Why do you think the boy would be unhappy if he saw what the cat was eating?
-
Natalia Gagarina
Abstract
The present study traces longitudinal trajectories of narrative comprehension in L2 German in 57 Russian- and Turkish-German bilingual children, for two age groups with a mean starting age of 3;6 and 4;3, respectively. The children answered comprehension questions from the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives in their L2 German. They were tested three times with a one-year interval in between, so that by the last time children had a mean age of 5;6 and 6;2, respectively. Comprehension questions targeted two types of elements of macrostructure, goals and internal states, in two modes, telling and model story. Results showed a significant improvement of narrative comprehension over time in both age groups. The steepest slope of development was found between three and five years. By age five, the children were able to answer the majority of comprehension questions, whilst after that, a plateau in the development was observed. Generally, goals were easier to comprehend than internal states, at all test times, for all groups and elicitation modes. The study enriches our knowledge of L2 bilingual trajectories of the comprehension of goals and internal states by showing that these two components of macrostructure require different inferencing skills and that goals are cognitively easier to infer as compared to internal states.
Abstract
The present study traces longitudinal trajectories of narrative comprehension in L2 German in 57 Russian- and Turkish-German bilingual children, for two age groups with a mean starting age of 3;6 and 4;3, respectively. The children answered comprehension questions from the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives in their L2 German. They were tested three times with a one-year interval in between, so that by the last time children had a mean age of 5;6 and 6;2, respectively. Comprehension questions targeted two types of elements of macrostructure, goals and internal states, in two modes, telling and model story. Results showed a significant improvement of narrative comprehension over time in both age groups. The steepest slope of development was found between three and five years. By age five, the children were able to answer the majority of comprehension questions, whilst after that, a plateau in the development was observed. Generally, goals were easier to comprehend than internal states, at all test times, for all groups and elicitation modes. The study enriches our knowledge of L2 bilingual trajectories of the comprehension of goals and internal states by showing that these two components of macrostructure require different inferencing skills and that goals are cognitively easier to infer as compared to internal states.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledging our reviewers vii
- Cross-linguistic development of narrative comprehension from A to Z 1
- Narrative comprehension in Lebanese Arabic-French bilingual children 31
- Inferential comprehension, age and language 61
- Bilingual Turkish-Swedish children’s understanding of MAIN picture sequences 99
- Narrative comprehension in simultaneously bilingual Finnish-Swedish and monolingual Finnish children 149
- Narrative comprehension by Croatian-Italian bilingual children 5–7 years old 171
- Bilingual children’s lexical and narrative comprehension in Dutch as the majority language 197
- Why do you think the boy would be unhappy if he saw what the cat was eating? 231
- Narrative comprehension and its associations with gender and nonverbal cognitive skills in monolingual and bilingual German preschoolers 269
- Bilingualism effects in the narrative comprehension of children with Developmental Language Disorder and L2-Greek 297
- Commentary 331
- Index 337
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledging our reviewers vii
- Cross-linguistic development of narrative comprehension from A to Z 1
- Narrative comprehension in Lebanese Arabic-French bilingual children 31
- Inferential comprehension, age and language 61
- Bilingual Turkish-Swedish children’s understanding of MAIN picture sequences 99
- Narrative comprehension in simultaneously bilingual Finnish-Swedish and monolingual Finnish children 149
- Narrative comprehension by Croatian-Italian bilingual children 5–7 years old 171
- Bilingual children’s lexical and narrative comprehension in Dutch as the majority language 197
- Why do you think the boy would be unhappy if he saw what the cat was eating? 231
- Narrative comprehension and its associations with gender and nonverbal cognitive skills in monolingual and bilingual German preschoolers 269
- Bilingualism effects in the narrative comprehension of children with Developmental Language Disorder and L2-Greek 297
- Commentary 331
- Index 337
