Russian and Turkish are the most frequently spoken and intensively investigated heritage languages in Germany, but contrastive research on their development in early childhood is still missing. This longitudinal study compares the trajectories of expressive lexicon development in Russian (n = 70) and Turkish (n = 79) heritage speakers and identifies predictors for their lexicon size at preschool age. Heritage lexicon size was tested with two comparable tests assessing the expressive lexicon at four test points between the mean ages of 3.3 (range: 25–49 months) and 5.6 (range: 54–78 months) years. The influence of language-related factors, such as input quantity, parents’ heritage language proficiency and age of onset (AoO) of German, and other potential predictors, i.e., intelligence and socio-economic status, is evaluated. Results show that the Turkish group’s abilities grow slower but are similar at the last test point. Common predictors for lexicon size are input quantity from siblings and AoO. Group-specific influences are parental input quantity in the Russian group and siblings’ proficiency in the Turkish group. Our findings emphasize the interplay of input quantity and society language AoO for heritage lexicon development. The relevance of our results for the usage-based theory of language acquisition is discussed.

Research question: How does Russian and German reading comprehension develop during the first 3 years of primary school in Russian heritage speakers and which factors predict performance in each language? Methodology: 40 Russian-German children were tested annually from first to third grade (age in grade 1 M = 7; 1 years). Reading was assessed with comparable Russian and German word and sentence reading comprehension tests. The Russian test was available in Cyrillic and Latin script (the latter for children who could not read Cyrillic letters). Potential predictors included lexicon size in Russian and German and rapid automatized naming (RAN) of numbers (both assessed in primary school). Other factors were assessed in kindergarten, that is, nonverbal reasoning and, derived from a parents’ questionnaire, their socioeconomic status and language input in the family. Data and analysis: Linear regressions were used to compare the development of Russian and German. Stepwise regression analyses identified predictors for reading comprehension in each language. Findings: German reading ability improved faster than that of Russian, likely due to the increasing amount of German input outside the family, literacy instruction in German at school, and the large variance in Russian literacy abilities. Children who could read Cyrillic script, who likely received some form of Russian literacy instruction, and who had a larger Russian lexicon size exhibited better reading performance. These results are discussed regarding the divergent attainment trajectories. Decisive factors for German were German lexicon size and RAN. Originality: This longitudinal study tracked Russian and German reading development over 3 years in primary school, assessed Russian reading in Cyrillic and Latin scripts, and identified predictors for bilingual reading development in both languages. Implications: To become proficient readers in their heritage language, children need to have a substantial lexicon size and receive literacy instruction.

Erwerbsprofile des Deutschen im mehrsprachigen Kontext was published in Deutsch in Europa on page 75.

Purpose: This longitudinal study investigated how kindergarten oral language skills predict second-grade reading comprehension in bilinguals with second language (L2) German, as well as the moderating role of word-decoding skills in this relationship. Method: Fifty-nine Russian–German and Turkish–German bilingual children were followed from kindergarten to Grade 2. Oral language skills, including vocabulary and morphosyntax, were measured in kindergarten, and word-decoding speed and sentence- and text-level reading comprehension were assessed in Grade 2. Age in kindergarten, age of onset (AoO) of L2 German, and phonological short-term memory were included as covariates. Results: Generalized mixed-effects models showed that vocabulary significantly predicted sentence and text reading comprehension in Grade 2 after controlling for age, AoO of L2 German, and phonological skills. Morphosyntactic skills were not significant. Moderation analyses revealed that the positive association between early vocabulary and text-level comprehension was more pronounced among children with average to strong word-decoding skills. For sentence-level comprehension, the interaction between word decoding and vocabulary was not significant. Conclusions: Word decoding speed and kindergarten vocabulary emerged as the strongest predictors of later reading comprehension in bilingual children acquiring L2 German, with the impact of vocabulary being more pronounced among children with more developed word-decoding skills. This study highlights the importance of supporting early vocabulary and decoding skills in bilingual children to promote later reading comprehension.

Purpose: This article investigates the development of oral narrative skills in children through the lens of internal states in a large cross-linguistic data set of comparable fictional stories. Method: In a joint effort of research groups around the world, 5,507 picture-based stories were elicited from 2,763 monolingual and bilingual typically developing (TD) children aged 3–13 years in 32 countries across 44 languages with the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN; Gagarina et al., 2019 ). These were transcribed and coded for internal state terms (ISTs) that express story characters' thoughts, emotions, and perceptions. Using generalized mixed models, we investigated the likelihood of a child producing ISTs in the stories, as influenced by age, monolingualism versus bilingualism, and, for bilinguals, first language versus second language, elicitation mode (telling vs. retelling), IST type, story type, and story length. Results: We found strong positive effects of age and elicitation mode (retelling) on IST production, but no differences between monolinguals and bilinguals or for bilinguals in their two languages. Children were far more likely to produce ISTs as initiating events than ISTs as reactions. Story length only predicted IST production in younger children, but not in older ones. Conclusions: As shown by this large-scale sample, children's skills in making explicit the internal states of characters in fictional stories develop substantially during the primary school years, across languages, and for both monolingual and bilingual learners. The robust facilitative effect of retelling suggests that retelling may be particularly suitable to use with MAIN when researchers/clinicians are interested in assessing a child's ability to verbalize internal states. Future research should examine ISTs in children with developmental disorders and explore their application in intervention. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.33857551

Narratives have been an important tool in assessing children’s language skills. However, research on the contributions of narratives to literacy has been limited in bilinguals, especially in non-English language contexts. This longitudinal study investigated whether oral narrative macrostructure in kindergarten, assessed in both the first language (L1) and the second language (L2), uniquely predicts reading comprehension three years later. Participants were 54 Russian-German and Turkish-German bilingual children who completed oral narrative tasks ("telling") in both L1 and L2 in kindergarten. German word-level reading comprehension was assessed in Grade 1 and German text-level reading comprehension in Grade 3. Age in kindergarten, language group (Russian- vs. Turkish-German), word-level reading comprehension, and narrative length were included as control variables. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that L2 German narrative macrostructure in kindergarten contributed uniquely to German reading comprehension in Grade 3, above and beyond early word-level reading comprehension. In contrast, L1 narrative macrostructure (Russian/Turkish) did not account for additional variance over L2 skills. These findings underscore the role of early L2 oral narrative skills in supporting later reading comprehension in bilingual children. They highlight the importance of narrative competence as a foundational language skill and provide evidence for the inclusion of narrative measures in school readiness assessments.