Age of arrival organizes immigrants' language learning environment
Catherine L. Caldwell-Harris
Boston University
Marianna Staroselsky
University of Chicago
Svetlana Smashnaya
Belarussian State Educational University
Nadya Vasilyeva
Northeastern University
Keywords: Second language acquisition, bilingualism, age effects, immigrants, emotions, language
usage, Russian speakers
25 double-spaced text pages, 5 tables, 6 Figures, 11,000 words total.
Address for correspondence:
Catherine L. Caldwell-Harris, Ph.D.
email: charris@bu.edu, telephone: 617 353-2956 fax 617 353-6933
Department of Psychology, Boston University
64 Cummington St., Boston, MA 02215 USA
Abstract
For Russian speaking immigrants to the U.S., age of arrival (AoAr) strongly influenced
frequency of using L1 vs. L2 with family and friends, perceived emotionality of the two languages, and
self-perceived L1 and L2 proficiency. We argue that AoAr so strongly correlated with these variables
because age of immigration is a potent organizing variable: early arrivals have an L1 that is not fully
developed, and they encounter a usage environment that is richer in L1 and poorer in L2. Later arrivals
encounter the opposite. The environmental variables accompanying early arrival set young immigrants
on a path to switching their dominance to L2, putting these learners at risk for less than native speaker
attainment of L1. The environmental variables that accompany later arrival facilitate maintaining L1
dominance, and can lead to lack of native speaker attainment of L2. Dominance that solidifies in the 23 years after immigration then further dictates usage patterns, with usage patterns then being the
proximal mechanism for ultimate proficiency attainments. Immigrant SLA represents a complex
dynamical system which should be studied from a multicausal perspective.
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Age of arrival organizes immigrants' language learning environment
Over the last two decades a central question in second language research has been understanding why
early learners generally acquire a second language to higher proficiency than do older learners. This is
frequently referred to as the question of how and why age of acquisition influences ultimate or long-term
attainment (Birdsong, 1992, 2004; Bongaerts, Summeren, Planken & Schils, 1997; Jia, Aaronson & Wu,
2002; Lardiere, 2006). As often happens when a question is first investigated, early theorists
emphasized single factor explanations, especially a critical period determined by maturation (Johnson &
Newport, 1989; Patkowski, 1980, 1990). A great deal of research on age effects has appeared since
these early papers, with authors noting logical and empirical failings of the single-factor maturational
accounts (Bialystok & Hakuta, 1998; Kellerman, 1995; Schumann, 1978; Snow, 1983; Moyer, 2004). In
the last decade, researchers have increasingly proposed that multiple factors are involved (Bialystok &
Miller, 1999; Birdsong, 2004; Birdsong & Molis, 2001; Flege, Yeni-Komshian & Liu, 1999;
MacWhinney, 2005, and others). In a comprehensive study of immigrants to the U.S., Jia, Aaronson,
and Wu (2002) argued that adults' proficiency in L2 (English) depended not just on age of acquisition,
but on similarity between the first and second language, cultural and usage factors such as home use of
the L2 and frequency of using two languages with peers.
While there is increasing acceptance of the view that multiple factors determine ultimate attainment
of native-like proficiency, an important role for age remains compelling, especially in studies of longterm attainment in immigrants. For immigrants, age of arrival (AoAr) to the host country is frequently
the strongest single factor correlating with outcome variables (such as proficiency; Jia et al., 2003).
When AoAr emerges in multiple regression as the variable able to uniquely explain all or most of the
variance in proficiency, researchers conclude that AoAr is either the single causal factor (Newport &
Johnson, 1989) or the strongest causal factor (Birdsong & Molis, 2001; McDonald, 2000).
Authors who propose alternatives to a strong role for maturation argue that AoAr is confounded
with other factors, such as length of stay, years of education in the host country, social/motivational
factors, and family members' proficiency (Jia & Aaronson, 2003). For example, Flege et al. (1999)
reported that AoAr is not the strongest predictor of ultimate attainment when years of education in the
U.S. is taken into account, and thus argued that AoAr may not be the causal factor. We are sympathetic
with these proposals but feel they do not go far enough because they do not explain why AoAr has such
high correlation with outcome measures. We propose that AoAr be regarded as a powerful "organizing
variable." We define "organizing variable" as one that causes, creates, organizes, or sets into motion a
large set of factors which jointly contribute to an outcome. Age influences myriad environmental
factors including schooling and treatment by peers. Perhaps more importantly, age also influences
3
cognitive and social abilities, including learners' ability and motivation to seek out L1 vs. L2 speaking
friends. A particular factor may exert only weak effects on its own, but aggregated together with other
age-related factors the cumulative impact can be large (see related ideas discussed by Moyer, 2004).
Age of acquisition is likely to be an especially potent organizing variable in the case of immigrants.
The experience of immigration at a young age means being thrust into schools and among L2-speaking
peers before L1 acquisition is complete. Jia and Aaronson (2003) found that within a year of arrival
young immigrants (age 9 and younger) had switched their preferred language to L2, while older
immigrants maintained L1 dominance. Young age is a powerful organizing variable because of
cognitive development and social skills. Young children have less ability and opportunity to choose
their reading material and their friends. In Jia and Aaronson's (2003) study, older immigrants had the
skills and maturity to seek out, even at long distance, L1-speaking peers, while young immigrants ended
up socializing with the L2 children in the immediate neighborhood.
Older immigrants likely have both more motivation and greater ability to locate and maintain
friendships with L1 speakers, and the older they are at time of immigration, the greater their motivation
and friend-finding resources become (MacWhinney, 2005). Jia et al. (2003) documented substantial
L1 language development through late childhood. At immigration, teenage and young adults will usually
have entrenched and highly proficient L1 abilities; indeed, the existing neurological and cognitive
commitments to a first language has long been proposed as a key mechanism underlying age effects
(MacWhinney, 2005). Their awareness of their poor L2 speech can be the motivation to seek out L1speaking friends. Their greater experience of life in the country of origin creates nostalgia for L1 culture
and themes, which is further motivation to seek out L1-speaking friends.
In the current paper, we investigate adults who emigrated to the U.S from Russian speaking
countries (or who were the children of Russian immigrants), along with a comparison group of nonimmigrant Americans who studied Russian as a foreign language. We seek to support and extend the
findings of Jia and Aaronson (2003) that the cognitive, social and linguistic immaturity of early arrivals
reduces the richness of the L1 environment and increases the amount of L2 encountered postimmigration. In contrast, older arrivals have high social agency and entrenched L1. This allows them to
find L1-speakers to maintain their socio-emotional and linguistic connections to their country of origin.
Researchers who advocate brain maturation (e.g., Johnson and Newport, 1989) as the cause of age
effects have focused on young age as the factor that allows native-like attainment of L2. A less well
studied outcome of immigration is failure to maintain native-speaker levels in L1 for those immigrating
in early and middle-childhood (Jia & Aaronson, 2003). Maturational factors can not explain why
4
proficiency is often at risk for early arrivals and thus instead L2 interference combined with cognitive,
social and motivational factors must be posited (Pallier, 2007).
