2026-04-14T04:49:39Zhttps://recercat.cat/oai/requestoai:recercat.cat:10230/533492025-12-19T22:59:44Zcom_2072_6col_2072_452952
RECERCAT
author
Vorobyeva, Tamara
author
Bel, Aurora
2022-06-02T05:53:10Z2022-06-02T05:53:10Z2021
This study focuses on the issue of language proficiency attainment among young
heritage speakers of Russian living in Spain and examines factors that have been
claimed to promote heritage language proficiency, namely, age, gender, age of onset
to L2, quantity of exposure and family language use. A group of 30 Russian-SpanishCatalan trilingual children aged 7–11 participated in the study. In order to measure
heritage language proficiency (L1 Russian), oral narratives were elicited.
The results demonstrated a significant relationship between L1 proficiency and
three sociolinguistic variables (age of onset to L2, quantity of exposure and family
language use). Additionally, the multiply regression model demonstrated that the
only significant variable affecting language proficiency was family language use and it
accounted only for 33% of the variation of children’s language proficiency. The study
raises the question about what are the other, yet unknown factors, which can affect
heritage language proficiency.This research has benefited from support by the Spanish Ministry of Economy
and Competitiveness (Grant FFI2016-75082-P).
© TAMARA VOROBYEVA AND AURORA BEL, 2021 / DOI:10.1163/19552629-14020003
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the prevailing CC-BY-NC license at the time of publication https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Heritage speakers
Child bilingualism
Language proficiency
Language dominance
Russian
Input exposure
Factors affecting language proficiency in heritage language: the case of young Russian heritage speakers in Spain
info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion