We asked whether parental questionnaires on the heritage language proficiency of bilingual children might elucidate how proficient bilingual children are in their heritage language. We tested 20 UK-based Polish–English bilingual children between 4;5 and 5;9 years on Polish and English versions of the Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (CLTs). These comprise receptive and expressive picture tasks. Our bilingual group performed significantly worse on the Polish CLTs than on the English CLTs overall. They also performed significantly worse on the English CLTs than did an age- and gender-matched group of monolingual English-speaking children. Therefore our bilingual sample represent the type of bilinguals for whom education professionals have difficulty determining whether weak English is due to diminished English input vs. an underlying speech, language or communication need. Parents of the bilinguals completed a Polish adaptation of the Children’s Communication Checklist 2. They also completed the Parents of Bilingual Children Questionnaire (PaBiQ), which includes risk factor measures (‘No Risk Index’ and children’s ‘Current Language Skills’). The PaBiQ also includes measures of the Amount and Length of Exposure to the majority language (English) prior to age four as well as the Proportion of English in the current input. For the bilingual sample the CCC2 General Communication Composite (GCC), which measures structural language, significantly predicted Polish CLT production, uniquely accounting for 25% of the variance. The parent-rated PaBiQ ‘Current Polish Skills’ section predicted the Polish CLT comprehension. While the PaBiQ measure of Amount and Length of English Exposure was related to both Polish comprehension and production, it did not retain significance in a regression analysis. Therefore, parental questionnaires of the heritage language could provide a useful first step for education professionals when deciding whether to refer bilingual children for speech and language assessment. Large scale studies are needed to further develop these parental questionnaires.

中文翻译：

---

使用家长问卷调查双语儿童的传统语言能力

我们询问父母关于双语儿童传统语言能力的问卷是否可以阐明双语儿童在其传统语言方面的熟练程度。我们在波兰语和英语版本的跨语言词汇任务 (CLT) 上测试了 20 名 4、5 到 5、9 岁的英国波兰语-英语双语儿童。这些包括接受性和表达性图片任务。我们的双语组在波兰语 CLT 上的整体表现明显低于在英语 CLT 上的表现。与年龄和性别匹配的单语英语儿童组相比，他们在英语 CLT 上的表现也明显更差。因此，我们的双语样本代表了教育专业人员难以确定英语水平低下是由于英语输入减少还是潜在语音导致的双语者类型，语言或交流需要。双语者的家长完成了儿童交流检查表 2 的波兰语改编版。他们还完成了双语儿童家长问卷 (PaBiQ)，其中包括风险因素测量（“无风险指数”和儿童的“当前语言技能”）。PaBiQ 还包括对四岁之前接触多数语言（英语）的数量和长度以及当前输入中英语的比例的测量。对于双语样本，测量结构语言的 CCC2 通用通信组合 (GCC) 显着预测了波兰语 CLT 的产生，唯一地占了 25% 的方差。家长评定的 PaBiQ“当前波兰技能”部分预测了波兰语 CLT 的理解能力。虽然 PaBiQ 测量英语接触的数量和长度与波兰语的理解和生产有关，但它在回归分析中没有保留意义。因此，在决定是否推荐双语儿童进行言语和语言评估时，传统语言的父母问卷可以为教育专业人士提供有用的第一步。需要大规模研究来进一步开发这些家长问卷。