A goal of the current paper is to investigate age effects in both L1 and L2, and to investigate not just
how proficiency changes with AoAr, but to compare AoAr effects on proficiency with AoAr effects on
the aspects of environmental language that are likely to vary with AoAr, such as family vs. friend usage
of L1 and L2, and emotional resonances of the two languages.
Emotional resonances of a language
The "Emotional resonances" of a language are the perceived strength of taboo words and phrases
like "I love you" (Dewaele, 2004, 2008; Pavlenko, 2005). Bilinguals frequently report experiencing
reduced emotion when using their second language (Altarriba & Santiago-Rivera, 1994; Bond & Lai,
1986; Gonzalez-Reigosa, 1976; Marian & Kaushanskaya, 2004; Schrauf, 2000). Self-reports have been
confirmed by electrodermal monitoring, revealing that skin conductance amplitudes are reduced when
bilinguals read or hear emotional words and phrases in their second language (Harris, Aycicegi, &
Gleason, 2003; Harris, 2004). The first language may generally be experienced as more emotional than
the second language because emotional regulation systems co-evolve with language (Bloom &
Beckwith, 1989), or it may be that the contexts of early childhood is generally more emotional than the
contexts of later childhood, because of bonding with caregivers (Harris, Gleason & Aycicegi, 2006).
The first language is not always the most emotional (Aycicegi-Dinn & Caldwell-Harris, 2009;
Dewaele, 2006; Schrauf and Durazo-Arvizu, 2006). In Dewaele and Pavlenko's (2001) web
questionnaire, respondents downgraded the illocutionary strength of L1 taboo/swear words, anger and
the expression "I love you" if L1 was no longer the dominant language (Dewaele 2004, 2006, 2008). For
each of these types of emotional expressions, multiple factors influenced how multilinguals evaluated
the emotional force of these expressions in their different languages. The most consistently relevant
were, in order of strength of effect: language dominance, proficiency, usage frequency, age of
acquisition and acquisition context (naturalistic vs. instructed).
Harris et al. (2006) named their framework for predicting which language is more emotional the
"emotional contexts of learning hypothesis." Drawing on past research in developmental psychology and
language acquisition, this theoretical framework proposes that language comes to be experienced as
emotional to the extent that it is learned and used in emotional contexts. Finding how perceived
emotionality of L1 vs. L2 varies with AoAr, proficiency and usage factors will allow us to support or
quality this hypothesis.
5
In the current paper, we investigated how judgments of emotional resonances correlated with AoAr,
family/friends usage, and self-reported proficiency. In particular, enjoyment of using the native language
with friends could contribute to seeking out L1-speaking friends, which then helps maintain both L1
proficiency and the strong emotional resonances in L1. Our goal was thus to identify interacting
variables that mutually support each other and lead to acquisition of L2 and/or maintenance of L1.
Studying Russian-English bilinguals
The current research builds heavily on the questionnaire-based studies of Dewaele (2004, 2006,
2008) and Pavlenko (2005). Their sample reflects the European experience of bi- and multi-lingualism,
including respondents who ranged from having only classroom exposure, to those who lived in or
moved between polyglot communities and countries with several national languages. Their web-based
questionnaire resulted in a large numbers of respondents, which conferred considerable statistical power,
which was useful in discerning broad patterns in their heterogeneous sample. The current study focuses
on bilingualism in the American context of immigration. We studied only Russian-English bilinguals to
benefit from cultural and linguistic homogeneity in our sample.
Russian immigrants to the U.S. and children of immigrants present a useful addition to the literature
on SLA in U.S. immigrants for several reasons. Many of the existing studies either focus on an L1 that
is very dissimilar to English, such as Mandarin (Jia et al., 2002; Jia & Aaronson, 2003), Korean
(Johnson & Newport, 1989), or Vietnamese (McDonald, 2000), or very similar, such as Spanish
(Birdsong & Molis, 2001) or Dutch (Kellerman, 1995). Russian is between these extremes in its
linguistic similarity to English, having grammatical structures and vocabulary which are less similar to
English than Dutch and Spanish, but more similar than Asian languages. It also has a writing system
which has both shared and different letters from English. The Russian immigrants we studied lived in
the Boston area where they are highly economically successful and well integrated into the dominant
culture, while still numerous enough for clusters of visibly Russian-oriented shops and restaurants.
However, we will be able to draw correlations between AoAr and self-reported proficiency to the
Russian-English bilinguals studied by McElree, Jia and Litvak (200), whose sample was broadly similar
to ours.
We expected young arrivals to mostly have L2-English as their dominant language, consistent with
SLA studies of young immigrants (Birdsong & Molis, 2001; Jia & Aaronson, 2003). Many of them
would likely identify themselves as bi-cultural, and we wanted to be able to determine where they more
resembled their monocultural, monolingual English-speaking peers, and where they resembled the
Russian-oriented older arrivals. We included respondents who had been born in the U.S. to immigrant
6
parents if Russian had been spoken in the home while growing up. A monolingual English comparison
group could not be asked whether English or Russian felt more emotional. We thus included native
English speakers who studied Russian as adults so that they would be able to answer the same questions
as our bilinguals about whether English or Russian felt more emotional, and to obtain a different
perspective on Russian-English bilingualism,
Method
Participants and procedure
Recruitment. Russian-English bilingual speakers were recruited from the Boston University
campus and the greater Boston area communities via flyers, word of mouth, and internet postings on
Craigslist and Facebook. We desired a naturalistic sample and thus included everyone who asked to be
in the study who identified themselves as fitting either of the following two descriptions: (1) Fluent in
both Russian and English with Russian learned in childhood, or (2) studied Russian as a foreign
language as a teenager or later for at least 2 years and judged themselves to have reasonable listening
comprehension of basic Russian. This second group was also recruited by asking Russian language
instructors at several colleges to identify their best students. Demographic and learning history variables
for the three groups in the sample (Table 1) reflect the naturally occurring characteristics of persons in
the greater Boston area, mainly associated with a college campus, who had self-identified as having at
least good comprehension and who wanted to be in a study of Russian-English bilinguals.
Constructing two categories of native Russian speakers. Those who had learned Russian in
childhood were categorized according to age of acquisition of English, defined as age of immigration to
the U.S., following Johnson & Newport (1989) and Birdsong and Molis (2001). We labeled those who
had immigrated before age 10 as "Early bilinguals" (N=23) and those who arrived at 10 or older "Late
arrival in the U.S." (N=21). This cutoff is essentially arbitrary and using a slightly earlier or later cutoff
does not change the pattern of results significantly. Although other researchers favor puberty (roughly
age 13) as the preferred cutoff because of earlier arguments for a critical period in second language
acquisition (Lenneberg, 1967), there is no reliable evidence of a brain-based changed in language
acquisition occurring with puberty (Elman, et al., 1996). We adopted a cutoff which emphasized the
critical socializing role of education in the host country. Russian speakers who immigrate at age 10-13
have had a substantial Russian educational experience and exposure to life in a Russian speaking
country which makes them more similar to those who immigrate in the teen years. Choosing age 13 as a
cutoff means that these individuals would be classified with bilinguals who were born in the U.S. In
contrast, choosing age 7 as a cutoff would err in the opposite direction, because it would categorize 7
7
and 8 year-olds with those who immigrate in adulthood. Persons who immigrate at age 8-9 will have
almost all of their schooling and substantial peer socialization in the U.S., making them a poor fit with
those who immigrate at older ages. Our cutoff of age 9 for the "early learning" group is consistent with
the finding of Jia and Aaronson (2003) that immigrants who arrived at age 9 or younger switched their
language preference to English, while those who arrived at age 10 or later maintained their L1 as their
preferred language. Eight respondents grew up speaking a language in addition to Russian, having
immigrated from the former Soviet republics outside of Russia. These languages were: Belorussian (3),
Ukrainian, Kazakh, Mongolian, Azerbaijan or Farsi (see preliminary analyses for the differences
between the bilinguals and trilinguals).
