Jannat Rayat
Pronouns: she/her
Research Mentor(s): Ioulia Kovelman
Co-Presenter:
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Psychology and CHGD / LSA
Presentation Date: April 20
Presentation Type: Poster
Session: Session 4 – 2:40pm – 3:30 pm
Room: League Ballroom
Authors: Jannat Rayat, Rachel Eggleston
Presenter: 18
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has severely changed the way in which bilingual children in America use their heritage languages and English. Due to staying at home, children are reading and speaking less English, but more of their own heritage languages. To study the effects of increased time at home on children’s heritage language, children were tested both before and after the beginning of the pandemic through a series of literacy tests, both in English and in Spanish. These tests measure vocabulary levels in children through activities such as verbal sentence completion tasks and timed written comprehension tasks. These tests are then scored based on the number of correct answers. After an analysis of the data, we hypothesize that their English scores will either remain the same or decrease, while their Spanish, especially oral Spanish, scores will increase due to increased time physically speaking the heritage language at home. This data can help shift the focus from the negative effects of COVID-19 on language to the positive effects by emphasizing the importance and existence of heritage language. These findings have the potential to influence theories of home language use on reading and comprehension levels in schoolchildren and can be used in classrooms to help identify conditions such as dyslexia more accurately in bilingual children.
Biomedical Sciences, Interdisciplinary
