Mariajose Galarza Ramirez
Research Mentor(s): Ioulia Kovelman
Mentor Department: Psychology and CHGD
Authors: Mariajose Galarza Ramirez, Silvana Tellez, Ioulia Kovelman
Session: Session 4 (1:00pm – 1:50pm)
Presentation Type: Poster 46
Abstract
Each bilingual child’s journey is unique, and their family environment can significantly influence how they develop English literacy skills. During a study conducted by Hammer et al. (2012), researchers found that Spanish-English bilingual children’s language abilities were influenced by various factors, including parental education levels. Their findings suggest that higher levels of parental education were related to stronger language skills in bilingual children. In order to delve further into this research and help scientists better understand the relationship between a parent’s level of education and their child’s Spanish proficiency, we conducted a series of tests on Spanish-English bilingual children’s level of language comprehension and correlated this data to their parent’s level of education. Prior works on the relationship between Spanish-English bilingual children suggest that they have a higher level of proficiency in Spanish when their parents have presented higher levels of education. We, therefore, predicted that bilingual kids whose parents have higher levels of education would demonstrate better proficiency in Spanish compared to those whose parents have lower levels of education. We asked around 60 bilingual children, ages 7-10, to complete measures of language proficiency in Spanish and in English. This was done using the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment (BESA-ME), TOWRE, and TNL. The parents of the children answered a questionnaire detailing their children’s day-to-day peer interactions. We then correlated children’s Spanish language proficiency with their parents’ level of education. We expect to find a positive association between parental education and children’s English proficiency. We find an association between language proficiency and parents’ level of education. (you will likely adjust it as you find out more about the topic). The findings inform bilingual language development theories as well as inform best practices for supporting young learners.
