Comparison of the Speech and Reading Rate in Mono and Farsi-Kurdish Bilingual of Third Grade Elementary Students

Speech rate is one of the main characteristics of speech fluency and it affects speech intelligibility and communication. Intervention for normal speech rate in language disorders, fluency disorders, dysarthria, and apraxia is one of the responsibilities of speech and language pathologists. Effective intervention needs knowledge of normal speech rate in the target language. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine and compare speech and reading rate in monolingual and bilingual third grade students.
Forty Persian monolingual students in the third grade (22 boys, 18 girls) and 50 Kurdish- Persian bilingual students (40 boys and 10 girls) were recruited after considering the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Afterwards, free and descriptive speech and reading were elicited. Reading, free and descriptive and speech rate were calculated. SPSS software 16 and independent t- test for data analysis were used.
The mean score for free, descriptive speech and reading in monolingual students were 108 (25.31), 103(21.75) and 79.14(23) words per minute, respectively. In addition, the mean score for bilingual students were 90.3(13.88), 89.91(19.20), 87.55(23.66) words per minute, respectively. There were no significant differences between the rate of reading in mono and bilingual students, however, there was a significant difference between rate of free and descriptive speech in monolinguals and bilinguals. The rate of free and descriptive speech were faster in monolinguals than bilinguals.
While bilingual students demonstrate higher rate in reading, they obtained lower score in descriptive and free speech. A possible explanation for this result might be related to descriptive and free speech, therefore, it may be assumed that bilingual students require more time for making decision about what to say and how to say in their second language.