Ausgewählte Sprachentwicklungsstandsfacetten von Kindergartenkindern mit Migrationshintergrund in Deutschland

Objectives: The present study aimed at exploring selected language development dimensions in kindergarten children with a migration background taking into consideration the duration of kindergarten attendance and home language.

Participants: 60 children with normal intelligence, 3 (n = 13), 4 (n = 24), 5 (n = 23) years of age, mean: 56.1 (SD 8.7) months.

Methods: Retrospective analysis of a data set. Instruments: The subtests “Phonological Non Word Repetition” and “Sentence Comprehension” from the German SETK 3-5 (Grimm, 2008); “Auditorial Sequential Memory for Digits”, “Doll Play”, “Word Explanation” from the German WET (Kastner-Koller & Deimann, 2002); and the German questionnaire SISMIK (Ulich & Mayr, 2003) for the assessment of language behaviour via the kindergarten educator.

Results: The mean performance on phonological memory for nonword repetition (T-score 48.4; SD 12.0) and for digits (Centile 4.9; SD 1.9) was found normal. Lexical knowledge and usage tended towards the lower norm range (mean Centile 3.5; SD 2.1); the individual result was in 20% of the children ≪ 2 SD below the mean age norm. Lexical performance was the only one which was significantly higher in children with a kindergarten attendance > 1 year. The understanding of sentence comprehension was on average in the lower norm range (T-score 42.2; SD 11.2; Doll Play: Centile 2.8; SD 2.3); the individual result fell in 10% resp. 33% of the children below the criterion ≪ 2 SD below mean age norm. Language behaviour in contact with children (T-score 56.6; SD 10.4), in contact with kindergarten educators (T-score 56.4; SD 11.5), and linguistic competence (T-score 56.9; SD 10.9) were rated age-appropriate (SISMIK). No gender differences were observed. Children communicating bilingually within the family showed higher language competencies.

Conclusion: Despite performance in the norm range, on average, still 33% of immigrant children display deficiencies both in syntactical and semantic capacities in the German language.