Sentence Repetition as an Ecologically Valid Tool for Assessing Bilingual Children’s Language Abilities
The Role of Morphological Awareness and Expressive Vocabulary
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22044536 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ifigeneia Dosi (0000-0003-4911-2049, Democritus University of Thrace, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 244 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Education Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2227-7102 • E-ISSN: 2227-7102 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/educsci16020244 |
| OpenAlex | W7127562109 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 31 |
This study examined the value of Sentence Repetition (SRep) tasks as an ecologically valid tool for assessing bilingual children’s morphosyntactic competence. Seventy Greek–Turkish bilinguals and Greek monolinguals (aged 8–12) completed tasks assessing expressive vocabulary, morphological awareness, and SRep. Monolinguals significantly outperformed bilinguals across all tasks, with near-ceiling scores in grammaticality in SRep tasks reflecting earlier acquisition of core Greek structures. In contrast, bilinguals’ performance was significantly lower and varied across conditions: while scores were relatively higher on simple SVO, coordination, and wh-clauses, difficulties emerged in clitic left dislocation, complement clauses, and adverbial clauses—domains of greatest typological divergence between Greek and Turkish. Importantly, SRep performance on grammaticality did not vary with age, despite strong age effects on vocabulary and morphology, suggesting that SRep tasks indexes morphosyntactic knowledge rather than general maturational growth. Regression analyses showed that monolinguals’ SRep performance was best predicted by morphological awareness, whereas bilinguals relied more heavily on expressive vocabulary, reflecting their reduced exposure to Greek and reliance on lexical resources. These findings confirm the fairness and sensitivity of SRep for bilingual assessment, while highlighting the interplay of typological differences and input in shaping bilingual children’s morphosyntactic abilities
Age of Acquisition · Clitic · Fluency · Grammaticality · Neuroscience of multilingualism · Sentence · Syntax · Vocabulary · Language Development and Disorders · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism · Reading and Literacy Development
Turkish
Assessing Multilingual Children
Sentence repetition
Awareness of the structure and meaning of morphologically complex words
Measuring Implicit and Explicit Knowledge of a Second Language
Morphological Awareness and Learning to Read
Sentence repetition is a measure of children's language skills rather than working memory limitations
Elicited Imitation as a Measure of L2 Implicit Knowledge
Sentence repetition with bilinguals with and without DLD
Sentence repetition task for European Portuguese
First and second language sentence repetition
Input and literacy effects in simultaneous and sequential bilinguals
Disentangling SLI and bilingualism using sentence repetition tasks
The interplay of lexical and grammatical development in Greek-Albanian bilingual children
Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in monolingual and bilingual learners
Differences in sentence repetition tasks in studies on bilingual children’s language development
Interpreting the early language trajectories of children from low-SES and language minority homes
Does Timing in Acquisition Modulate Heritage Children's Language Abilities? Evidence from the Greek Litmus Sentence Repetition Task
Validation of a Greek Sentence Repetition Task with Typically Developing Monolingual and Bilingual Children
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |