Assessing Lexical Skills to Determine Language Development of Urban Bi/multlingual Preschool Children

Abstract

Abstract Purpose This research determines the lexical development of preschool children in bi/multilingual Pakistani society, who are exposed to English (L2/L3) in playschool and their native language (L1) as well as Urdu (L1/L2) at home. The study aims to establish the lexical increment among the three age groups of children through conceptual scoring of their responses, on an indigenously designed tool for the assessment of vocabulary. Method This quantitative cross-sectional research recruited 100 (n) typical bi/multilingual children aged 2;0–4;11 years, by simple random sampling from mainstream playschools where the medium of instruction was English. They were individually screened through a Screener for Lexical Skills of Bi/multilinguals, which measured vocabulary development through 255 culturally appropriate pictures across twenty-one categories for their semantic and morphological skills, subsequently analyzing the data through the SPSS version 20. Results Bi/multilingual children from mainstream playschools named the pictures of the Screener for Lexical Skills of Bi/multilinguals, in English and Urdu predominantly, instead of their own native language. There was an incremental difference seen in the lexicon among the age groups, based on the number of pictures named by the children. The 2;0–2;11-year-olds named 40.7% of the pictures, while 3;0–3;11-year-olds named 49.02%, and 4;0–4;11-year-old children named 62.75% of the total pictures. Conclusion Children easily acquire multiple languages, in early childhood. The bi/multilingual children show an unequal increment in the vocabulary of each language, across the three age groups. Although all the children named some pictures in English, the increment in their Urdu vocabulary was greater than English.