The third group to be studied consisted of American individuals who learned Russian as a foreign
language in a classroom setting. Many had additional sources of expertise beyond classes, such as BA’s
or masters in Russian (4), travel to Russia (5), Peace Corps in Russia (1), certified interpreter (1) and
Russian- speaking wife (1). No participants reported a hearing, language, or learning disability.
Procedure. Respondents completed the questionnaire sitting in a laboratory room with a research
assistant sitting near by to clarify questions. The questionnaire was followed by an interview/debriefing
with one of the authors or an assistant. Most respondents than participated in a study of electrodermal
responsiveness to emotional phrases, described elsewhere (Staroselsky, Caldwell-Harris & Vasilyeva in
preparation). Respondents volunteered, received course credit for Introductory Psychology, or received
$20.
Materials
Questions were designed to assess three broad domains (see summary and item descriptions in
Table 2).
Overall learning history. Respondents answered questions about languages spoken, perceived
dominance, ages of first exposure to each language, immigration dates and overseas travel and other
demographic and language learning questions similar to those in Dewaele and Pavlenko (2001) and
Marian et al. (2007). Proficiency in both English and Russian was an important question for us, but it is
difficult to find objective tests in both these languages such that scores on the two tests can be
compared. Self-report measures are known to correlate highly with linguistic measures of proficiency
(Kroll et al., 2002; Jia et al., 2003; Marian et al., 2007) and have been used successfully in prior studies
(Dewaele, 2006; Bialystok & Hakuta, 1998; Chiswick & Miller, 2008). It is indeed unclear whether
objective tests are necessarily superior to self-report, since objective tests have the disadvantage of
individual differences test-taking ability, text anxiety, and frequently display considerable measurement
8
variance. In Jia et al's study of European immigrants, there was no correlation between AoAr and
grammar test scores. In contrast, in the McElree et al study of Russian-English bilinguals, self-report of
both English and Russian proficiency showed strong age effects. We thus decided to rely on
individuals’ verbal SAT scores (which were available for 47 participants), and self-reported proficiency.
A 1-7 scale was employed (7=native speaker, 6=very good, 5=good, 4=fair, 3=adequate, 2=limited,
1=little, 0=none), with separate measures for listening comprehension, speaking, reading and writing.
We then used the mean of these four values as our overall measure of proficiency, following Jia et al
(2003). A reason to take the mean of the four ratings is that the mean of 4 separate introspective
measures is likely to be more reliable than a single introspective measure, because the respondent is
making 4 self-assessments of their proficiency. Bilinguals who are at the edge of native-speaker
proficiency may feel confident about giving themselves an assessment of "7" for listening
comprehension, but will select a 6 or 5 for reading and writing. The average of the 4 measures is thus
likely to be a nuanced reflection of respondents' perception of their overall language proficiency.
Emotional intensity. Questions asked about respondents' experiences with the three domains of
anger expressions, positive emotional expressions and lying, following the content of items used in
Dewaele and Pavlenko (2001). Relative emotional intensity of English vs. Russian verbal expresses was
assessed with questions such as: "When you express anger, which language is stronger for you in
meaning?" and "I feel emotionally uncomfortable when I am telling a lie in..." (response options ranged
form Only English to Only Russian, see Table 2). These same response options were used to measure
inner speech, with questions like "When I have angry thoughts they are in..." Usage preference was
measured with questions such as: "What language do you prefer for expressing anger?" Here, response
was with a checklist, scored as 1 for Russian, 0 for English, .5 for "No difference." As these examples
show, we did not use Likert scales. While Likert scales have many advantages, one disadvantage is
individual differences in response bias: some individuals may have a tendency to respond overall
strongly or weakly. Our questions explicitly required respondents to compare the relative emotional
force of their two primary languages. This means that we will not be able to identify whether some
individuals felt emotion equally strongly in their two languages vs. equally weakly. We will simply
know that a mid-point value on the English<->Russian scale indicates that the two languages were
perceived as having similar emotional resonances. Because perception of relative emotional strength
was our goal, obtaining a single scale was appropriate for the current project, and resulted in a relatively
short questionnaire and streamlined statistical analysis.
Frequency and context of use. Respondents were asked to estimate the percentage of time using
each of their languages with family members, friends and in personal/intimate relations, both currently
9
and in the past, following Marian et al. (2007). For the bilingual speakers, the estimates for Russian and
English summed to 100%, but because the questions were simple percentage estimates, their sum was
sometimes below 100% for the small number of trilingual speakers, especially for estimates concerning
use with family.
Results
Standardization of responses and preliminary analysis. Responses were scored from 0
(indicating Always/Only English) to 1 (Always/Only Russian) (see Table 2), to allow percentage scales
checklist scales to yield means between 0 and 1. In a preliminary analysis, participants responded
similarly to all anger items and all positive emotion items, regardless of whether the question concerned
emotional intensity, usage preference or inner speech. This was confirmed by high Cronbach alpha
scores when these different items were treated as comprising a scale (see alpha values listed in Table 2).
For this reason, the averages for responses about anger, positive emotional expressions and lying were
treated as uni-construct scales, meaning that emotional intensity, usage preference and inner speech
jointly contributed to these scales. For convenience we will refer to these as the emotional intensity
scales. Note that emotional intensity and usage preference do not invariably co-occur. In Dewaele's
(2004) questionnaire of multilinguals' swear word usage, taboo phrases and curses were judged to be
stronger in the more proficient language, but respondents sometimes named a different language as the
preferred language for cursing. Dewaele (2004) pointed out that the speakers' usage preference
depended on whether they wanted to feel the full illocutionary force of the swear word.
No gender differences were obtained on any of the measures (all p > .2), including basic
demographic factors as well as the usage and emotionality scales. Gender will thus not be discussed
further. T-tests were conducted to determine if any of the measures varied by bilingual/trilingual status
for the Late English group (N=7 trilingual, N=14 bilingual). There was no overall difference in the age
of arrival but the trilinguals had immigrated more recently, having a length of stay of 3.7 years
compared to Bilinguals' 11.2 years); t(19)=3.3, p < .01. Trilinguals reported less use of Russian with
family (.65 vs. .95), t(19)=2.7, p < .02, because they used their third language with family. Because the
bilinguals and trilinguals were very similar on the remaining measures (all p > .2), we generally grouped
trilingual and bilingual speakers together in subsequent analyses except analyses which related to family
usage.
