Phonological skills of Korean-English bilingual children: preliminary findings from 5-6 year olds

Research in bilingual phonological development has been predominantly focussed on Spanish-English bilingual children, with a significant lack of research on other bilingual populations. This presentation contributes to the research on a lesser studied bilingual population by reporting on the phonological skills of 16 Korean-English five and six year olds in their two languages. In general, these children performed better in Korean than English. They had a more complete consonant inventory and fewer errors in Korean than in English. Their phonological skills were comparable with their monolingual counterparts. However, three children showed delayed rates of development in both languages. These findings will be compared with the literature and the presentation will conclude with a discussion of the factors that may impact on phonological development in bilingual children