The Effect of Narrative Intervention in Korean- English Bilingual Children: Crosslinguistic Interaction View

Objectives: The primary objective of this study was to identify the effectiveness of narrative intervention in Korean (L1)-English (L2) bilingual children. To achieve this, the groups were classified based on their L1 and L2 vocabulary performance, providing a comprehensive understanding of the impact of narrative intervention on bilingual children. Methods: Nineteen Korean-English bilingual preschool children (aged 5-6) participated and were divided into two groups: 1) language delay bilingual (LD; N=9) and 2) typically developing bilingual (TD; N=10). Participants completed the story generation task pre- and post-intervention and underwent eight sessions of narrative intervention in their L1. Results: After eight sessions of narrative intervention in their L1, both the LD and TD groups showed statistically significant increases in their post-intervention story grammar (SG), number of different words (NDW), and mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) in L1. Additionally, both groups demonstrated statistically significant increases in their post-intervention SG and NDW in L2. A significant correlation was found between L1 MLUw and both L1/L2 expressive and receptive vocabulary. Furthermore, L1 expressive vocabulary skills were significantly correlated with their L2 post-intervention SG and MLUw. Conclusion: The findings of this study are significant, confirming that L1 narrative intervention not only significantly enhances L1 narrative skills (SG, NDW, and MLUw) but also L2 narrative skills (SG and NDW). Moreover, it identified positive correlations between L1 expressive vocabulary and L2 narrative performance post-intervention. These results underscore the crucial role of L1 intervention in supporting the development of L2 narrative skills, thereby highlighting the cross-linguistic association in Korean-English bilingual children.