“l'animal qui fait oink! oink!”: Bilingual children's oral and written picture descriptions in English and French under varying instructions

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Abstract
How do children perform on four distinct picture description tasks in French, a language that has limited use in their lives? How does their performance on these tasks in the “limited use” language compare to the performance on the same tasks in English, the broader use language of their school and the society? And what are the effects of the children's home language environments on their performances both in French and in English? Fifty‐two 2nd‐ through 5th‐grade children at an independent school in Manhattan produced oral and written picture descriptions for a present audience (contextualized condition) and for an absent audience (decontextualized condition) in English and French. Descriptions were coded for measures of quantity, specificity, density, main theme, and narrativity. For the French tasks, children were most influenced by whether the task was written or oral. By contrast, in English, the instructions (contextualized vs. decontextualized) had a more powerful effect. Overall, English descriptions scored higher on measures of quantity, density, and specificity. In both languages, the written mode elicited more highly narrative descriptions. Variations in home language environment were associated with performance on language tasks only in French. On the French tasks, children from bilingual homes where no French was spoken performed better than children from monolingual English homes. Children from bilingual homes where French was a home language performed as well as children who spoke only French at home.