In 2019, about 12.08 million children were speaking another language other than English at home in the United States. This number is fairly consistent with the previous year, where 12.13 million children spoke another language at home.

The data in this repository were collected in France, the Netherlands and the UK between 2020 and 2022 to inform the validation of the Q-BEx questionnaire (). Children between the ages of 5 and 9 were tested individually to assess their proficiency in the societal language (i.e., French, Dutch or English), as well as their non-verbal intelligence and working memory. One of their parents or caregivers also filled in the full version of the Q-BEx questionnaire. The respository includes data from 299 children (FR: n=78, NL: n=117, UK: n=104), although some measures are not available for all children. In France, children were recruited in ordinary schools and in private clinics for Speech & Language Therapy (37 children were recruited via clinics). The consent form for schools asked parents if the child had previous or current SLT, and the reason. In the Netherlands, recruitment took place in schools and via social media advertisement. Language disorder (reported by parent/teacher/remedial teacher) was an exclusionary criterion. In the UK, all children were recruited in schools; no exclusionary criteria were applied, and not SLT information was collected. Language experience data Language experience data was collected using the full version of the Q-BEx questionnaire (), which was completed by one of the child’s parents or caregivers. This includes all the following modules (except that Language mixing wasn’t included in France): - Background (languages the child is exposed to, adults and children the child lives with - Risk factors (early language milestones, early parental concerns) - Language exposure and use (current and cumulative estimates; onset of exposure to each language) - Estimates of proficiency in each language (listening, speaking, reading, writing) - Richness of experience in each language (activities, diversity of interlocutors, parental education) - Language mixing - Attitudes The questionnaire was administered either in the societal language (French, Dutch or English) or in one of the child’s home languages (Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish). The choice of administration language was constrained by the translated versions available at the time of testing. The translation protocol used to create the versions in different languages can be found at . Direct outcome measures We collected measures of language and cognitive outcomes during individual, face-to-face sessions with each child (two sessions per child, lasting approximatively 45 minutes each). Most of the testing was done in the child’s school. In France, the children recruited via speech & language therapy clinics were tested in the clinic. In the UK and the NL, some testing sessions took place in a different location (e.g., university premises), and on rare occasions online via Zoom. Language proficiency Outcomes in the societal language (i.e., Dutch, English, or French) include phonology, morphosyntax and vocabulary. Phonology Phonological competence was assessed with the LITMUS Quasi-Universal Non-Word Repetition task. See dos Santos, C., and Ferré, S. (2016) “A Nonword Repetition Task to Assess Bilingual Children’s Phonology”. Language Acquisition 41: 1–14. Morphosyntax Morphosyntax outcomes were assessed with the LITMUS test in each societal language. See Marinis, T. and S. Armon-Lotem (2015). “Sentence Repetition. Methods for assessing multilingual children: disentangling bilingualism from Language Impairment.” in S. Armon-Lotem, J. de Jong and N. Meir, Methods for assessing multilingual children: disentangling bilingualism from Language Impairment. Amsterdam: Multilingual Matters). The English and Dutch versions included 30 items. The French version included 16 items. We created two blocks in the English and Dutch versions so that the first block be comparable to the 16-item French version. Subsequent analyses demonstrated that there was no block effect in EN and NL. For each child, we report three overall scores: Identical Repetitions, Target Repetitions, and Grammatical Attempts. These overall scores correspond to the mean across items (n=30 in English and Dutch; n=16 in French), excluding NAs (i.e., the mean is calculated on the items for which the child did provide a response). Vocabulary Vocabulary breadth was measured in the UK with the British Picture Vocabulary Scale (BPVS), in France with the the Échelle de vocabulaire en images Peabody (EVIP), and in the Netherlands with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). Vocabulary depth was measured with the Word Classes component of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals CELF-V (in its Dutch, English, or French version). Cognitive measures The tasks used to evaluate cognitive skills were administered in the child’s societal language. Memory Short-term memory was assessed through Forward Digit Recall; working memory was assessed through Backward Digit Recall. Most children were tested using the digit...

