Words are acquired in context and children’s vocabulary varies according to the environment in which they grow up. Children learn those words earlier that are present in their everyday life, especially at home (e.g., “ball”, “house” or “apple”). These words have a higher frequency and are more easily accessible than academic vocabulary like “envelope”, “addition” or “parallelogram”. In dual language learners, especially in children with a minority home language, the usual age of acquisition for words in the societal language might be reversed. While these children are confronted with academic vocabulary at the same time as their peers in school, the typically and technically easier terms from daily life are often communicated in the minority home language. Thus, age of acquisition and difficulty ranking of words in the societal language might be jumbled in dual language learners as a consequence of systematic differences in vocabulary exposure. We analyze these differences using normative data of a receptive vocabulary test (PPVT-4; German adaptation by A. Lenhard, Lenhard, Segerer & Suggate, 2015). The sample includes n = 2400 monolingual German children, n = 417 children with mixed home languages and n = 546 children with a home language other than German. The mean age of the sample was m = 10;5.The items were presented in ascending difficulty (according to pre-study results) with a maximum raw score of 228. Test items were drawn from 19 different domains, such as animals, toys, professions or tools and based on age specific entry and exit rules, children usually complete about 12 blocks with 12 items each. The raw item data were scaled with a 1 PL IRT model on the completed items, yielding high reliability for separating items and persons (both EAP and WLE reliability = .961). We modelled age of acquisition of the words as well as uniform and non-uniform differential item functioning depending on the participants’ language background. Preliminary results seem to confirm the assumption of different acquisition ages of academic and everyday words for monolingual and dual language learning subjects. We will discuss our findings with respect to diagnostic strategies, implications for research on dual language acquisition and didactics.

Lenhard, A., Lenhard, W., Segerer, R., and Suggate, S. (2015). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - Revision IV (German Adaption). Frankfurt: Pearson Assessment.