The influence of home language on dual language toddlers’ comprehension in Norwegian

The purpose is to investigate the language comprehension of the majority language, in this case Norwegian, among different groups of bilingual toddlers. The study also compares the language comprehension of these children with monolingual children of the same age. The research questions are: 1) What are the differences in understanding the majority language between monolingual and bilingual children when they are 2 years old and 9 months old? 2) What is the relationship between how much exposure to the majority language the children receive from their parents and the children’s understanding of Norwegian?

The bilingual children’s Norwegian comprehension was significantly lower than the monolingual children’s comprehension. There was no difference in Norwegian language proficiency between group 1) and 2) among the bilingual children, while children in group 3) scored significantly lower than the other two groups. The authors conclude that although the bilingual children are exposed to Norwegian at home, there seems to be a limit to how much input is required from the parents for the children to acquire good second language skills.

The children’s language comprehension was observed in a kindergarten setting using the TRAS mapping tool. In addition, the bilingual children’s parents filled out a questionnaire to measure how much Norwegian-language exposure the children received at home. The bilingual children were then divided into three groups measured according to how much Norwegian-language exposure they received from their parents: 1) Homes where only Norwegian was spoken, 2) homes with a combined use of majority and minority languages and 3) homes where only minority languages were spoken. The monolingual children were mainly used as a control group. A total of 1063 children (902 monolingual children and 161 bilingual children) from kindergartens in Stavanger participated in the study.

Gunnerud, H. L., Reikerås, E. & Dahle, A. E. (2018). "The influence of home language on dual language toddlers’ comprehension in Norwegian". European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 26(6):833-854.