Disfluency Characteristics in 4-6 Age Bilingual Children

4-6세 이중언어아동의 비유창성 특성 연구

The purpose of present study was to investigate the characteristics of disfluency between the Korean-English bilingual and Korean monolingual children, matched by their chronological age with the bilingual children. Twenty-eight children, 14 bilingual children and 14 monolingual children participated in this study. The experimental tasks consisted of the play situation and the task situation. The conclusion is (a) The score of total disfluency of the bilingual was significantly higher than that of the monolingual. The score of normal disfluency of the bilingual was significantly higher than that of the monolingual. The most frequent type is Interjection in both groups. All shows higher score in the task situation than the play situation. The bilingual children have quantitative and qualitative differences in disfluency score and types from the monolingual. (b) The bilingual were divided into two groups such as 6 Korean-dominant bilingual and 8 English-dominant bilingual. All shows more disfluency in their non-dominant language. The most frequent type is Interjection in both groups. (c) The higher the chronological age and the expressive language test score is, the lower the disfluency score is. The earlier the exposure age to the 2nd language is, the higher the disfluency score is. There is no correlation between resident month at foreign country and the disfluency.