A Study on Differences in Vocabulary Test Accuracy of Korean-English Bilingual Children according to Language Experience and Scoring Methods; [언어적 경험과 채점 방식에 따른 한국어-영어 이중언어 아동의 어휘력 검사 정답률 연구]

Abstract

Objectives: This study investigated differences in vocabulary performance among Korean-English bilingual children across four scoring methods (Korean, English, composite, and total scores) and examined how these abilities vary according to language environment and relative language proficiency. Methods: A total of 30 bilingual children aged 6-9 living in English-speaking and non-English-speaking environments participated. The Vocabulary Test for Korean-English Bilingual Children (VOKEB) was administered to calculate scores using the four methods. Data were analyzed to verify differences based on group and scoring method, and to examine relationships with environmental variables and relative language proficiency. Results: Results revealed a significant main effect of scoring methods. While single-language scores were significantly influenced by the language environment, composite and total scores showed no significant group differences and were consistently higher than single-language scores. Furthermore, relative language proficiency significantly predicted total scores in expressive vocabulary, indicating that children with greater balance between their two languages achieved higher total scores. Conclusion: The significance of this study lies in verifying that composite and total scores provide stable measures of conceptual knowledge, independent of environmental constraints. In particular, the total score method was identified as a meaningful indicator of bilingual balance in expressive vocabulary. These results suggest that employing these scoring methods as complementary measures can provide a more accurate assessment of both the overall lexical capacity and the linguistic balance of bilingual children. Copyright © 2026 Korean Academy of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.