Oral Narrative Skills of RussianEnglish Bilingual Children

1
Oral Narrative Skills of Russian-English
Bilingual Children Mariya Yunusova and Peggy
Jacobson, St. Johns University, Queens, NY

• Comparisons to monolingual speakers in the SALT
  database.
• Mean length of utterance (MLU) ranged from 7.88
  to
• 9.94 (M 9.05, SD .65). One child exhibited
  an MLU
• more than 1SD above the database mean.
• Word level errors ranged from 4 to 20 (M 10,
  SD
• 5.8). Four of eight children scored more
  than 1 SD
• above the mean. Four children scored more
  than 2
• SDs above the mean for word level errors.
• The high number of word-level errors was
  attributed to
• - prepositional errors (e.g., "on" for "over"
  "in" for "at"
• "to" for "in" and, "into" in place of "for").
• - semantic substitutions (e.g., "goat" for
  deer
• eagle for owl mouse for gopher).
• - neologisms such as beeflys for bees .
• Patterns Unique to Russian-English Speakers
• Prepositional errors are judged to be related
  to the
• influence of Russian L1 on English L2.
• Two of 8 children used opened window" for
  "open
• window" this may be attributed to the Russian
  noun

• Background
• Oral Narratives serve as a bridge between oral
  language and literacy, predict later academic
  success, provide information regarding language
  content, form, and use, and are useful for
  evaluating language skills in culturally and
  linguistically diverse populations (Speece, Roth,
  Cooper, De La Paz, 1999).
• Demographics of NYC
• According to recent US Census data, the
  population of New York City is 7.8 million.
• Russian-speakers constitute approximately 6 of
  the citys residents (560,000) with most residing
  in Brooklyn and Queens.
• Purpose
• To examine oral narrative skills of typically
  developing Russian-English speaking children and
  compare their language patterns to those of
  typically developing monolingual English
  speakers, and to another bilingual group
  (Spanish-English bilinguals) using the SALT
  database.
• Method
• Participants
• 8 Russian-English speaking children (4 boys 4
  girls)
• Ages ranged from 7 8 years with mean of 7.4
  years (SD .33 ).
• All spoke Russian as a first language and
  continued to speak Russian at home.
• None had a history of developmental delay
  requiring special education or therapeutic
  services.
• All were recruited through personal contacts from
  Brooklyn and Queens.
• Task
• Narrative samples were collected using an oral
  narrative re-tell task based on the wordless
  picture book Frog, Where Are You? (Meyer,
  1968).
• After listening to the pre-recorded story found
  on the SALT website (www.languageanalysislab.com),
  children retold the story while looking at the
  book.
• The narratives were transcribed and coded
  according to the Systematic Analysis of Language
  Transcripts (SALT) conventions (Miller and
  Chapman, 2006).
• Two graduate students transcribed 2 samples
  separately. Percent agreement was 96.7 for
  number of words per utterance. The faculty
  supervisor listened to four samples and recorded
  each past tense form. Percent agreement for past
  tense forms was 96.

• Results
• Similar to what is expected for typical
  monolingual English speakers, children used a
  high proportion of grammatically correct
  sentences and accurate use of tense morphemes.
• Past Tense Morphology
• Regular past tense verbs were used with 97 (84 /
  87) accuracy.
• Irregular past tense verbs were used with 89
  (204 / 233)
• accuracy. Half of all errors
  were productive errors
• such as overregularization
  (e.g., hitted) or double
• marking (e.g., broked).

• Word Level Errors
• Similar to other bilingual speakers, a high
  number of word level errors were noted.

Contact Mariya Yunusova myunu19_at_yahoo.com