The pace of the language acquisition depends not only on children’s cognitive skills and medical issues but also, among other things, on numerous sociodemographic conditions such as immigrant background. For instance, children of Turkish origin lag behind in the German language acquisition in Germany because they acquire German under comparatively unfavourable sociodemographic conditions in terms of quality and quantity of the German language input. In the current study, German language skills of Asian children (predominantly from Japan, Thailand, Iran, and India) were compared to those of non-Asian immigrant children under consideration of sociodemographic conditions. A sample of 984 four-year-old bi-/multilingual children (112 Asians, 872 non-Asians) was tested with the language screening “Kindersprachscreening” (KiSS.2): speech comprehension, vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, and phonological short-term memory. Sociodemographic conditions of the German language acquisition were assessed by the KiSS.2 questionnaires for parents and kindergarten teachers and compared for Asian and non-Asian children. Asian children showed comparatively weak German language skills because, among other things, German was spoken less often in their families than in the families of other immigrants. However, there were also indirect positive factors such as a higher educational level of fathers of Asian children. Asian children lag behind in the German language acquisition in comparison with other immigrant children. However, German statistics on the academic success shows that Asian children are overrepresented in the prestigious grammar schools and universities. This shows that Asian children catch up with their peers in the German language skills, probably in primary schools.

Authors:
Eugen Zaretsky, Marburg University, Germany
Christiane Hey, Marburg University, Germany

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Eugen Zaretsky is currently a researcher (post-doc) at the Department of Phoniatrics and Pediatric Audiology, University of Marburg

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