These data accompany the article, "Attention in Bilingual Children with Developmental Language Disorder", published in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. The data were collected from 175 6- to 8-year old children exposed to only English or both Spanish and English. Data from direct language assessments, parent report instruments (on attention skills, language development, and bilingual language exposure), and computer-based assessments of processing speed, sustained attention, and attentional control.

this data set is associated with the publication Rinker T, Yu YH, Wagner M and Shafer VL (2022) Language Learning Under Varied Conditions: Neural Indices of Speech Perception in Bilingual Turkish-German Children and in Monolingual Children With Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Front. Hum. Neurosci. 15:706926. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.706926

Data used in the following paper:

Bilingual children outperform monolingual children on executive functions tasks far more often than chance: Changing the perspective

The file contains the data collected from a sample of Spanish-Italian speaking preschool children who were tested with the MuLiMi platform for the validation of the tasks implemented there. The tests (language tasks) have the aim to allow identification of risk of Developmental Language Disorder in the bilingual population. The file is in Italian but English translation is provided for all variables. The bigram "sp" in the variable name indicates Spanish, "it" indicates Italian.

The global market for bilingual education for children is experiencing robust growth, driven by increasing parental awareness of the cognitive and social benefits of multilingualism. The market, valued at approximately $15 billion in 2025, is projected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 8% from 2025 to 2033. This expansion is fueled by several key factors, including rising disposable incomes in developing economies, increased globalization leading to higher demand for multilingual professionals, and the growing adoption of diverse learning methodologies emphasizing language immersion. The segments showing the strongest growth are Dual Language Bilingual Education programs and those offered in the Private School sector, reflecting a willingness by parents to invest in specialized educational services for their children. While regional variations exist, North America and Asia-Pacific are expected to dominate the market share due to a strong emphasis on international education and readily available resources. However, the market faces challenges including the need for qualified bilingual teachers and the development of standardized curriculum across diverse linguistic backgrounds. Despite the challenges, the long-term outlook for the bilingual education market for children remains highly positive. Government initiatives promoting multilingual education in many countries are boosting market growth, and technological advancements, such as online language learning platforms and interactive educational tools, are expanding access to high-quality bilingual education. The increasing integration of technology in the classroom also enables personalization of learning experiences, cater to diverse learning styles, and allows for more effective monitoring of student progress. Furthermore, the rising demand for personalized learning and the growing recognition of bilingual education's positive impact on cognitive skills and career prospects underpin continued market expansion in the forecast period.

Multilingualism has emerged as a global necessity in the dynamically evolving digital age. With exposure to multiple languages and writing systems, neurotypical children develop awareness of diverse linguistic rules. Statistical properties in the language environment enable implicit learning of co-occurring pattern distribution, which is known as implicit statistical learning (ISL). Although previous research has examined ISL in language and reading acquisition, the impact of multilingual exposure on individuals’ potential for acquiring multiple regularities remains underexplored. Examining ISL’s abilities in multilingual children with and without language impairments is essential for understanding the role of associated cognitive mechanisms dedicated to learning multiple regularities within and across languages. In three empirical studies, this thesis examined ISL among Indian multilingual children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) and developmental dyslexia (DD). The first study examined the effect of multilingualism on multiple regularity ISL and its association with meta-linguistic skills and reading in typically developing children. The second study examined the age and multiple regularity effects in visuo-motor ISL among children and adolescents with and without DD using a non-linguistic serial reaction time paradigm. Finally, employing a novel Zipfian distribution-based naturalistic language stimuli, the third study investigated the role of the chunking mechanism in multiple regularity ISL in children with and without DLD and DD.

The dataset contains data from 26 studies on cross-linguistic influence at the level of morphosyntax in simultaneous and early sequential bilingual children. Calculated effect sizes were used in the following study: van Dijk, C.N., van Wonderen, E., Koutamanis, E., Kootstra, G.J., Dijkstra, T., & Unsworth, S. (to appear). Cross-linguistic influence in early bilingual children: A meta-analysis. Journal of Child Language. A short description and coding decisions for each study in the dataset are included.

