Since 2015, more than 58,000 Syrian refugees have settled in Canada and, at the time of the 2016 national census, more than a fifth had settled in the province of Quebec. The rising numbers of refugees and the risks associated with families’ forced displacement have underscored the need to better understand and support the language of refugee children. The article reports on the oral language of three Syrian children ages five and six years, drawing on data from parent interviews, teacher reports, measures of the children’s language, and observations of their language use in a dual-language stimulation group, StimuLER. By triangulating this data, we were able to develop a rich and realistic portrait of each child’s language abilities. For these three boys, we observed that the home language was vulnerable to delays and weaknesses, and that learning the language of school was a drawn-out process. We also documented that parents and teachers had difficulties communicating with one another, and thus had difficulty meeting the educational needs of these children. We conclude that to foster resiliency in these children who are refugees, schools must find a way to build bridges with the parents to support the children’s language learning in both the language of school and at home.

中文翻译：

---

难民背景儿童的语言能力：案例研究的见解

自 2015 年以来，已有超过 58,000 名叙利亚难民在加拿大定居，而在 2016 年全国人口普查时，超过五分之一的人定居在魁北克省。难民人数的增加以及与家庭被迫流离失所相关的风险凸显了更好地理解和支持难民儿童语言的必要性。这篇文章报道了三名 5 岁和 6 岁叙利亚儿童的口语，其数据来自家长访谈、教师报告、儿童语言测量以及他们在双语刺激组 StimuLER 中的语言使用观察。通过对这些数据进行三角测量，我们能够对每个孩子的语言能力进行丰富而真实的描述。对于这三个男孩，我们观察到母语容易出现延迟和弱点，学习学校的语言是一个漫长的过程。我们还记录了父母和老师之间难以沟通，因此难以满足这些孩子的教育需求。我们的结论是，为了培养这些难民儿童的适应能力，学校必须找到一种方法与父母建立桥梁，以支持孩子们在学校和在家中的语言学习。