10
Differences in the three learner groups
One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed significant main effects of group for each of the
ten scales. F(1,61) values ranged from 4.3 to 64.1, indicating substantial statistical power. Compared to
other groups, for late arrivals, emotional expressions felt stronger in Russian, and they reported higher
frequency of use for Russian and valuing of Russian culture compared to the other two learner groups.
The striking pattern in all cases is that the early English bilinguals were numerically intermediate
between the late English bilinguals and Russian foreign language (RFL) learners. In addition, the
groups differed reliably in verbal SAT scores (highest score=800): Russian foreign language learners,
718, early English bilinguals, 675, late English bilinguals, 585; all pair wise comparisons different, p <
.05.
The graphs in Figures 1-3 were designed to depict the "in-between" status of the early arrivals
Fishers PLSD was used to identify whether the intermediate group (early arrivals) differed (p < .05)
from either or both the other two groups, and these are noted in the titles of each panel in the figure. The
scale for "Dating Russian partner" was not graphed, but the early and late arrivals patterned together and
differed from the Russian Foreign Language learners.
Figure 1 graphs the three emotional intensity scales. Scores for the late arrivals are between .5 and
.6 (values of 0 indicating English is always more emotional, 1 indicates Russian always more
emotional), indicating that respondents judged English and Russian to have roughly equal emotional
intensity, with a slight tilt toward Russian for anger expressions. Early bilinguals patterned with the late
arrivals, and indeed were not significantly different from them, but did differ from the Russian Foreign
Language Learners.
Figure 2 graphs the three frequencies of use scales. The early bilinguals resembled the late arrivals
in frequently using Russian with family. Not surprisingly, the RFL learners reported minimal use of
Russian with family. For use of Russian with friends, the early arrivals were intermediate between the
other two groups, indicating low use of Russian with peers. They had slightly higher use of Russian in
personal relations (.30), similar to the rate of the Russian Foreign Language Learners (.22).
The RFL's report of use of Russian in personal relationships may seem higher than one would
expect given the very low report of use of Russian with friends (compare the middle and right-hand
panels in Figure 2). The questions underlying this scale asked about percent of time Russian is used in
current personal relationships; a separate question asked about use of Russian in past relationships.
Several of the RFL learners reported having dated a Russian speaker in the recent past (and one had a
Russian-speaking spouse). Two respondents who had previously dated Russian speakers gave values of
11
25% for frequency of past use of Russian in relationships, while the respondent with a Russian-speaking
spouse listed that Russian was used in 80% of his intimate relations. An additional question in the scale
was: "When I have warm thoughts they are in.." (response format was the Russian-English scale
described in Table 2). Two respondents choose "usually Russian" and one chose "Only Russian" (this
was the certified Russian interpreter). These reports indicate that use of a foreign language for intimate
relations can have a different status than use with friends, with substantial inner speech even in the
absence of frequent in-person conversations. The possibility of using the foreign language for intimatepartner talk can bolster the personal significance of the language and contribute to maintenance, as
theorists have noted (Pavlenko, 2005). While the habits of foreign language learners has inherent
interest, our primary point here is simply that the early arrivals are sufficiently integrated into a nonRussian- speaking social life that their use of Russian in personal relationships resembles that of Russian
foreign language learners and contrasts with late arrivals.
Figure 3 graphs two of the three scales about language/cultural values. The early arrivals resembled
the late arrivals in valuing Russian language culture equally to English and American culture, as
indicated by the mean scale values of .5. In contrast, the early arrivals patterned with the Russian
foreign language learners by identifying with American culture (values of .35 and .27, with 0 being
"strongly American" and 1 indicating "strongly Russian"). Note that even the late arrivals were
intermediate on the scale (.47) meaning they identified with both cultures. We also plotted an additional
usage scale, the use of each language for thinking and problem soling. Here the early arrivals differed
significantly from both of the other two groups, using English for problem solving more than late
bilingual but less than Russian Foreign Language Learners.
Graphing age effects
Visual depiction of how proficiency, usage and emotionality vary as a function of age of arrival can
provide powerful clues to life-span changes in bilingual speakers, even in a cross-sectional sample such
as the one in the current study. Figure 4 shows that proficiency in L1-Russian rose sharply with
increasing AoA, but by arrival age of 14 and later, respondents’ judged themselves to have Russian at
native-speaker levels. Proficiency in L2 English was at native speaker levels for AoAr until age 8, and
was reduced for AoArs 10-15, with no further decline for later arrivals, who judged their English to be
close to "very good." This pattern of very good long term attainment for AoArs of older than 15 is
consistent with results from grammatical judgment tests for European learners of L2-English (Birdsong
& Molis, 2001; Jia et al., 2002). Age-trajectories for the two languages cross at age 11, the AoAr for
respondents who perceived their languages to be roughly equal in proficiency.
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Figure 5 depicts frequency of use of Russian with friends and with family. Use with family rises
steeply as age-of-arrival varies from 0 to age 9, with a peak at "Always Russian" from age AoAr of age
9 and later. Reported frequency of use of Russian with friends is low for respondents who arrived in
childhood and rises linearly, reaching high levels for the latest arrivals, consistent with findings about
greater L1 use with peers for older immigrants in Jia and Aaronson (2003). Because the trilingual
speakers (those who immigrated from the former Soviet Republics) reported lower use of Russian with
family, their data is plotted separately (see open circles and squares).
Respondents generally judged anger and positive expression to be similar in emotional strength, as
shown by values in the midrange of the scale from 0 (English stronger) to 1 (Russian stronger).
Perceived emotionality of anger in Russian increased slightly with AoArs ranging from birth to age 11,
but thereafter was flat, while ratings for positive emotional expressions increased steadily across the
entire range of AoAr in our sample. Respondents with younger AoArs judged anger expressions to feel
stronger in Russian than English, but positive emotional expressions were judged to feel stronger in
English. This pattern was absent for those who arrived later.
Visually comparing age effects in Figure 4 (AoAr and proficiency) to Figure 6 (AoAr and
emotionality) powerfully suggests the greater age-dependence of proficiency compared to emotionality.
To show how closely emotionality tracks proficiency, Figure 6 also plots “Russian dominance”, which
indicates Russian proficiency relative to English proficiency. This is highly correlated with AoAr
(r=.78).
In the next section, we report correlations and statistical significance for the variables plotted in
Figures 4-6.
Correlations between scales
Table 3 presents correlations between proficiency variables, the family/friends frequency of use
scales, emotional intensity scales, and learning history variables (age of arrival in the U.S. and length of
stay; excluding Russian Foreign Language Learners). Valuing Russian language/culture, self-identity
and dating scales had weaker correlations than these and are thus excluded for succinctness. The table is
organized so that correlations with Russian proficiency can be read down the first column, and
correlations with a second key variable, age of arrival in the U.S. (AoAr), can be read across the bottom
row. Only significant correlations (p < .05) are displayed, and strong correlations (greater than r=.55)
are outlined with boxes.