The description of each dataset is given below. Study01 assessed Grades 1 to 3 bilingual children to identify the cognitive and linguistic skills that predict early reading comprehension. The data includes all the participants' scores in different cognitive and linguistic measures.Study02 identified different subgroups of early bilingual readers using their word reading, oral language, and reading fluency skills. The data includes the participants' scores in different linguistic measures in their first and second languages.Study 03 determined the efficacy of a multi-component oral language intervention for bilingual Grades 1 to 3 children. The data include scores of pretest and posttest measures of control and intervention groups.

The current study examined the effect of speaker variability on children’s cross-situational word learning (XSWL). The study also examined the role of bilingual experience and sustained attention. Forty English monolingual children (MeanAge = 5.73 years; SDAge = 1.07) and 40 Spanish-English bilingual children (MeanAge = 5.85 years; SDAge = 0.83) ages 4-7 completed a XSWL task in a Single Speaker Condition and a Multiple Speaker Condition. Results indicated that speaker variability neither facilitated nor hindered XSWL. While monolingual children outperformed bilingual children,speaker-variability effects did not fluctuate across the two language groups. Notably, exposure to multiple speakers facilitated XSWL in children with poorer sustained attention skills, suggesting that variability in the input may be especially useful to children with poorer cognitive processing abilities.

Purpose: This longitudinal study investigated the impact of different academic programs of primary language instruction (Spanish or English) on the dual language development of Spanish–English bilingual children. Types of academic settings offered to bilingual students as well as differing views and outcomes based on language of instruction are outlined.Method: Narrative retell language samples from 90 typically developing Spanish–English bilingual children elicited across six consecutive academic semesters from the fall of kindergarten to the spring of second grade were used to estimate Spanish and English language skills (grammar and lexical diversity) longitudinally. Participants academically instructed primarily in English (n = 45) were matched to primarily Spanish-instructed participants by age, gender, maternal level of education, and family income level.Results: The estimates of conditional growth curve models indicated that bilingual children differed in their rates of Spanish and English oral language development as a function of their primary academic language of instruction. Loss of Spanish grammatical skills was estimated for English- and Spanish-instructed participants.Conclusions: A wide range of expressive language skills and differing rates and directions of growth is present in typically developing bilingual children. The language of instruction explains some of the variability seen. These take-home findings should be considered in clinical assessment of dual language learners to avoid misdiagnosis of language impairment.Supplemental Material S1. Mean length of utterances in words (MLUw), and subordination index (SI-count) descriptive statistics in Spanish and English for English- (EI) and Spanish-instructed (SI) children.Hiebert, L., Rojas, R., & Iglesias, A. (2025). Impact of academic language of instruction on Spanish and English growth and loss in bilingual children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_LSHSS-24-00120

The global bilingual education market size was valued at USD 74.67 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 12.4% from 2023 to 2030. The market is driven by the increasing demand for multilingualism in the globalized world, as well as the growing awareness of the benefits of bilingual education for children. Bilingual education has been shown to improve cognitive skills, academic achievement, and social development. The market is segmented by application (public school, private school), type (transitional bilingual education, maintain bilingual education, dual language bilingual education), and region (North America, South America, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia Pacific). North America is the largest market for bilingual education, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. The market is expected to grow in all regions over the forecast period, with the fastest growth expected in Asia Pacific. Key players in the market include Nord Anglia, Dulwich, Huijia Education, Cogdel Education Group, Ulink Education, Tianli Education, Virscend Education, Wisdom Education, Shangde Education, BIBS, Weidong Cloud Education Group, Taylor's Education Group, Manipal Global, New Oriental, Macmillan Education, and Benesse Holdings.

In 2021, about 21.3 percent of school children spoke another language than English at home in the United States. This is a decrease from 2019, when 22.6 percent of school children did not speak English at home.

