The Effects of Bilingualism on First Language Acquisition: A Focus on Grammar Development in Early Childhood

The Effects of Bilingualism on First Language Acquisition: A Focus on Grammar Development in Early Childhood | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article The Effects of Bilingualism on First Language Acquisition: A Focus on Grammar Development in Early Childhood Sarah Ashouri This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7686638/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract This study searches on how early bilingualism affects young children's Farsi grammatical development. Thirty participants, ages four to five, were chosen from a Tehran kindergarten and split into two groups: fifteen children who spoke Farsi only and fifteen children who were exposed to Farsi and a heritage language (either Kurdish or Azeri) at the same time. A Sentence Repetition Task (SRT) and a picture-based grammar elicitation and picture story narration task were used to evaluate grammatical proficiency. Those tasks were created to focus on fundamental Farsi grammatical features, such as verb tense, agreement, word order, and the usage of subordinate clauses and others. Parental language background data were collected via a standardized questionnaire adapted from the Language Exposure Assessment Tool (LEAT). Results showed that monolingual children scored higher than bilingual peers on most assessments of grammar, particularly those examining complex sentence structure. However, the bilingual group demonstrated comparable performance on simpler constructions. These findings support previous research indicating that reduced or uneven exposure to the societal language can affect grammatical accuracy in bilingual children, without indicating a language delay or disorder. The study investigated the importance of considering linguistic background when evaluating early grammatical development. bilingualism monolingual grammar acquisition sentence repetition Full Text Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. 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