Factors influencing vocabulary development among Bangla-English bilingual children in an urban Bangladeshi context

Abstract

This study aims to highlight the factors that influence the expressive and receptive vocabulary development among the bilingual Bangla and English-speaking urban children. This paper adapts a quantitative correlational analysis to examine how social, biological, environmental, and parental variables can shape children’s vocabulary knowledge. Another important aspect of this study is to reveal the reasons behind imbalanced vocabulary acquisition in two languages in a bilingual setting. To conduct the study, the researcher has selected 143 participants who are bilingual and aged between 2 and 3 years old. A parental demographic report has been used along with the Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs). A statistical analysis has been done to establish the correlation of participants’ vocabulary score with several factors found from parental demographic reports. Overall, the findings indicated that societal, habitual and developmental factors are the key variables that differentiate the vocabulary outcomes among children.