Does Sibling Stimulation in Children Facilitate Proficiency in Second Language?

Abstract

Bilingualism refers to the knowledge and the usage of the two languages by an individual. A bilingual can possess variable proficiency in the second language. Several factors are known to influence the second language proficiency in children and sibling stimulation is one of the potent variables which may influence. The effect of sibling stimulation on second language proficiency is often explored in western context however the findings cannot be generalized to Indian context owing to the culture difference. The present study aimed to investigate the second language proficiency in children with siblings (group 1) and without siblings (group 2). Details of language usage in these children were determined through a questionnaire. Following which, two tasks (one tapping reception domain and other tapping expression domain) were administered on these participants. Reception was tested through sentence completion while expression was tapped through story narration task. Bilingual children with siblings performed better compared to those children with no siblings and statistically significant difference was seen on both the domains depicting that the sibling stimulation may enhance the second language proficiency.