Influence of environmental factors in the occurrence of cross-language errors in the writing discourse of bilingual children.

Abstract

This paper investigates the influence of environmental factors on the occurrence of cross-language errors in the writing discourse of bilingual children. A mixed-method research was used. 19 bilingual children were asked to translate two texts: from Russian to Dutch, and from Dutch to Russian. Their parents’ field in the questionnaires, and based on this information children were divided into groups based on the environmental factors: type of the family, parental language, dominant language. Number of cross-language errors were linked to environmental factors (parental strategies, type of the family, dominant language), and comparison analysis between the languages and between the groups (one-parent-one language strategy/ local; monolingual family/ blended family; L1 Russian/ L1 Dutch) were made. In order to investigate three hypothesises SPSS Wilcoxon sample t-test was ran. We assumed that each of the environmental factors will influence the number of errors. Those hypothesises were confirmed. The fourth hypothesis was a qualitative part of the study, we assumed that the nature of the errors will differ for Dutch and Russian languages. We expected to see lexical, grammatical, graphical and orthographical errors, but we would like to know if the nature of each of the type will differ in Russian and Dutch. This hypothesis was also confirmed. The practical implication is also discussed.