| This study investigated the relationship of length of exposure to English of Russian (L1)-English bilingual first grade students with their English language proficiency as measured in different language domains. Three groups of 6--7 year old children were studied. A group of native monolingual English speaking children and two groups of bilingual Russian (L1) - English children at different levels of English proficiency participated in the study. We investigated the children's ability to correctly interpret imbedded sentences, their vocabulary skills and their use of irregular and regular verb forms. A one-way analysis of variance was conducted to evaluate the relationship between children's length of exposure to English in an educational setting and their English proficiency level. Results indicate that overall, Russian-English bilingual children's English proficiency was found to be comparable to that of English native speakers of the same age, with the exception of Russian-English bilingual children's lower performance on Expressive Vocabulary tasks than native English monolingual children's. |
