Abstract

Despite Arabic being the second most spoken home language (after Swedish) in Sweden, relatively little is known about the lexical and narrative abilities of Arabic-Swedish-speaking children.

In this talk, I will present results from my doctoral dissertation (Haddad, 2022) on the lexical skills and narrative abilities (in both languages) of 100 Arabic-Swedish-speaking bilingual children aged 4 to 7 residing in Sweden. The children’s narrative abilities were analysed in relation to age, as well as task and story effects for both narrative comprehension and narrative production. The children’s lexical skills were analysed in relation to age and effect of various language input factors (such as parents’ language use with the child, estimated daily language exposure, and shared book reading). Additionally, the children’s lexical skills in Arabic were compared to those of Arabic-speaking bilinguals in Lebanon.