ABSTRACT

Environmental sources of variance in the Italian vocabulary and reading skills of bilingual primary school children from immigrant families (or language minority bilingual children (LMBC)) in Italy were investigated, and the LMBC’s skill levels were compared to those of their monolingual classmates. A total of 140 children from the first, third, and fifth grades were administered standardized tests of receptive vocabulary, word reading, and nonword reading skills. LMBC’s exposure to Italian at home and their mothers’ Italian proficiency were reported by mothers. Immigrant mothers’ Italian proficiency was a significant predictor of vocabulary and word reading speed but not of word accuracy or nonword reading. High levels of Italian exposure at home in combination with low levels of maternal Italian proficiency was a negative predictor of vocabulary; high exposure to Italian at home was positively associated with word reading speed and negatively associated with nonword reading speed. LMBC had lower vocabulary scores but did not differ from monolingual children in measures of reading skill. The findings underscore the importance of the quality of language exposure for language development and replicate findings that bilingual children show decoding skills on a par with monolingual children despite smaller vocabularies.

摘要

调查了来自意大利移民家庭的双语小学生（或语言少数双语儿童（LMBC））意大利语词汇和阅读技能差异的环境来源，并将LMBC的技能水平与其单语同学的技能水平进行了比较。共有 140 名一年级、三年级和五年级的儿童接受了接受性词汇、单词阅读和非单词阅读技能的标准化测试。LMBC 在家中接触意大利语和他们母亲的意大利语水平由母亲报告。移民母亲的意大利语水平是词汇和单词阅读速度的重要预测指标，但不是单词准确性或非单词阅读的重要预测因素。在家中接触意大利语的水平高，加上母亲的意大利语水平低，是词汇量的负面预测因素；在家中大量接触意大利语与单词阅读速度呈正相关，与非单词阅读速度呈负相关。LMBC 的词汇分数较低，但在阅读技能方面与单语儿童没有差异。研究结果强调了语言接触质量对语言发展的重要性，并复制了双语儿童尽管词汇量较小但显示出与单语儿童相当的解码技能的发现。