Development of language skills and basic competences of language acquisition: a comparison of bilingual and monolingual preschool children

The present study compares the speech performance of monolingual and multilingual preschool children. Atotal of N=138 children aged 3:0-5:11years were tested in the language areas of vocabulary, semantic relations, grammar, phonology, and pragmatics as well as in the basic competences of auditory memory capacity, processing speed, and emotion recognition and empathy. The results underline the need to differentiate between successive and simultaneous acquisition of language. Moreover, adifferentiated distinction between receptive vs. expressive areas as well as rule-governed vs. not rule-governed areas is important. Thus, the results argue for adifferentiated assessment of language abilities in preschool children in order to ensure appropriate and individual support tailored to the child's needs.