Introducing project QuaLIBi : Quality of Language Input in Bilingual Language
Acquisition
Elise de Bree, Sharon Unsworth, Josje Verhagen (UiL-OTS)
Whilst exposure to two languages is necessary to become bilingual, it is not a guarantee
for successful acquisition; there is considerable individual variation in the extent to which
children raised in a bilingual environment acquire and use their two languages.
Developing sufficient knowledge of the majority language in the preschool years is
particularly important, as failure to do so can affect chances of later educational success.
Various child-internal and child-external factors have been shown to affect bilingual
language development, and these have been investigated from both a pedagogical and
linguistic approach. Project QuaLIBi, a 2-year collaborative project between UiL OTS
(GW) and Pedagogiek (FSW) funded by the University Educational and Learning
Sciences research impulse, draws on both approaches, continuing this line of research by
investigating the role of input quality on bilingual language development using a variety
of experimental techniques, examining data from infants to preschoolers, and assessing
knowledge in a number of linguistic domains, whist at the same time taking into account
individual characteristics such as working memory and SES.
In this talk, we will provide an overview of two part-projects. In Language learning from
variable input by bilingual children, Elise de Bree will use experimental techniques on
word and grammar learning to investigate the impact of non-native input on the learning
process. In Input and output variability in bilingual preschoolers, Sharon Unsworth will
evaluate the impact of exposure to non-native input, along with other quantitative and
qualitative properties of bilingual language input, on early successive bilingual 3-year-old
children's acquisition of vocabulary and morphosyntax. We will present the experimental
set-up and test battery for both projects, and we look forward to receiving your feedback
so that we can improve these!