The role of socioemotional wellbeing difficulties and adversity in the L2 acquisition of first-generation refugee children
Author
Vitoroulis, Irene
Al Janaideh, Redab
Chen, Xi
Jenkins, Jennifer
Georgiades, Katholiki
Publication date
2022ISSN
1366-7289
Abstract
First-generation refugee children often experience pre- and post-migration adversity and display high levels of mental health/wellbeing difficulties, but to date, research has not examined the impact of such factors on refugee children's L2 acquisition. Accordingly, this study examined the influence of externalizing and internalizing problem behaviours (wellbeing), time in refugee camps and low socioeconomic status (SES) (adversity) on the English-L2 abilities of 117 Syrian refugee children (7–14 years) in their third year of residency in Canada. Wellbeing difficulties and adversity factors accounted for variance on L2 vocabulary, morphosyntax, listening comprehension and narrative production tasks, beyond the variance accounted for by age of L2 acquisition and length of L2 exposure. Specifically, externalizing problem behaviours, time in refugee camp, maternal education and maternal employment predicted variance in L2 abilities. It is concluded that refugee children could have influences on their L2 acquisition that are different from those of bilinguals with other backgrounds.
Document Type
Article
Document version
Published version
Language
English
Subject (CDU)
81 - Linguistics and languages
9 - geography. Biography. History
Keywords
Aprenentatge d'idiomes
Benestar
Infants refugiats
Aprendizaje de idiomas
Bienestar
Niños refugiados
Language learning
Welfare
Refugee children
Pages
13
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Collection
25; 5
Is part of
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
Citation
Paradis, Johanne; Soto-Corominas, Adriana; Vitoroulis, Irene [et al.]. The role of socioemotional wellbeing difficulties and adversity in the L2 acquisition of first-generation refugee children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2022, 25(5), p. 921-933. Disponible en: <https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bilingualism-language-and-cognition/article/role-of-socioemotional-wellbeing-difficulties-and-adversity-in-the-l2-acquisition-of-firstgeneration-refugee-children/48BDED9CB904FCEB996C44D5E602F342>. Fecha de acceso: 9 nov. 2022. DOI: 10.1017/S136672892200030X
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Ciències de la Salut [740]
Rights
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/