Decomposing Variation in Vocabulary and Listening Comprehension Task Performance in Spanish and English Into Person, Ecological, and Assessment Differences for Spanish-English Bilingual Children in the United States.

PURPOSE: We investigated the contributions of person, ecological, and assessment characteristics to one's performance on vocabulary and listening comprehension tasks in English and Spanish. Person characteristics included English learner status, ecological characteristics included instructional program enrollment (bilingual vs. English immersion) and poverty status, and assessment characteristics included the language of assessment (Spanish vs. English) and linguistic grain size (vocabulary vs. listening comprehension).

METHOD: Data were from 208 Spanish-English emergent bilingual children in Grade 1 in the United States and were analyzed using explanatory item response models.

RESULTS

Substantial variance in the tasks across both languages was attributable to the random effects of assessment/item (74%) and person (26%). English learner status was a significant student predictor of language performance, and the instructional program was a significant ecological predictor of language performance. Regarding assessment characteristics, both the language of assessment and linguistic grain size explained the variance in performance. There were no differences in performance on English assessments between children in the Spanish-English bilingual program and children in the English immersion program. However, on the Spanish tasks, children in the bilingual program outperformed their peers in the English immersion program.

CONCLUSION

These findings highlight the importance of considering not only person/child characteristics but also ecological and assessment characteristics for Spanish-English bilingual children's performance on oral language tasks.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.26972749.