The strongest correlations occurred between age of arrival and the two proficiency variables (r=.73
for Russian and r=-.78 for English). These correlations are similar in magnitude to those reported by
13
McElree et al. (2000) in their study of 26 native-Russian teens and young adults who immigrated to the
U.S. between ages 7 to 22 (their correlations were r=.68 and r=-.70 for Russian and English
respectively). This is consistent with prior findings that AoAr plays a strong role in ultimate attainment
(Flege, Yeni-Komshian & Liu, 1999; Birdsong and Molis, 2001). Verbal SAT scores correlated with
AoA at only r= -.35, with the relatively weak correlation likely due to the fact that SAT scores were not
available for those older than age 20. Length of stay (LoS) (which is current age minus AoAr) was not
as highly correlated with other variables as was age of arrival. The only case where LoS had a
correlation as strong as AoAr was frequency of family usage of Russian. The later the age of
immigration, and the shorter the length of stay, the more respondents used Russian with family.
The other case of decoupled LoS and AoAr concerns the emotional intensity of lying in Russian.
Perceived strength of lies in Russian was weaker with longer LoS, but did not vary with AoAr. But the
"Expressing lies" measure was an exceptional one in our data set, because it was not strongly correlated
with any of our variables. It was only weakly correlated with Russian proficiency, family Russian usage
and length of stay.
Later AoAr was associated with feeling emotions more strongly in Russian for positive emotions
(r=.56) and anger (r=.42), but not for lying. These are stronger associations with age than were found in
Dewaele's (2008) “I love you” study, presumably because age of acquisition is a stronger organizing
factor for the immigrants studied in the current paper, compared to the heterogeneous, predominantly
European and multilingual learners studied by Deawele (2008). Expressing positive emotions in
Russian was more highly correlated with frequency of usage with friends (r=.61) than with family
(r=.50), while expressing angry emotions is more highly correlated with usage with family (r=.58) than
with friends (r=.50). The association of anger with family may be the reason that expressions of anger
are not as tightly linked to AoAr (r=.42), probably because Russian usage with family is not tightly
linked to AoA. In contrast, the associations of positive emotions with friends means that positive
emotions are strongly associated with AoAr (r=.56). Russian immigrants to the U.S. who continue to
use Russian with friends are those who report experiencing positive emotional expressions as feeling
strong in Russian.
In an exploratory analysis, we categorized all bilingual participants according to whether they had a
Russian-speaking romantic partner or spouse (8 reported "yes", 36 "no"). Those who reported "yes"
were older (mean age 30 vs. 22), had greater AoAr (18.7 vs. 9.7 years), reported lower English
proficiency (5.8 vs. 6.5), and valued dating a Russian speaker (.75 vs. .48). They reported greater use of
Russian in personal relations (.61 vs. .37), with friends (.62 vs. .35), and had higher scores on the
positive emotional expressions scale (.63 vs. .40), all ps < .05. It is likely that having a Russian14
speaking partner or spouse plays a substantial role in the strong association between AoAr and judging
positive emotional expressions to feel stronger in Russian than English.
Multiple regression analyses
Multiple regression to predict Russian and English proficiency was performed with predictors AoAr
and frequency of using Russian with friends, the two highest correlates in Table 3. Because these two
variables are highly correlated (r=.87), they can be understood as jointly explaining variance in
proficiency. When entered into multiple regression, the variable "use with friends" emerged as the sole
significant predictor for Russian proficiency, t(61)=3.5, p < .001, accounting for 60% of the variance.
The sole significant factor of English proficiency was age of immigration to the U.S., t(61)=3.4, p <
.005, accounting for 53% of the variance.
Table 4 lists the correlations between each of the three emotionality variables and the other
predictors separately for the early English and late English bilingual speakers. AoAr was not a
significant correlate, presumably because of the restricted range that results by subdividing data
according to A0Ar groups. Russian proficiency was the strongest predictor of strength of angry
emotions in Russian for early arrivals, while low English proficiency was the strongest predictor for
emotions feeling strong in Russian.
To extract further generalizations about emotionality and our measures, factor analysis was
employed to reduce scales to a single factor which could then be used in multiple regression. The lefthand panel of Table 5 lists the factor reductions for the predictor variables (e.g., "Usage" is the reduction
from family usage and friends usage; "Proficiency" is the reduction from the English and Russian
proficiency measures). The 3 emotionality scales (anger, positive emotion, and expressing lies) were
reduced to a single factor, "emotionality," which accounted for 45% of the variance in the original 3
scales for the Late English bilinguals and 52% for the Early English bilinguals. A high percentage of
variance captured by a single factor indicates that factor-reduction was performed on a set of correlated
variables.
For each of the two bilingual learner groups, stepwise multiple regression was run with the three
predictors and the dependent variable of emotionality. As shown in the right-hand panel of Table 5,
usage was the single best predictor of emotionality for the Late English group, while proficiency was the
best predictor for the Early English group.
15
Discussion
Our main question concerned how age of arrival influenced frequency of using L1-Russian with
friends vs. family, relative strength of emotional expressiveness, and perceived proficiency in the two
languages.
Self-reported proficiency correlated strongly with age of arrival in the U.S. (AoAr), r=.73 for L1Russian, and r=-.78 for L2-English. Early arrivals (before age 10) rated themselves as having native
speaker ability in L2-English, while later arrivals (after age 15) rated themselves as having native
speaker abilities in L1-Russian; those with AoAr between 10 and 15 reported mixed dominance.
Classic studies of age effects in SLA for immigrants have focused on how late immigration reduces
long-term attainment of L2 (e.g., Birdsong & Molis, 2001; Newport & Johnson, 1989). A different
result was found in the current study: early immigration reduced long-term proficiency in L1. The late
arrivals maintained native-speaking abilities in L1-Russian, but also reported high ability in L2-English,
although less than native-speaker ability. This pattern resembles prior research using grammaticality
judgments to measure both L1 and L2 proficiency for immigrants to the U.S. from European countries,
although the correlations using self-report measures are higher than has been found with grammaticality
judgments (e.g., (Jia et al., 2002; McElree et al., 2000),
Compared to perceived proficiency, emotionality was less strongly related to AoAr, although
correlations were still substantial, r=.42 for anger and r=.56 for positive emotions. The greater agedependence of proficiency is apparent by comparing Figure 4 (AoAr and proficiency) to Figure 6 (AoAr
and emotionality) reveals. Figure 6 also reveals that relative proficiency (i.e., Russian judged better
than English) was highly correlated with AoAr. The judgment that emotional expressions felt stronger
in Russian closely tracked the judgment that Russian proficiency was better than English proficiency.
We thus conclude that judging emotions to feel stronger in L1 than L2 is tightly linked to the relative
proficiency of the two languages.
Interesting patterns emerged in the association of anger with family usage (r=.58), positive emotions
with friend usage (r=.61), and how usage frequencies were linked to arrival age. To explain this, we will
first discuss usage frequency patterns. As shown in Figure 3 and Table 3, frequency of Russian usage
with friends increased with arrival age (r=.87) more strongly than did frequency of Russian usage with
family (r=.61) Most respondents generally reported high uses of Russian with family (usually meaning
their parents), but only late arrivals sad they frequency used Russian with friends. Family usage was
generally high across all but the youngest arrivals, presumably because it is learners' parents who control
family Russian usage. Most of the respondents indicated that their parents preferred using L1 with their
16
children. We infer that parents' preference established this as the household custom, regardless of
whether children were age 8 or age 20.
