A study of early multilingualism in Iran: The effects of mother tongue literacy, socio-economic status and foreground TV exposure.

Publisher: North Holland Publishing Country of Publication: Netherlands NLM ID: 0370366 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1873-6297 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00016918 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Acta Psychol (Amst) Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: Amsterdam : North Holland Publishing
Original Publication: The Hague.

Literacy* ; Multilingualism*; Child ; Humans ; Child, Preschool ; Iran ; Economic Status ; Tongue ; Language Tests

This study investigated interactions among linguistics, social and political factors in a linguistically rich environment. For this purpose, two-hundred Iranian preschoolers (aged 5 to 6 years old) from four ethnic/linguistic groups (Arab, Kurd, Turk and Fars) were selected using multi-stage stratified sampling. All participants took part in an Elementary English language course and their exposure to foreground TV was recorded using media exposure portfolio. Maternal education and family income were considered as criteria for socio-economic status. Children's language proficiency was measured through Language Sample Analysis (LSA). The LSA components included total number of utterances produced, total number of words produced, total number of new words produced and mean length of utterances. Regression analysis, ANOVA and t-tests were used for data analyses. The results showed that bilingual children performed slightly better than multilingual children in LSA measures but this cannot be taken for granted. Moreover, socio-economic status and LSA measures were significantly related but TV exposure was not associated with the LSA measures. These results supported the arguments purported by minority language proponents on the importance of using children's mother tongue in educational curriculum.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest There was no conflict of financial and non-financial interests between the authors to disclose.
(Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Keywords: Early language development; Foreground television; Language sample analysis; Mother tongue literacy; Multilingualism; Socioeconomic status

Date Created: 20240202 Date Completed: 20240219 Latest Revision: 20240219

20240219

10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104167

38306876