Reading to bilingual preschoolers: An experimental study of two book formats

Reading stories to children provides opportunities for word learning. Bilingual children encounter new words in each of their languages during shared storybook reading, but the way in which they encounter them can vary. We compared learning from two types of bilingual book materials: typical single-language books (i.e., two copies of the same book, each in a different language), and bilingual books (i.e., one copy of the book, with text in both languages on each page). Five-year-old French-English bilinguals (n = 67) who were either proficient or second-language learners were randomly assigned to hear an original story from a balanced bilingual experimenter in one of the two book formats. Children’s learning of French and English labels for five novel objects embedded in the story was assessed via a pointing task. Children were successful at learning words in both languages, and performance was not affected by either book format nor by children's language proficiency. Children neither favoured nor avoided learning translation equivalents (i.e., cross-language synonyms) in either format. These results suggest that children are flexible word learners and that shared bilingual book reading — regardless of book format — is an effective way to teach bilingual children new words in two languages.