Einbezug von Alter und Sprachkontaktdauer in die Wortschatzdiagnostik bei Mehrsprachigkeit

Abstract

There is a dearth of evaluation approaches for the assessment of expressive vocabulary of multilingual school-aged children that take the heterogeneous conditions of multilingual language acquisition into account. Such evaluation approaches are needed in education and healthcare to provide better orientation which multilingual children have noticeable language problems. This study investigates whether age and length of exposure (LoE) to the environmental language can be considered as components of norms for vocabulary assessments. In a sample of 451 multilingual primary students, age and LoE were significant predictors of environmental vocabulary. Furthermore, differential relationships were found. Children with a shorter LoE differed more in vocabulary from children who were, for example, one year older and one contact year more advanced than children with a longer LoE. Overall, the results indicate that the development of norms of multilingual children that take age and LoE into account could improve the identification of multilingual children with noticeable language problems.