Preposition accuracy on a sentence repetition task in school age Spanish-English bilinguals.

The study used only a sentence repetition task, so it cannot show how children use prepositions in conversation, writing, or other language tasks. The children were classified as typically developing by parent and teacher report and language measures, but attention and phonological working memory were not tested, so memory demands may have affected scores. The measure was an experimental version of a bilingual language test, not a fully published standardized tool for this age group. The study is cross-sectional and correlational, so it cannot show that increasing English input and output will improve preposition accuracy. The sample was limited to typically developing Spanish-English bilingual children from Colorado and central Texas, so results may not apply to children with language impairment or different bilingual backgrounds.

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Do not conclude that low English preposition scores indicate language impairment or that preposition training will improve them. The children were classified as typically developing, and the study only reports correlations on one sentence repetition task.