2026-04-14T07:47:59Zhttps://recercat.cat/oai/request

oai:recercat.cat:10230/533492025-12-19T22:59:44Zcom_2072_6col_2072_452952

Factors affecting language proficiency in heritage language: the case of young Russian heritage speakers in Spain Vorobyeva, Tamara Bel, Aurora Heritage speakers Child bilingualism Language proficiency Language dominance Russian Input exposure 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). 2022-06-02T05:53:10Z 2022-06-02T05:53:10Z 2021 info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion Journal of Language Contact. 2021;14(2):304-30 info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/1PE/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 Brill