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Revista Psicopedagogia
Print version ISSN 0103-8486
Abstract
CORREIA, Juliana Belomo; BARBAM, Aline and SEABRA, Alessandra Gotuzo. Difference in receptive-expressive performance in bilingual children and related factors. Rev. psicopedag. [online]. 2022, vol.39, n.118, pp.27-39. ISSN 0103-8486. https://doi.org/10.51207/2179-4057.20220003.
The study investigates the difference between receptive and expressive vocabulary in children at bilingual schools with the intention of verifying if there is a gap between the two vocabularies and to identify aspects related to this possible distance. 42 bilingual children, aged 4 to 7 years, who speak Portuguese and are exposed to English in bilingual schools in São Paulo have participated in this study. According to the analyzes, a difference was found between receptive and expressive vocabularies in bilingual children in both languages and it was noticed that the difference between vocabularies in English varied according to some characteristics of exposure to the language. Thus, children whose mothers spoke two languages showed less difference between receptive and expressive vocabularies. Children who have been attending bilingual schools for a longer time, who are exposed to English in different contexts daily and who travel abroad more frequently also showed a greater difference between vocabularies, with the receptive vocabulary more developed. It is suggested that the growth of the gap with this kind of increased exposure to the second language is due to the fact those children acquire more vocabulary in English, but have a greater input of receptive vocabulary than expressive vocabulary, which means that in different environments they are more nurtured to listen than to speak. For this reason, strategies and interventions can be developed, especially in bilingual schools, to help the language development of bilingual children and promote stimulation not only of the receptive, but also the expressive vocabulary.
Keywords : Bilingualism; Vocabulary; Schoolchildren.
