What does a receptive bilingual understand? Evidence from Polish as a heritage language in Germany

Summary Our study explores the field of receptive bilingualism, a highly common phenomenon with respect to heritage languages—one that, despite its commonness, has been analyzed by few studies. We collected data from 10 receptive bilinguals of Polish as a heritage language in Germany, including data from interviews regarding language biographies, a battery of tests on language comprehension skills, and a single-word production task. The main focus of our study was the analysis of the receptive abilities of our 10 participants, with a specific emphasis on their level of listening comprehension of spoken text. We conducted an explorative correlation analysis with respect to the interrelation of listening comprehension with other parameters, such as single-word comprehension, sentence comprehension, single-word production, and the language choice of the participants’ parents. The results indicate that all participants coped well with spoken texts up to level B1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). There was great variance in performance at levels B2 and C1, with some of the participants still performing very well. Their performance at levels B2 and C1 strongly correlated with the number of direct address instances in Polish by the parents during childhood and with single-word comprehension. Furthermore, the word production task generated the lowest outcomes of all tests, thus revealing a wide gap between receptive and productive abilities. Interestingly, the results of the word production task did not correlate with those pertaining to the listening comprehension of texts at levels B2 and C1. This finding underscores the fact that productive skills do not constitute a valid indicator of receptive abilities. In summary, our results demonstrate the special quality of receptive bilingualism and the need to avoid underestimating this specific status (e. g., in language classes).