Despite
the importance of classroom language interactions for children’s school
readiness skills and the school readiness gaps faced by Spanish-speaking
emergent bilinguals (EBs), the field knows little about their classroom
language interactions in early childhood education (ECE) classrooms.
Expanding upon traditional approaches of observing classroom interactions,
this study applies a child-centered analytic method to identify profiles of
EBs classroom language interactions, characterized by their vocalizations and
conversational turn-taking with teachers and peers, based on audio
recordings. Data were drawn from 20 ECE classrooms and 171 EB children (ages
3 to 4) during the 2020–2021 school year. Latent profile analysis using
variables from all-day recordings of EB children’s language environment
identified three profiles: (1) limited classroom language interactions (58%);
(2) engaging in conversations with teachers (14%); and (3) vocalizing and
engaging conversations with peers (28%). EB children categorized to the
second profile were less likely to speak Spanish and have teachers who spoke
Spanish but were more likely to hear more words than EBs in profile 1. EBs
children in profile 3 were likelier to be older than EBs in profile 1. Given
that most EBs were in a profile of limited language interactions, the
findings suggest the importance of improving opportunities and providing more
support for EBs to engage in conversational turn-taking with their teachers
and peers.