Szőcs Gábor

Illés Bence
Academic Writing for Teachers
2022 autumn
Results and discussions
Results
The main aim of my research was to examine the semantic fluency of mono, - and bilingual
people living in Italy, and to draw a parallel between their language proficiency. My study was
carried out orally, giving the participants one and a half minutes to give as many examples within a
given category as they could.
Measuring semantic fluency of mono, -and bilingual Italian native speakers
Measuring semantic fluency has always been one of the most effective ways of measuring
people’s language fluency (Bialystok & Craik 2010: 19). This is the reason why I decided to
examine verbal fluency with the use of this method, too. 7 participants, whose native language is
Italian, blessed me with their presence and helped me carry out my research. I asked every
participant to tell me as many words as they can in these given categories: body parts, food, work,
school, animals, verbs, and adjectives. First, their Italian language proficiency was measured. In
most of the given categories, monolinguals earned much higher scores than bilinguals did.
Furthermore, they were much more confident when they were telling me their examples in Italian.
The results are shown in the following diagram:

Italian semantic fluency

60
50
40
30
20
10
0
ts d
or
k ol al
s bs es
ar oo ho er tiv
p i/f /w s c im i/ v c
dy cib ro la
/ an rb je
bo vo uo al
i/ ve ad
o/ la s c im vi/
rp tti
lc
o an g e
de ag
rti
pa

Italian native 1 Italian native 2 Italian-German bilingual

Italian-Spanish bilingual Italian-French bilingual Italian-Portuguese bilingual 1
Italian-Portuguese bilingual 2

Table 1: Italian semantic fluency of Italian native mono, - and bilingual students
 The next step was to examine the participants' English semantic fluency. The questions that I
asked were all the same, while the answers were slightly different. Here the differences can be seen
better. Bilingual students’ English language semantic fluency, in most cases, was higher than Italian
monolinguals’, and they didn’t have to think as much as monolinguals did. The results are
represented in this diagram:

English semantic fluency

60
50
40
30
20
10
0
i i i vi
po ib ro la al rb
cor d/c a vo cuo im / ve e tti
l o l s an s g
de fo k/ l/ s/ rb /a
g
ti or hoo al ve es
ar w sc im tiv
/p an ec
ts j
par ad
dy
bo

Italian native 1 Italian native 2 Italian-German bilingual

Italian-Spanish bilingual Italian-French bilingual Italian-Portuguese bilingual 1
Italian-Portuguese bilingual 2

Table 2: English semantic fluency of Italian native mono, - and bilingual students
Discussion
The outcomes of this research have provided insight into the differences concerning
semantic fluency of mono, - and bilingual Italian native speakers. As the above-presented tables
indicate, I divided the study into two separate sections, each containing seven categories in itself.
The first five categories are concepts that are about everyday life and in which students could
express their ideas with ease, without thinking much. The last two categories were rather different.
After asking them to name as many familiar words as they could, I wanted to be sure that they could
name items within abstract categories, too. This is the reason why I decided to ask them for verbs
and adjectives, as well.
The first part of my research concerns the Italian semantic fluency of the participants. As the
first table shows, Italian monolinguals scored higher in almost every category containing the two
abstract ones. It is interesting to see that bilinguals scored nearly the same among themselves. No
significant difference can be observed between the results of bilinguals. According to a study
carried out by four well-known researchers in the field of linguistics, in semantic fluency tests,
monolinguals’ scores are higher than bilinguals’, because during the early ages of language
acquisition there is no need to divide their attention into two parts; they are exposed to a sole
language which makes it twice as ‘facile’ to learn a language than being exposed to two (Bialystok
et al. 2010:19). Therefore, monolinguals’ advantage can be traced back to childhood. Furthermore,
it becomes easily visible that bilingual people could much harder obtain such language proficiency
in their native language than monolinguals do.
The second section of my study indicates a much more significant difference compared to
the previous one. While Italian monolinguals performed better in the first section of the study,
concerning English semantic fluency, bilingual students showed better language use and
knowledge. In some categories, bilinguals could name more words in English than in their mother
tongue, more precisely in Italian. An appealing example is the sixth category in which the Italian-
German bilingual alumni listed 52 verbs in English, while in Italian she could tell me no more than
32. This phenomenon could be answered by the similarities between the German and the English
language; both are derived from the same language family which makes it easier to learn and
remember the concepts of the languages. A recent study states that language families do have an
impact on the bilingual brain and their upcoming language learning process, as well. A compelling
example of this phenomenon is the case of a German-Norwegian bilingual. According to the
studies, this person could pick up Swedish easier but had a hard time picking up Spanish and then
French (Bhatia & Ritchie 2008:17). Concerning the other bilinguals, their scores were almost
always higher than monolinguals’, which leads us to the conclusion that bilinguals semantic fluency
in another language can be higher thanks for their early exposure of not a sole, but two different
languages.
The data contributes to a clearer understanding of the semantic fluency of the above-
mentioned two types of people, more precisely mono, -and bilinguals. These results should be taken
into consideration when examining language proficiency concerning semantic fluency. Due to the
number of participants, this paper is considered a case study, so the outcome cannot be generalized
but can give us a starting point to carry out further research and get a more complex picture of this
field of study.