Here we provide the first evidence that exposure to a multilingual environment early in life promotes the development of effective interpersonal communication. In our experiment children performed a communication task that required taking an interlocutor's perspective to understand her intended meaning. We discovered that monolingual children were at a disadvantage compared to bilingual children, and compared to children who were merely exposed to another language but were not bilingual. Given that exposure to a multilingual environment is the human norm, rather than the exception, we propose that such an environment may facilitate the development of perspective-taking tools that are critical for effective communication. This discovery opens new lines of investigation regarding the social consequences of early multilingual exposure, as well as the potential costs of raising children in an exclusively monolingual social environment.

The MIND project is a study into bilingual childcare in the Netherlands. Ten childcare organizations offer childcare in both Dutch and English to children aged between zero to four years from 2018 until 2021. A team of researchers at the University of Amsterdam investigated how children, who attend such bilingual centers, develop their language proficiency. The development of both the Dutch and English language skills was examined for a total of 751 children. Their language skills were measured one to four times with an intermission of eight to nine months. In addition, policy documents were consulted, 70 teachers and 410 parents filled out surveys and eight teachers were interviewed. At three locations, teacher-child interactions were investigated by means of video recordings.

Audio and Video recordings of four German/Spanish bilingual children starting at approx. 1 year and 6 months and ending at age 6-7 years with about 392 recordings (interviewer/child interaction), 185 in a German and 207 in a Spanish speaking environment.

PhonBLA Longitudinalstudie Hamburg is a phonetically and orthographically transcribed corpus of German and Spanish, finalized in the project Prosodic constraints on phonological and morphological development in bilingual first language acquisition at the Research Center on Multilingualism, University of Hamburg.

Lleó, Conxita. 2012. "Monolingual and Bilingual Phonoprosodic Corpora of Child German and Child Spanish." In Multilingual Corpora and Multilingual Corpus Analysis, edited by Thomas Schmidt and Kai Wörner, 14:pp. 107–22. Hamburg Studies in Multilingualism. John Benjamins.

CLARIN Metadata summary for PhonBLA Longitudinalstudie Hamburg (CMDI-based)

Title: PhonBLA Longitudinalstudie Hamburg
Description: Audio and Video recordings of four German/Spanish bilingual children starting at approx. 1 year and 6 months and ending at age 6-7 years with about 392 recordings (interviewer/child interaction), 185 in a German and 207 in a Spanish speaking environment.
Data owner: Conxita Lleó, Institut für Romanistik / Von-Melle-Park 6 / D-20146 Hamburg, lleo@uni-hamburg.de
Contributors: Conxita Lleó, Institut für Romanistik / Von-Melle-Park 6 / D-20146 Hamburg, lleo@uni-hamburg.de (compiler)
Project: E3 "Prosodic Constraints on Phonological and Morphological development in Bilingual First Language Acquisition", German Research Foundation (DFG)
Keywords: child language acquisition, child bilingualism, longitudinal data, simultaneous bilingualism, L2 data, L1 data, EXMARaLDA
Languages: German (deu), Spanish (spa)
Size: 61 speakers (42 female, 18 male, 1 unknown), 413 communications, 392 recordings, 12725 minutes, 413 transcriptions, 303792 words
Genre: discourse
Modality: spoken
References: Lleó, Conxita. 2012. "Monolingual and Bilingual Phonoprosodic Corpora of Child German and Child Spanish." In Multilingual Corpora and Multilingual Corpus Analysis, edited by Thomas Schmidt and Kai Wörner, 14:pp. 107–22. Hamburg Studies in Multilingualism. John Benjamins.

Audio recordings of five German and five Spanish speaking monolingual children. For the German children there are 175 recordings (interviewer/child interaction), on an average starting at 9 months and ending at 3 years; for the Spanish children there are 77 recordings, on average starting at 9 months and ending at 2;6 years.

PAIDUS is a phonetically and orthographically transcribed corpus of German and Spanish child language, finalized in the project Prosodic constraints on phonological and morphological development in bilingual first language acquisition at the Research Center on Multilingualism, University of Hamburg.

Lleó, Conxita. 2012. "Monolingual and Bilingual Phonoprosodic Corpora of Child German and Child Spanish." In Multilingual Corpora and Multilingual Corpus Analysis, edited by Thomas Schmidt and Kai Wörner, 14:pp. 107–22. Hamburg Studies in Multilingualism. John Benjamins.

CLARIN Metadata summary for Parameterfixierung im Deutschen und Spanischen (PAIDUS) (CMDI-based)

Title: Parameterfixierung im Deutschen und Spanischen (PAIDUS)
Description: Audio recordings of five German and five Spanish speaking monolingual children. For the German children there are 175 recordings (interviewer/child interaction), on an average starting at 9 months and ending at 3 years; for the Spanish children there are 77 recordings, on average starting at 9 months and ending at 2;6 years.
Publication date: 2010-09-30
Data owner: Conxita Lleó, Institut für Romanistik / Von-Melle-Park 6 / D-20146 Hamburg, lleo@uni-hamburg.de
Contributors: Conxita Lleó, Institut für Romanistik / Von-Melle-Park 6 / D-20146 Hamburg, lleo@uni-hamburg.de (compiler)
Project: E3 "Prosodic Constraints on Phonological and Morphological development in Bilingual First Language Acquisition", German Research Foundation (DFG)
Keywords: child language acquisition, longitudinal data, monolingual data, EXMARaLDA
Languages: German (deu), Spanish (spa)
Size: 66 speakers (43 female, 23 male), 253 communications, 252 recordings, 8217 minutes, 253 transcriptions, 166976 words
Genre: discourse
Modality: spoken
References: Lleó, Conxita. 2012. "Monolingual and Bilingual Phonoprosodic Corpora of Child German and Child Spanish." In Multilingual Corpora and Multilingual Corpus Analysis, edited by Thomas Schmidt and Kai Wörner, 14:pp. 107–22. Hamburg Studies in Multilingualism. John Benjamins.

Bilingual lexical acquisition is a common event for young learners all over the world. Previous studies have primarily focused on lexical acquisition from a linguistic or cognitive perspective, neglecting the emotional aspect and its impact on process of lexical acquisition. This study aims to explore emotional features and influences on L2 lexical acquisition in bilingual children. Data were collected from 46 Chinese learners, aged 3 to 4, attending three preschools emphasizing the English education. The study employed Bivariate DeFries- Fulker (DF) extremes analysis to gather information from the Vocabulary Learning Questionnaire (VLQ), Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (ITSPA), and Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS). The findings indicate that emotional analysis can reveal correlations between lexical acquisition and emotional features. Moreover, subtle differences were observed in the reciprocal interactions between bilingual lexical acquisition. Additionally, the Bivariate DF extremes analyses demonstrated a significant correlation (r=.71) between L1 lexical acquisition and emotion, while the correlation between bilingual lexical acquisition was significant (r=.79). These results further reinforce the significance of emotional impact on supporting bilingual cognition and learning.

The dataset contains raw and aggregated data with scores obtained by participant children (Italian-German bilingual children) subdivided in three groups (typically developing, at-risk, diagnosed with developmental language disorder). as well as in the two groups presence/absence of phonological risk, on a new Nonword Repetition Task. Rows in the file correspond to single nonwords, belonging to one of the subsets: LS (language-specific), LNS (llanguage-non-specific), for each language (IT, Italian, GER, German).

The dataset has been the basis for the analyses reported in the paper "A Nonword Repetition Task Discriminates Typically Developing Italian-German Bilingual Children From Bilingual Children With Developmental Language Disorder: The Role of Language-Specific and Language-Non-specific Nonwords", part of the research topic "Discriminating the Linguistic Profiles of Bilingual Children and Children with Language Impairment", Frontiers in Psychology, 2022