The exception to high Russian use with family occurred for respondents who were born in the U.S.
or arrived before age 6 (see Figure 5). The average frequency of Russian use for these young arrivers
was only 61%, compared to 86% for AoAr age 6 and older. Children born in the U.S. or arriving early
are introduced into the American school system and grow up with English as their dominant language.
They may thus Americanize the discourse in their households, leading to mixed language use within the
home. An alternative explanation is that more English was spoken in the home because the parents of
early arrivals were themselves younger and thus open to pursuing high L2 proficiency. Regardless of the
explanation, the reported usage patterns support Jia and Aaronson's (2003) conclusion that early arrivers
grow up in a richer L2 and poorer L1 environment than do later arrivers.
In contrast to the pattern of consistently high family usage for arrivals greater than age 10,
frequency of using L1-Russian with friends increased linearly with AoAr (see Figures 2 and 5). The
striking correlation between friends usage and AoAr (r=.87) has several provocative implications.
Using Russian with friends correlated with feeling that positive emotions were strong in Russian, which
also correlated with AoAr. For later arrivals, high use of L1 with friends could maintain high
proficiency, protecting against the L1 proficiency decline observed for early arrivals. Feeling that
positive emotions are strong in L2 may then be a motivation to seek out L2-speaking friends, which then
increases proficiency, resulting in a nexus of reinforcing factors to maintain high L2 proficiency.
Confirming the proposal that friend-usage is an L1 proficiency protector for immigrants awaits
future research. However, the current data does allow us to extend the findings of Jia and Aaronson
(2003) to an older age group: older immigrants have both more motivation and greater ability to locate
and maintain friendships with L1 speakers, and the older they are at time of immigration, the greater
their motivation and friend-finding resources become. One of the reasons for this is that at immigration
teenagers and young adults will usually have entrenched and highly proficient L1 abilities (see
discussion in MacWhinney, 2005). Their awareness of their poor L2 speech can be the motivation to
seek out L1-speaking friends. Their greater experience of life in the country of origin creates nostalgia
for L1 culture and themes, which is further motivation to seek out L1-speaking friends, with friends then
influencing judgments that positive emotional expressions feel strong in Russian. Support for this in the
current data was early arrivers' greater identification with American culture compared to later arrivers.
17
How arrival age can dictate L1 proficiency and from there, usage patterns
We argue that AoAr reliably influences L2 proficiency because of the way it determines L1
proficiency, and L1 proficiency determines family and friend usage patterns, as explained above. We
propose the following broad (and approximate) phases for immigrants to the U.S.
AoAr Early childhood (birth to age 5): These very early arrivals rapidly become dominant in L2English and this alters household dynamics, leading parents and siblings to use more L2, resulting in a
richer L2 and poorer L1 environment in the home. (Many early arrivals said parents only spoke Russian
in the home but that they responded to parents’ Russian with English and use English with siblings.)
Lacking an environment featuring exclusive L1 use, and experiencing rapid cognitive and social
development in an L2-English world, these individuals become English native speakers and their ability
in their parents' language ranges from limited to a maximum ability of only "good."
AoAr Middle childhood (age 6 to 9): L1 is firmly the language of the home, but L2-English is the
language used with friends. L2 becomes the dominant language and because of the restrictive context of
use of L1, L1 is usually not attained to native-speaker levels
AoAr late childhood (age 10-15). For this group, L1 is not just the language of home, but also a
language that can be used with L1-speaking friends in the new country and for maintaining connection
to the country of origin. But L2 will be the language of schooling in at least some of the teen years, and
will also rapidly become the main language of peer socialization. These individuals have the best
opportunity to feel they are native speakers in both of their languages. In adulthood they will have high
proficiency in both of their languages and will regard both languages as having strong emotional
resonances, because both languages have an emotional context of use: the emotional context of use with
family for L1, and the emotional context of peer friendships for L2.
AoAr young adulthood (age 16-30): L1 will remain the language used with family members and
may remain the dominant language for at least a decade post-immigration, or even for life (see Bahrick,
1992). It will also frequently be the language with the greatest emotional resonances. Individuals will
seek out chances to socialize with other L1 speakers, and the number of L2-speaking friend will
diminish with greater age of arrival. Depending on idiosyncratic personal factors, such as an L2 or L1
speaking spouse/partner and proportion of L1 speaking friends, these individuals will attain greater or
lesser proficiency in L2. 1
1
Of course, these idiosyncratic factors could exist in all 3 groups. Younger immigrants may marry an
L1 speaking spouse or may immigrate to an L1 rich community,
18
Factors influencing perceived emotional resonances
The thesis that the first language is experienced as more emotional is powerful, because it fits with
contemporary neuroscience ideas about the primacy of events from early childhood and the crucial role
of brain development. In the current study, perceived emotionality did vary consistently by AoAr, but,
we argue, was not caused or influenced by brain maturation. Instead, emotionality tracked usage patterns
and proficiency, which are themselves powerfully sensitive to AoAr. The current study is thus consistent
with findings of Dewaele (2004, 2006, 2008) and Pavlenko (2005) which found that usage factors,
proficiency and contexts of acquisition were more important than age of acquisition for judgments of
strength of emotional expressiveness. This is also consistent with the "emotional context of learning"
hypothesis, which proposes that language comes to be experienced as emotional when it is used and
learned in emotional contexts (Harris et al., 2006).
Perceived emotionality differed from relative proficiency in the case of judgments about angry vs.
positive expressions. Angry expressions in L1-Russian felt stronger than positive expressions for young
arrivals, but these judgments reversed for older arrivals. The following three broad age periods are
offered as a summary of the patterns in Figure 6.
AoAr Childhood (birth to 9): Positive emotional expressions were perceived to be weaker in L1Russian than L2-English. Angry expressions felt stronger in L1 than did the weakly felt positive
expressions.
AoAr Late childhood and teen years (10-20): Tracking relative proficiency, these respondents
experienced Russian angry and positive expressions to be more powerful than did the younger arrivals.
Like the younger arrivals, angry expressions felt stronger in Russian than did positive expressions.
AoAr 22 years and older: Positive emotional expressions felt substantially stronger in Russian than
English, such that positive expressions were felt by this group to feel as strong in Russian as angry
expressions.
Why would family L1 language usage be correlated with experiencing angry expressions as feeling
strong in L1? We infer that using L1-Russian in the limited context of family promotes easy retrieval of
emotionally charged angry expressions but not positive expressions. In contrast, using Russian
extensively with friends promotes easy retrieval of emotionally charged positive expressions. Social
interactions among family vs. friends differs: the former is marked by hierarchical, authority-based
relations, and the latter with egalitarian, voluntary relationships. Hierarchal relations with parents
include the usage of childhood reprimands, found to elicit high skin conductance responses in a first
language but not a second language (Harris et al, 2003, 2006). Skin conductance responses to positive
19
expressions were found to be equally strong in a first and second language (Staroselsky et al., in
preparation).
