A study of early multilingualism in Iran: The effects of mother tongue literacy, socio-economic status and foreground TV exposure.

This study investigated interactions among linguistics, social and political factors in a linguistically rich environment. For this purpose, two-hundred Iranian preschoolers (aged 5 to 6 years old) from four ethnic/linguistic groups (Arab, Kurd, Turk and Fars) were selected using multi-stage stratified sampling. All participants took part in an Elementary English language course and their exposure to foreground TV was recorded using media exposure portfolio. Maternal education and family income were considered as criteria for socio-economic status. Children's language proficiency was measured through Language Sample Analysis (LSA). The LSA components included total number of utterances produced, total number of words produced, total number of new words produced and mean length of utterances. Regression analysis, ANOVA and t-tests were used for data analyses. The results showed that bilingual children performed slightly better than multilingual children in LSA measures but this cannot be taken for granted. Moreover, socio-economic status and LSA measures were significantly related but TV exposure was not associated with the LSA measures. These results supported the arguments purported by minority language proponents on the importance of using children's mother tongue in educational curriculum.

Preschool Minority Children's Persian Vocabulary Development: A Language Sample Analysis.

This study linked background TV and socioeconomic status (SES) to minority children's Persian vocabulary development. To this end, 80 Iranian preschool children (aged 5-6 years old) from two minority groups of Arabs and Turks were selected using stratified random sampling. They were simultaneous bilinguals, i.e., their mother tongue was either Arabic or Azari and their first language was Persian. Language sample analysis (LSA) was used to measure vocabulary development through a 15-min interview by language experts (PhD in applied linguistics). The LSA measures included total number of utterances (TNU), total number of words (TNW), total number of new words (NDW), and mean length of utterance (MLU). A series of independent-samples t test, paired-samples t test, and repeated measures MANOVA tests were ran to examine data. Results showed significant improvements in children's vocabulary scores from pretest to posttest for all children. In addition, high-SES children scored higher on the vocabulary measures in pretest and posttest. Moreover, background TV was associated with higher means in the TNW and the NDW in groups. The researchers concluded that background TV may be related to higher vocabulary scores in low-SES families as it may compensate for some linguistics gaps in these families including lower amount of child-parent interaction, play, and parents' level of literacy.