A manifestation of the bilingual disadvantage in college-level writing
Journal: International Journal of Language Studies (Vol.7, No. 1)Publication Date: 2013-01-01
Authors : Eliza C. ANDERSON Aaron M. VANDERHOFF; Peter J. DONOVICK;
Page : 139-150
Keywords : ;
Abstract
While bilingual ability can add richness to one’s life, bilingualism has been demonstrated to hamper lexical access, verbal fluency and vocabulary size of the targeted language. Although in higher education the quality of one’s writing is a great indicator of success, little research has explored how bilingual disadvantages translate into written expression. The current study utilized the written portion of the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) to compare performance between monolingual and bilingual college students, with the Raven Progressive Matrices providing baseline nonverbal intelligence and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software providing an objective analysis of the written samples. Bilingual students wrote fewer words and tended to receive a lower score on the PIAT than monolingual students, while showing a similar level of competency in other measures of quality of writing. Results suggest that bilinguals may be at a disadvantage on writing tasks that are time constrained.
Other Latest Articles
- Conflicts between prioritizing medical care and profit-making for a Thai hospital: A critical discourse analysis research
- Power distance reduction and positive reinforcement: EFL learners’ confidence and linguistic identity
- The social semiotics of funerary rites in Iran
- You know Korean English? Lexical Priming in short strings of Korean Spoken English
- A contrastive study of determiner usage in EST research articles
Last modified: 2014-01-27 17:01:49