Different factors influenced emotionality for early vs. later arrivals. As revealed by multiple
regression following factor reduction, for later arrivals, usage patterns most strongly influenced the
judgment that Russian felt more emotional than English. For early arrivals, the key variable was
proficiency. Both effects may reflect the necessity of having good proficiency in order to experience
strong emotions in a language. The early arrivals had highly variable proficiency in L1-Russian, and the
ones who had good proficiency reported feeling that Russian was more emotional than English. For the
older arrivals, their proficiency in both languages was generally high, meaning restricted range for the
proficiency variable. Once proficiency is high, then frequency of use is what determines perceived
emotionality.
Age of acquisition as an organizing variable
In Johnson & Newport's (1989) seminal study of age effects in immigrants' second language
acquisition, the authors were careful to document that it was age of arrival in the host country rather than
length of stay which was most predictive of ultimate proficiency. Subsequent publications demonstrated
the irrelevance of length of stay for proficiency, thus appearing to bolster maturational accounts,
including the idea of a critical/sensitive period for language acquisition. Twenty years later, we can
speculate about what kind of ideas about language learning would result in this inference. It suggests
binary thinking of the following sort:

LOS as the strongest predictor of proficiency is consistent with language learning occurring via
immersion in a speech community.

Since LOS isn't the strongest predictor, then language learning doesn't simply happen as an
automatic result of exposure.

If exposure isn’t sufficient, this means that language development is critically dependent on a
special maturational period in development.
The two alternate concepts of language learning hinted at above resemble the innate language
acquisition device developed by Chomsky (1965) and the behaviorist view of gradual accruement with
practice (Skinner, 1957). If these are the only two possibilities, then the either-or reasoning italicized
above is logical. However, from a contemporary perspective, learning a second language after early
childhood is understood to be influenced by environmental demands and individual motivation
(Schumann, 1978, 1997). Contemporary theorists now make different inferences when confronted with
empirical data that LoS is mostly irrelevant and that AoAr is crucial. Instead of concluding that age
20
effects must result from brain-based maturational changes, researchers now see that LoS is mostly
irrelevant precisely because we understand that passive exposure is irrelevant to language learning.
Contemporary researchers can understand that AoAr is so potent a predictor of ultimate proficiency
because environment L1/L2 richness and language-learning motivation are tightly determined by agerelated cognition and social skills (Moyer, 2004; Jia et al., 2002)
The current data demonstrate that frequency and contexts of L1 and L2 use are important
determinants of long term proficiency. We argued that AoAr has its strong effects on ultimate outcome
because age of immigration powerfully organizes many variables related to frequency and contexts of
use, from the fragility of the L1 for young arrivals to the need to maintain self-identity via socialization
with L1 speakers among older arrivals.
Theorists have long discounted frequency of use explanations
because of the phenomena of fossilization, meaning lack of improvement despite years of exposure (see
chapters in Han & Odlin, 2005). But adults whose L2 fossilizes are generally also older arrivals who use
L2 in restricted contexts, continuing to use L1 for their emotionally meaningful conversations with
friends and family.
Future research
The bicultural, in-between status of early L2 learners
As part of examining age effects on usage patterns, emotionality and proficiency, we assembled a
profile of early vs. late learners by asking how early arrivals to the U.S. resembled late arrivals and how
they resembled their American peers who grew up speaking only English (the Russian foreign language
learners). Early arrivals resembled late arrivals in judging both English and Russian to elicit strong
emotions. Early arrivals also resembled later arrivals in their frequent use of Russian with family, and
with the extent to which they valued Russian language and culture. However, early arrivals used Russian
less with friends than did later arrivals. Early arrivals differed from later arrivals in the degree to which
they identified with American culture, and on this variable did not differ significantly from nonimmigrant Americans (Russian foreign language learners).
What is useful in this portrayal of the "in-between" state of the early L2 learners is that they are not
identically in-between on every measure. For issues related to family, they most resembled the later
arrivals. For issues outside of the family, such as dating and cultural identification, they most resembled
their non-immigrant English speaking peers. We suspect that the details of this pattern may be specific
to the population we sampled: Russian speaking immigrants, mostly college students or university
affiliated. It would be useful to compare the observed "in-between" state of our early arrivals with those
21
in other immigrant groups who differ in variables such as integration with the dominant culture and
emphasis on L1 in the home.
Perceived emotional strength of lying
Perceived strength of lying in Russian correlated with frequency of using Russian with family
(r=.48), Russian proficiency (r=.34) and length of stay in the U.S. (r=.39). The correlation with Russian
family usage is consistent with our analysis of why strength of anger judgments correlated with Russian
family usage: lying, like expressing anger, may bring to mind autobiographical examples of lying to
parents in childhood and may thus be related to parental authority relationships.
In designing the current questionnaire, we assumed that perceived strength of lying in L1-Russian
would resemble our other two categories of emotional language. However, lying correlated with fewer
learning history variables than did anger and positive emotions. This suggests that judgments about
lying may reflect individual opinions about when an dhow lying is most emotionally distressing. For
many respondents, this may be the context of lying to family members, as mentioned above. For others,
lying to peers or romantic partners may be the most distressing. Judgments about lying may also differ
from other emotional expressions because the emotion activated by an angry statement is determined by
statement content, while the emotion associated with lying may come less from statement content than
from personal discomfort about lying.
During interviews, Spanish-English bilinguals in the U.S. and Turks learning English as a foreign
language in Turkey discussed whether they preferred to lie in L1 or L2 (Caldwell-Harris, Sanchez,
Ventura, Angun, & Aycicegi-Dinn, 2007; Caldwell-Harris & Aycicegi-Dinn, 2008). The majority of
respondents preferred L1, their more proficient language, in order to avoid the dual-task load of
monitoring their L2 production while navigating their lie. A significant minority preferred their less
proficient language, saying that they wouldn't feel the lie as strongly and thus their lie wouldn't be as
discernable. If participants had nearly equal proficiency in both languages, then their responses were
more predictable: they preferred to lie in the language they experienced as less emotional. Given the
variability in language preferences for lying, variability in judgments of emotional strength of lying is
less surprising. Future work on judgments of the emotionality of lying (and indeed, all emotional
expressions) could benefit from specifying details of the situation and the conversation partners
involved.
22
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of emotional arousal to bilingual speakers' first and second languages.
27
Table 1. Demographic and learning history of the three learner groups
Later Arrival to
the U.S. (N=21)
Gender
Percent born in Russia or other
USSR republics
Dominant language (%)
Age (range)
Age at arrival in the US (range)
Length of stay (range)
Age of Exposure to Rus (range)
Russian Prof. (1-7 scale)b (sd)
English Prof. (1-7 scale) (sd)
66%
60% Russia
45% Other Rep.
10 % English
40% Both
50% Russian
27.7 (18-56)
19.4 (10-40)
8.8 (1-26)
.5 (0-6)a
6.7 (.4)
6.1 (.6)
Early Bilinguals
(N=23)
56%
42% Russia
39% Other Rep.
46% English
54% Both
0% Russian
20.0 (17-24)
4.1 (0-9)
14.2 (9-21)
0
5.0 (1.3)
6.6 (.7)
Russian L2
in Adulthood
(N=20)
45%
0%
100% English
27.5 (18-64)
0
Not applicable
20.9 (14-59)
4.4 (1.0)
7.0 (.2)
Tables Notes. aTwo participants learned a first language (Mongolian or Azerbaijan) before learning
Russian at age 6. bAverage of ratings for proficiency in speaking, listening comprehension, reading and
writing.
