Narrative Discourse in Bilingual English-Spanish Speakers: A Case Control Study

The study explored differences in storytelling between bilingual English and Spanish speakers and monolingual English Speakers, differences between Spanish and English storytelling in bilingual speakers, and the relation between language ability used in storytelling and language ability used on a structured measure of language ability. Ten second and third grade children were targeted for this study – five of whom were monolingual English speakers and the other five were bilingual English-Spanish speakers. Bilingual children completed two sessions – one in English and one in Spanish – while monolingual children completed one session in English. Each session contained a narrative retell, unique narrative, and the core language score in the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF). The findings suggested that the bilingual and monolingual children performed similarly on the unique narratives; however, they performed significantly different on the narrative retells. Monolingual and bilingual children also scored similarly on the CELF examination. In addition, bilingual children scored similarly on the CELF examination in English and Spanish