Collating 120 English first-(monolingual) and second-language (bilingual) school beginners, matched for age, grade and socio-economic background, and instructed in English, on simple and complex verbal working memory and receptive and expressive vocabulary measures, this inquiry tries to define whether working memory tests are fairer language skill measures than the lexicon tests for bilingual children when tested in their second language. Monolinguals surpass bilinguals on both expressive and receptive vocabulary; no notable contrasts appear between the language groups on any of the working memory tests, when receptive and expressive vocabulary both were and were not statistically controlled; and from the working memory measures, Digit Span tasks were notably linked to vocabulary for both language groups, while Non-word and Counting Recall were only linked to vocabulary for the monolinguals.