Language Growth in Turkish-English Bilingual Children in the United Kingdom

This thesis focuses on understanding the heritage language growth of Turkish – English bilingual children in the UK. The aim was to investigate the effects of Turkish supplementary school and home language linguistic environments on the growth of Turkish and English lexical vocabulary and narrative storytelling skills by 4-8-year-old bilinguals by comparing students who attend Turkish supplementary schools and those who do not. A mixed-methods design was used, aiming to triangulate the data through both quantitative (vocabulary and narrative tasks and questionnaires) and qualitative (interviews) methods of data collection.
The participants of the present study consist of children recruited from Turkish supplementary schools (attendees, n = 19) and Turkish communities (non-attendees, n = 22) in Doncaster, London, Manchester, Nottingham and York, and their parents (n = 39), who took part in two phases of data collection. Twenty-two teachers recruited from Turkish supplementary schools in the UK also participated in the study.
The data were gathered from teachers in several supplementary schools, to examine their specific teaching environment, teaching techniques and teachers’ perceptions in relation to heritage children’s language and family environment profiles providing background information about the Turkish supplementary schools in the UK.
The results from time 1 (t1) indicated that children who attend Turkish supplementary schools underperformed in comparison to their non-attendee peers in vocabulary size in the production and comprehension of nouns and verbs and in their narrative skills in Turkish, although their proficiency in English was comparable to their peers.
The cross-sectional design analysis revealed that the lexical knowledge of both groups of children showed significant growth from t1 to t2. However, despite the observed gains, the attendee children
continued to lag behind their non-attendee peers in the language knowledge of Turkish. Moreover, attendance status did not make a significant difference in English vocabulary knowledge.
Unexpectedly, the findings showed that the attendee children did not perform as well in Turkish language skills tasks as non-attendee children. This can be explained by data from the family bilingual background questionnaire which showed that the non-attendee children were exposed to and spoke Turkish at home more than the attendee children. Although the attendee children’s language skills improved during their attendance at the supplementary school, language practice and input at home seems to have great importance to bilingual language growth, and future studies should take home practices and language use into account.