Results

Macrostracture

Similar

performance in both languages

for children with

TLD and those diagnosed with SLI

Bilinguals with DLD had significantly lower scores for story grammar than their TD peers

Both groups achieved below average scores on productivity, narrative structure, literate language, and language form measures from the narrative samples

Bilingual children with SLI were found to attain similar levels of performance, and even to outperform monolingual

children with SLI, in

macrostructure

All four groups of

children showed growth over a 6-month period .Bil. children expose predominantly to English in the home performed similarly to their monolingual peers in measures of narrative information, sentence length, number of different words and first mentions

Bilingual and monolingual children with DLD scored lower on expression of causal relations

Microstructure

Microstructure analysis of verbal productivity, length of

communication units, and lexical diversity distinguished children with TLD from those with SLI

They showed similar scores for narrative microstructure components

Dual language children lower scores on standardized tests of

morphosyntax but not on measures of language form derived from the narrative samples

Differences between TD children and children with SLI in microstructure

Bilingual children exposed predominantly to English in the home performed similarly to their monolingual peers in measures of sentence length, number of different words and first mentions

Bilingual TLD children produced complex narratives that resembled those of their monolingual peers in respect of causal relations and in the use of language forms as cohesive devices