15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)

Barcelona, Spain
August 3-9, 2003


Phonological Acquisition of English and Spanish in Bilingual Preschool Children

Lisa M. López, Adele W. Miccio

Harvard University, USA

The population of school-aged children who are English language learners in the United States is rapidly increasing. The current study focused on the Spanish and English phonological acquisition of a group of bilingual preschool children in the United States who are either English or Spanish dominant. The children were asked to repeat a series of phrases in both English and Spanish at two time periods, six months apart. Results indicate gains in accuracy for both groups in English. The Spanish-dominant group performed similarly to the English dominant group in English at Time 2. The English-dominant group gained accuracy in the pronunciation of Spanish vowels at Time 2. However, no significant differences in accuracy of Spanish pronunciation were found across groups at Time 2. Additionally, phonological error types of the two groups are discussed.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  López, Lisa M. / Miccio, Adele W. (2003): "Phonological acquisition of English and Spanish in bilingual preschool children", In ICPhS-15, 1553-1556.