Canadian students enrolled in either French-immersion or English-instruction programs were followed from Grades 2 to 3 (M[subscript age] = 7.8 years to 8.9 years; N = 244; 55% girls). In each grade, students completed two mathematical tasks that required oral language processing (i.e., word-problem solving and number transcoding from dictation)…

This cross-sectional study investigated the impact of length of instruction, out-of-school exposure to foreign language input, and gender on learners' receptive vocabulary knowledge in two foreign languages: French (first foreign language) and English (second foreign language). The findings suggest that, although length of instruction correlated…

Purpose: This study investigated within-language and between-language associations between phonological memory, vocabulary, and grammar in French-English (n = 43) and Spanish-English (n = 25) bilingual children at 30, 36, and 48 months. It was predicted that phonological memory would display both within-language and between-language relations to…

The input factors that may cause variation in bilingual proficiency were investigated in 38 French-English bilinguals aged six to eight, of middle-to-high socio-economic status, attending an international state school in France. Data on children's current and cumulative language exposure and family background were collected through questionnaires…

Cognate awareness is the ability to recognize the cognate relationship between words in two etymologically related languages. The current study examined the development of cognate awareness and its contribution to French (second language) reading comprehension among Canadian French immersion children. Eighty-one students were tested at the end of…

When preschoolers listen to storybooks, are their eye movements related to their vocabulary acquisition in this context? This study addressed this question with 36 four-year-old French-speaking participants by assessing their general receptive vocabulary knowledge and knowledge of low-frequency words in 3 storybooks. These books were read verbatim…

We assessed the language, cognitive, and socioemotional abilities of 27 internationally adopted children from China, adopted by French-speaking parents, 12 of whom had been assessed previously by Gauthier and Genesee. The children were on average 7 years, 10 months old and were matched to nonadopted monolingual French-speaking children on age,…

This article explores the widely documented difficulty with object clitics in the acquisition of French. The study investigates the effects of L1 transfer and processing limitations on the production and comprehension of object clitics in child L2 learners of French with different L1 backgrounds (Chinese, Spanish). The Spanish-speaking learners…

This study investigates Italian and French students' grammatical problems while reading in German as an L3 or L4. For the study, we developed a reading test which consists of invented encyclopaedia articles on imaginary animals. These articles enabled us to test various grammatical structures for their receptive difficulty. This paper discusses…