2018 Sat Session B 1630

Saturday, November 3, 2018 | Session B, Conference Auditorium | 4:30pm

Using Television to Boost Native-Speaker Input for L2-Learning Children: A Cautionary Tale
T. Sorenson Duncan, J. Paradis

Parents with limited second language (L2) fluency may not be providing their children with sufficiently rich input to support L2 development (e.g., Hammer et al., 2012). Television is one suggested source to increase the native-speaker input that L2-learning children receive (e.g., Lindgren & Muñoz, 2013; Paradis & Jia, 2017). This recommendation occurs despite the finding that high quantities of television watching have been associated with depressed expressive language scores and even language delays in monolingual children (e.g., Chonchaiya & Pruksananonda, 2008; Close, 2004). Given this paradox, this study considers whether increased television viewing is associated with increased L2 abilities in young children from immigrant and refugee backgrounds.

Eighty-nine children from diverse first language backgrounds who were enrolled in half-day preschool and kindergarten programs in Canada and were learning English as a L2 (mean age = 5;0) participated in this study. All parents were L2 speakers of English. Parents participated in an oral interview that provided detailed information about the length of time that the child had attended school, the relative language input provided by the primary caregiver, who for these children was their mother, the relative language input from siblings, and the child’s frequency of English (L2) television viewing (Paradis, 2011). Children also completed an L2-story generation task (Schneider et al., 2005) and their stories were assessed for story grammar, referring expressions, complex syntax use, and lexical diversity.

Hierarchical logistic regression was used to evaluate the relationship between television viewing and emerging L2 skills across linguistic subdomains. After accounting for the linguistic input children receive at school and the input they receive at home from their mothers and siblings (steps one and two), time spent watching television was added in step three. Increased television viewing was found to be negatively associated with appropriate referring expressions, complex syntax use, and lexical diversity and seemed to have no impact on children’s L2 story grammar. That is, those children who viewed more L2-based programming obtained lower L2 scores (see Table 1 and Figure 1). In contrast, increased cumulative exposure to English through school and increased relative L2 input from siblings was associated with increased L2 abilities. Increased relative L2 input from mothers was not associated with increased L2 abilities, except in the case of vocabulary.

In sum, this study revealed a negative relationship between increased L2 television viewing and emerging L2 skills in young L2-learning children. Interestingly, the frequency of L2-television viewing was not correlated with mother’s level of education (r (87) = -0.15, p = 0.15) for this sample of children, suggesting that our findings are not the by-product of socio-economic status. Thus, it seems that despite the abundance of native-speaker input present on television, increased L2 television viewing does not support L2 development in young L2-learning children. One possible explanation is that, for these children, passive television-viewing detracted from time spent in more meaningful social interactions with family members, particularly siblings. Notably, siblings attend school in the L2 and are developing highly proficient L2 abilities.

References: Chonchaiya, W., & Pruksananonda, C. (2008). Television viewing associates with delayed language development. Acta Pædiatrica, 97, 977–982. Close, R. (2004). Television and Language Development in the Early Years: A Review of the Literature. Hammer, C. S., Komaroff, E., Rodriguez, B. L., Lopez, L. M., Scarpino, S. E., & Goldstein, B. (2012). Predicting Spanish – English Bilingual Children’s Language Abilities. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 55, 1251–1264. Lindgren, E. & Muñoz, C. (2013). The influence of exposure, parents, and linguistic distance on young European learners’ foreign language comprehension. International Journal of Multilingualism, 10, 105-129. Paradis, J. & Jia, R. (2017). Bilingual children’s long-term outcomes in English as a second language: Language environment factors shape individual differences in catching up with monolinguals. Developmental Science, 20, 1-15. Paradis, J. (2011). Individual differences in child English second language acquisition: Comparing child-internal and child-external factors. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1(3), 213–237. Schneider, P. V., Dubé, R., & Hayward, D. (2005). The Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument.