Giguere, David

The 3MT® competition celebrates the exciting research conducted by graduate students. Developed by The University of Queensland (UQ), the exercise cultivates students’ academic, presentation, and research communication skills. The competition supports their capacity to effectively explain their research in three minutes, in language appropriate to a non-specialist audience. The first 3MT® competition was held at the University of Queensland in 2008 with 160 students competing. In 2009 and 2010 the 3MT® competition was promoted to other Australian and New Zealand universities and enthusiasm for the concept grew. Since 2011, the popularity of the competition has increased and 3MT® competitions are now held in over 170 universities across more than 18 countries worldwide.

Extensive evidence indicates that oral language skills at school entry predict later reading development among monolingual children. It is not clear if the effect is the same for bilingually developing children and whether their oral skills in one language can transfer to reading comprehension in the other. The current longitudinal study followed 72 Spanish-English bilingual children (42 girls, 30 boys) and examined the extent to which early oral language proficiency in English and in Spanish were related to later reading comprehension development within- and across-languages. Multilevel models revealed significant within-language relations between oral language skills at 5 years and reading comprehension growth from 6 to 8 years in both English and Spanish. Additionally, English oral skill predicted Spanish reading comprehension, whereas Spanish oral skill was unrelated to English reading comprehension. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

The current studies tested the hypothesis, that early exposure is sufficient for
nativelike proficiency. Study 1 compared the English skill of 116 5 year olds who had
been exposed to English and Spanish from birth with English monolingual and found that
the bilingual children had significantly lower levels of vocabulary skill. Study 2 assessed
65 adult bilinguals, comparing them to 25 English and 25 Spanish monolinguals on a
battery of language measures. The bilinguals had lower scores in Spanish in 7 of the 8
domains of language skill measured. The bilinguals were not different from the English
monolingual speakers in most, but not all, aspects of language proficiency. These
findings provide evidence that the monolingual-bilingual gap observed in childhood is no
longer evident among adult bilinguals, but that despite early exposure and continued use
into adulthood, second generation immigrants are not native-like in their heritage
language skills.