28
Table 2. Scales in the three questionnaire domains with sample items and response formats
Subscale names
N
Sample Items
Cronbach
Alphaa
Emotional intensity (dependent variables)
Angry Emotions
When I have angry thoughts they are in.... (Rus-Eng scale)
Expressing Lies
I feel guilty when I am telling a lie in … (Rus-Eng scale)
Positive Emotions I experience strong emotion when expressing intimacies in...
6
3
4
.86
.90
.83
4
4
4
1
1
.94
.80
.80
---
7
.84
5
3
.75
.76
Frequency and context of use (predictor variables)
Use with family
Use with friends
Personal relations
Personal Problems
Thinking
Percentage of time Russianb spoken with family (%)
Percentage of time Englishb spoken with friends (%)
Percentage of time Russianb spoken in relationships (%)
When analyzing a personal problem I use...(Rus-Eng scale)
When thinking about an academic topic I use...(Rus-Eng scale)
(Problem Solving and Thinking combined into one scale)
Self-identification and valuing Russian language/culture
Self-Identification The culture I feel most in tune with is... (Rus-Am scale)
Valuing Russian
It’s important to me that my partner appreciates the Russian
Lang, Culture
culture…(5 point scale, Strongly disagree to Strongly agree)
Dating Russian
I prefer to date speakers of… (Rus-Eng scale)
Partner
Format of response scales
Russian-English (Rus-Eng) scale
Only Eng. _ Usually Eng._ Both languages equally_
Usually Russian_ Only Russian
Russian-American (Rus-Am) scale
Strongly Am. _ Mainly Am._ Both cultural equally _ Usually Russian_ Only Russian _
Scoring:
0
.25
.5
.75
1
Table notes. aChronbach alpha calculated on data from all three learner groups. bSame question asked
about English, but English percentages were subtracted from 100 so these items could be averaged with
items asking about Russian.
29
Table 3: Correlations between measures
Proficiency
Usage
RusProf EngProf Comf
Family
Friend
Emotionality
Problem
solving
Anger
Positive
Lies
Length
of Stay
EngProf
-0.58
*
Comfort
0.51
-0.41
*
Family
0.59
-0.47
0.38
*
Friend
0.78
-0.74
0.43
0.68
*
Problem
0.61
-0.67
0.45
0.51
0.65
*
Anger
0.51
-0.34
0.27
0.58
0.50
0.40
*
Positive
0.49
-0.66
0.38
0.50
0.61
0.63
0.49
*
Lies
0.34
-0.12
0.20
0.48
0.23
0.27
0.29
0.23
*
LoS
-0.55
0.47
-0.17
-0.63
-0.56
-0.48
-0.47
-0.28
-0.39
*
AoA
0.73
-0.78
0.40
0.61
0.87
0.63
0.42
0.56
0.21
Family
Friend
Problem
solving
Anger
Positive
Lies
-0.55
Length
of Stay
RusProf EngProf Comf
Table Note. Correlations performed after excluding Russian Foreign language learners
30
Table 4: Anger, positive emotions and lying for the two bilingual groups
Expressing
Lies
Positive
emotions
Late English Bilinguals
Angry
emotions
Expressing
Lies
Positive
emotions
Angry
emotions
Early English Bilinguals
Russian Proficiency
0.61
0.43
0.19
0.52
0.12
0.18
Eng Proficiency
-0.44
-0.52
0.03
0.23
-0.62
-0.07
Comfort in Russian
0.45
0.15
0.33
0.05
0.43
0.32*
Family usage freq
0.42
0.24
0.38
0.42
0.33
-0.01
Friend usage freq
0.29
0.2
0.27
0.22
0.54
-0.16
Problem solving
0.47
0.5
-0.28
-0.15
0.49
0.18
Length of Stay
-0.28
-0.16
-0.41
0.12
0.11
0.03
Age of Arrival
0.25
0.11
0.37*
-0.08
0.39
-0.19
Table notes. *n.s.
31
Table 5: Factor reductions and multiple regression
Variance obtained following
reduction to 1 factor
Dependent
Predictors
Late
English
Early
English
Multiple Regression Results
Usage
AoA,
LoS
Proficiency
Emotionality
Signif.
Predictor
81%
59%
51%
45%
Usage
52%
Profici
-ency
64%
93%
63%
R2
Beta
F
0.29
0.57
F(1,19)=9.0
0.47
0.70
F(1,21)=20.0
32
Figure 1. Relative strength of emotional expressions in L1-Russian vs. L2-English are plotted for the
three groups of learners. Strength is measured from 0 (English stronger) to 1 (Russian stronger) with .5
indicating that emotional expressions feel equally strong in the two languages.
33
Figure 2. Frequency of using L1-Russian vs. L2-English is plotted for the three learner groups. Usage
frequency is measured as percent of total language use, such that 0.5 indicates that the two language are
used equally in the three situations of family, friends and personal/intimate relationships.
34
Figure 3. The three learner groups are plotted according to how they valued Russian language, use of
Russian vs. English for problem solving, and extent of identification with American culture.
35
Figure 4. Self-rated proficiency for Russian and English is plotted as a function of age of arrival in the
U.S. Each depicted data point is the average for 3-4 respondents. Trilinguals are not plotted separately
because their proficiency ratings did not differ from bilinguals. See Table 3 for correlation coefficients.
Proficency
(7=Native Speaker)
7.0
6.0
5.0
4.0
Russian Proficiency
English Proficiency
3.0
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
Age of Arrival in the U.S.
36
Figure 5. Frequency of using Russian with family (circles) and friends (squares) is plotted separately for
bilinguals (filled circles and squares) and trilinguals (open circles and squares; each trilingual data point
is the average of 1-2 respondents). Trilinguals immigrated between 1999-2006 from former Soviet
republics outside of Russia and thus have shorter length of stay in the U.S. and reported less use of
Russian with family. See Table 3 for correlation coefficients.
100%
Use of Russian with…(%)
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
Use
Use
Use
Use
20%
10%
with Family
with Friends
Family (Tri)
Friends (Tri)
0%
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
Age of Arrival in the U.S.
37
Figure 6. Perceived emotional intensity of Russian compared to English is plotted on a scale ranging
from 0 (English stronger) to 1 (Russian stronger). Each bilingual data point is the average for 3-4
respondents. Trilinguals are separately plotted with each data point corresponding to 1-2 participants.
Trend line is plotted through “Russian dominance values” indicated by . These values were obtained
by dividing Russian proficiency by the sum of English and Russian proficiency; equal proficiencies thus
have a relative proficiency rating of .5, and ratings of higher Russian than English veer towards 1, while
higher English than Russian veers towards 0. See Table 3 for correlation coefficients.
Strength of emotions in Russian
1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
0
5
10
15
20
Age of Arrival in the U.S.
25
30
38
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Vicky Rukovets, Elizabeth LoTempio, Victoria Choate, Deborah Williams,
Noreen Cipriano and Ebi K. Poweigha for research assistance.
39