Age and Language

Loss
Tengku Mohamad Faiz Tg Azhar

Language Maintenance and Loss in Preschool-Age

Children of Mexican Immigrants: Longitudinal Study
(Guiberson and Barrett, 2006).

Abstract
In this study, the authors plotted the Spanish language usage
of 10 preschool-age children over the course of 3 years and
assigned them to one of two groups: language maintenance
and language loss. The authors then compared the groups
scores on structured tasks, language behaviors, and
language usage/exposure variables. They found that children
in the language loss group presented with more grammatical
errors, whereas the language maintenance group performed
better on Spanish vocabulary and language tasks. No specific
variable was predictive of maintenance or loss, but the
children from the language loss group began to use more
English with family members or peers.

Introduction
Number of preschool-age children from diverse backgrounds
has drastically increase in the US over past decade.
Currently, more than 2 million preschool-age children of
Hispanic/Latino descent reside in the United States (U.S.
Census Bureau, 2005).
In numerous surveys, Speech-Language Pathologists have
reported a lack of confidence or efficacy in assessing and
treating children from culturally and linguistically diverse
backgrounds. Many of these surveys indicate that the
causes probably include a lack of appropriate training and
insufficient knowledge of cultural and linguistic differences.

Definitions
Language Loss
A process where an individuals L1 are reduced while the L2
skills become more established (Anderson, 2004).
According to Genesee et al. (2004), in adults, they lost
manifests as decreases in the use of L1 vocabulary and
fluency, and/or the transfer of L2 rules to L1.
In children, who are in the process of acquiring language
proficiency : defined as a failure to gain proficiency in L1 as
expected (Sharwood Smith & van Buren, 1991).
Variables associated with language loss; preschool enrollment
(Filmore, 1991), age of second language exposure (Hakuta &
DAndrea, 1992); and language usage with siblings, peers and

 Language Maintenance
A process where there is continuous L1 growth or maintained
L1 proficiency and usage (Fase et al., 1992).
LM results in L1 proficiency and includes the continues use of
L1 (Hakuta & DAndrea, 1992; Tannenbaum, 2003).
In order for true LM to occur, children from linguistically
diverse background must learn more than the household
vernacular of their L1; they also need to learn the academic
language that is fostered through educational experiences
(Cummins, 1994; Echevarria & Graves, 1998; Schiff-Myers,
1992).

Code Switching and Code Mixing

Code switching : alternate usage of languages between
sentences or phrases
Code mixing : alternate usage of languages within a single
sentence
Common in bilinguals.
According to Cheng & Butler (1989), both have been
considered by some researchers as indicators of language
deficiency, inadequacy or deviancy.
Ardila, (2005), mentioned the opposite where both code
switching and code mixing is common and typical at all levels
of language proficiency.

Past Research
Kaufman and Aronoff (1991) : preschool-aged child,
bilingual (L1: Hebrew, L2: English). After being exposed
to English, he began to code-mix and became unwilling
to speak Hebrew. As code-mixing increased, error
patterns in L1 also increased.
Brice and Anderson (1999) : Preschool aged child,
bilingual (L1 : Spanish, L2 : English). 10% of the child
utterance involved code-mixing but no significant errors
were shown in L1.
Nicoladis & Paradis (1995) : studied young
French/English bilinguals have found that children know
when to use L1 or L2 with monolingual adults.

Error Patterns and General Term

Usage
Anderson (1999) described another 2 language
behaviors in Children experiencing Language Loss; 1)
Increased error patterns 2) use of general terms/nondescriptive words.
L1 grammatical errors (verb, articles, and prepositions)
are more frequent as the child became more proficient
in L2. (Anderson, 1999)
Decrease in lexicon as the child lost vocabulary in their
L1 and began to use general terms. (Anderson, 1999)

Research Questions
How do language maintenance or loss trajectories
compare to scores obtained on structured language
tasks?
What child language behaviors are associated with
language maintenance or loss?
What language usage and exposure variables are
associated with language maintenance or loss?

Methodology
Participants
10 preschool-aged children (6girls, 4 boys) of Mexican
immigrant parent recruited at Colorado metro-area healthcare center. (preoperational stage ; thought processes are
developing, vocab expanding, animism)
Purposive sampling method with 3 main criteria to be met :
parents reported no concerns about speech-language
development, children had normal hearing histories and non
of them were receiving special education services.
The children were studied across three time points: 33-37
months of age; 48-49 months of age and 59-61 months of age.

Data collecting method

Demographic Questionnaire
Modified from Matters and Santiagos (1985) Bilingual
Language Proficiency Questionnaire to gain information about
demographic and also the familys language use. Questions
include :
1. What percentage of time does the mother speak Spanish
with the child?
2. What percentage of the time does the father speak Spanish
to the child?
3. What percentage of the time does the child speak Spanish
with his or her parents?
4. Do you have concerns about your childs speech-language

 Spanish Language Assessment Procedure-Third edition.

Spanish language assessment that measures both expressive
vocabulary and the ability to comprehend and use language in
structured academic task.
Items tested :
1. Describe noun function
2. Comprehend noun function
3. Describes differences between objects
4. Makes inferences
5. Predicts outcomes
6. Follows instruction in sequence
7. Retells short stories

 Video Recording
Interactions between the SLP and the children will be
recorded.

Transcription
Interaction from the recordings were transcribed and coded

Videotape behavior scale

Administered to see whether the videotaped session is natural
or not
Parents will watch the recording afterwards to see the
naturalness of the interactions occurred.

Procedure
A bilingual SLP recruited the participants from the area where
mostly Mexican immigrants lived.
SLP completed three home visits at roughly child age of 3
years, years, and 5 years old.
During these visits, the SLP will use the demographic
questionnaire to collect and update the information on each
visit.
Parents were asked to interact with their child on each visit.
And the interactions will be videotaped
At the end of the third visit, SLAP will be administered right
after collecting the videotaped sample.

Findings

 Based on the findings, the researcher had concluded

that 8 children experienced language maintenance and
2 children experienced language loss
Upon checking the SLAP score, the children who
experienced language maintenance scored better than
the children who experienced language loss.

Discussion
How do language maintenance or loss trajectories
compare to scores obtained on Structured Language
Task?
The children in the language maintenance group did well on
Expressive Vocabulary subtest and presented with a range of
skills on the Language subtest.
Both of the children in the language loss group had difficulty
wit Language items.

 What child language behaviors are associated with

language maintenance or loss?
From the research, 3 behaviors were identified ; use of general
term/nondescriptive words, code-mixing and grammatical
errors

What language usage and exposure variables are

associated with language maintenance or loss?
The findings showed that the children in the Spanish-language
maintenance group came from homes that were using Spanish
while the children from the language loss group speaks 90%
more English at home.

Strengths and Weaknesses

This article is compact with additional information
The researcher had done a good job in preserving the basic validity and
the reliability of the research
BUT, the number of participants is low and also the purposive sampling
method restricted the external validity of the research
As mentioned in the research, Parent-child interaction styles across
Hispanic/Latino cultures vary, with parenting behaviors ranging from
nurturing-permissive to authoritative. (This may result in the children not
behaving naturally, thus, the data collected MIGHT not be authentic)
The researcher had done the job well in triangulating the data to further
preserve the basic validity and reliability of the research by triangulating
the methods of data collection to get a more accurate data.

K.THE END.