in the metalinguistic tasks. This suggests that both subject-specific and task-specific factors are important in understanding the relationship between bilingualism and metalinguistic awareness.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , June 1988 , pp. 141 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anderson, J. R. (1982). Acquisition of cognitive skills. Psychological Review, 89, 369–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beilin, H. (1975). Studies in the cognitive basis of language acquisition. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Ben-Zeev, S. (1977a). The influence of bilingualism on cognitive strategy and cognitive development. Child Development, 48, 1009–1018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ben-Zeev, S. (1977b). The effects of bilingualism in children from Spanish-English low economic neighborhoods on cognitive development and cognitive strategy. Working Papers on Bilingualism, 14, 83–122.Google Scholar
Berko Gleason, J. (1985). The development of language. Columbus, OH: Merrill.Google Scholar
Bialystok, E., & Ryan, E. B. (1985). Toward a definition of metalinguistic skill. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 31, 229–251.Google Scholar
Cummins, J. (1976). The influence of bilingualism on cognitive growth: A synthesis of research findings and explanatory hypothesis. Working Papers on Bilingualism, 9, 1–43.Google Scholar
Cummins, J. (1978). Metalinguistic development of children in bilingual education programs: Data from Irish and Canadian Ukranian-English programs. In Paradis, M. (Ed.), The Fourth Locus Forum (pp. 29–40). Columbia, SC: Hornbeam.Google Scholar
Cummins, J. (1984). Bilingualism and special education. San Diego: College Hill.Google Scholar
Dale, P. S. (1976). Language Development. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.Google Scholar
De Avila, E. A., & Duncan, S. E. (1981). Bilingualism and cognition: Some recent findings. NABE Journal, 4, 15–50.Google Scholar
de Villiers, P. A., & de Villiers, J. G. (1972). Early judgments of semantic and syntactic acceptability by children. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 1, 299–310.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunn, L. (1965). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.Google Scholar
Fantini, A. E. (1974). Language acquisition of a bilingual child. Brattelboro, VT: Experimental.Google Scholar
Galambos, S. J., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (1983). Learning a second language and metalinguistic awareness. In Chukerman, A. (Ed.), Papers from the 19th regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (pp. 117–133). Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Galambos, S. J., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (1986). A study of the development of metalinguistic awareness in bilingual and monolingual children. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven.Google Scholar
Gleitman, L. R., Gleitman, H., & Shipley, E. F. (1972). The emergence of the child as grammarian. Cognition, 1, 137–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gleitman, L., & Wanner, E. (1982). Language acquisition: The state of the state of the art. In Wanner, E. & Gleitman, L. R. (Eds.), Language acquisition: The state of the art (pp. 3–50). New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hakes, D. T. (1980). The development of metalinguistic abilities in children. New York: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hakuta, K. (1984). The causal relationship between the development of bilingualism, cognitive flexibility, and social-cognitive skills in Hispanic elementary school children (Final Report No. NIE-G-81–0123). National Institute of Education.Google Scholar
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Gleitman, L. R., & Gleitman, H. (1978). What did the brain say to the mind? A study of the detection and report of ambiguity by young children. In Sinclair, A., Jarvella, R. J., & Levelt, W. J. M. (Eds.), The child's conception of language (pp. 97–132). New York: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howe, H. E., & Hillman, D. (1973). The acquisition of semantic restrictions in children. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 12, 132–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ianco-Worrall, A. (1972). Bilingualism and cognitive development. Child Development, 43, 1390–1400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, S. L., & Miller, J. F. (1973). Children's awareness of semantic constraints in sentences. Child Development, 44, 69–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lambert, W. E. (1975). Culture and language as factors in learning and education. In Wolfgang, A. (Ed.), Education of immigrant students. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.Google Scholar
Raven, J. C., Court, J. H. & Raven, J. (1976). Raven's progressive matrices test. London: H. K. Lewis.Google Scholar
Rosenbaum, T., & Pinker, S. (1983). Word magic revisited: Monolingual and bilingual children's understanding of the word-object relationship. Child Development, 54, 773–780.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, E. B., & Ledger, G. W. (1979). Grammaticality judgments, sentence repetitions, and sentence corrections by children learning to read. International Journal of Psycholinguistics, 6, 23–40.Google Scholar
Shultz, T. R., & Pilon, R. (1973). Development of the ability to detect linguistic ambiguity. Child Development, 44, 728–733.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snedecor, G. W., & Cochran, W. G. (1967). Statistical methods (6th ed.). Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press.Google Scholar
Sternberg, R. J. (1984). A theory of knowledge acquisition in the development of verbal concepts. Developmental Review, 4, 113–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiener, F. D., Simmond, A. J., & Weiss, F. L. (1978). Spanish picture vocabulary test. New York: Marymount Manhattan College.Google Scholar