Developmental Changes in Receptive Vocabulary in Hispanic Bilingual School Children

The present study examined the receptive vocabulary knowledge of mid-socioeconomic-status Hispanic simultaneous bilinguals exposed to English and Spanish (either mostly Spanish or equally English and Spanish) at home since birth. One hundred and two (34 from each grade level) first, third, and sixth graders were tested in both English and Spanish with complementary standardized tests, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-R) and the Test de Vocabulario en Imaenes Peabody (TVIP-H). All functioned comparably well on the Spanish receptive vocabulary test, the performance of first and sixth graders being near the mean for the norming sample. In contrast, English receptive vocabulary performance increased with grade level (p<.05), first graders functioning approximately one standard deviation below the mean and sixth graders near the mean. It appears, therefore, that early simultaneous exposure to two languages does not harm receptive vocabulary development in the language of origin, while it lays the groundwork for gradual improvement in the majority language with formal schooling. Furthermore, within a simultaneous learning circumstance, equal exposure to English and Spanish at home was found to be sufficient for the maintenance of Spanish vocabulary skills and superior to exposure to mostly Spanish at home with respect to English vocabulary development. In addition, consistent with Cummins'(1979, 1984) interdependence hypothesis, performance in one language was found to be the best predictor of performance in the other.