Bilingual Children and Language Development

Discuss the linguistic development of bilingual children across the three key stages of language acquisition.

The following literature review seeks to assess the extant literature on the question of the linguistic development of bilingual children across the three key stages of language development: 0-3, 3-5, 6-7. The study of language acquisition generally, and the acquisition of children in particular, has seen a vast efflorescence in the past two decades. The study of the language development of bilingual children has already produced a rich harvest of scientific research and empirical data. This present review delineates the salient themes and ideas that emerge from that literature, and in its analysis seeks to bind some of those themes together into a coherent whole. The review inquires, in particular, into the attitudes and responses of bilingual children when confronted in their environment with strangers or outsiders.

Any competent literature review has of course to consider and question both the authority and nature of its sources, and it is worth briefly considering the authority and nature of the sources used for this present literature review. Perhaps the first thing the student of childhood language acquisition encounters is the sheer profusion of sources available to him - as well as the myriad forms (academic books, journals, internet sources etc.,) in which they are published. This mass of research can be, at first, intimidating, and it is crucial to have a way to sift through the material to find both the best and most relevant information for one's own particular question. Fortunately, in terms of the present review, some orientation is given by the specialization of the question. Most literature on language acquisition in bilingual children centres upon either the reading or literacy aspects of this process - those parts we are not concerned with in this literature review. Once these aspects are discarded, it is far easier to analyze the residue of what remains: a concentrated and rich pool of research on our exact question of language development in bilingual children.

This review drew heavily upon two of the seminal works in this field: Bee's and Boyd's The Developing Child (Bee & Boyd, 2003) and Santrock's (Santrock, 2004) Child Development - both now having reached their tenth editions! Though relatively old now, Saunders' Bilingual Children: From Birth to Teens (Saunders, 2000) was particularly useful for an analysis of the separate stages of bilingual development. With sources such as these, as well as the other twenty or so used as the base of this review, the student need not be too concerned about the quality and authority of their sources. All such books and journals are the compositions of world-renowned scholars and authors of the highest reputation and teaching at leading universities. This review has made limited use of internet sources, but where so used these should be treated with a greater scrutiny that the academic books mentioned above.

Stage 1 - Ages 0-3

It is perhaps best to begin this section by blowing-away the popular public fallacy that infant (0-3) bilingual children are disadvantaged in their acquisition of language by the fact that they hear two or more different languages at home. Saunders says this explicitly (Saunders, 1998: 51): '. . . there is no evidence at all that an infant who is exposed to two or more languages in the home... will be delayed in any way.' An interesting project by Doyle (Doyle, 1978) using English-French bilingual infants reported that the bilingual children, typically, uttered their first words sooner (11.2 months) than the monolingual children (12) months. During this first stage (approximately from when the first word is spoken, to near the third birthday) bilingual infants, like monolingual infants, learn mostly monosyllabic and single-element words like 'Mama', 'Dog' and Daddy' until approximately two years of age (Barrett, 1999).

However, an interesting aspect here of the acquisition of bilingual infants is that when then learn the pronunciation of one word in English like 'dog' that they are unlikely to be able to say the corresponding French word 'chien'; nonetheless, bilingual children comprehend that these words mean the same thing - only they cannot pronounce them. Such comprehension, it has been shown by Doyle (Doyle, 1978), is directly linked to physical experience of the object discussed. Thus a English-German bilingual child when asked by his father, in English, what noise a cat makes, answered 'Meaouw', but asked the same question in German, the child had no idea how to answer. In this instance, the infant had played with a cat in the garden before and heard his father call it 'cat' and so recognised the sound and object; but when called 'katze' by his mother the child did not recognise it. Saunders argues (Saunders, 1978: p52) that this failure to use words interchangeably at this early stage is not a major cause for concern. The infant is not overwhelmed by the confluence of the two languages spoken to it, but regards 'dog' and 'chien' as synonyms in one greater language. The infant uses these synonyms according to preference, and this explains why it may appear not to know the corresponding word in its other language.

The second stage of language acquisition runs from approximately the third to fifth years. At this stage a bilingual child's language becomes characterized by a greater differentiation and implementation of the numerous synonymous words that it comprehends in its two languages (Bialystock, 2001). For example, infants of this age have normally learnt to use different greeting words to address different people and in different languages. Thus an English-Greek bilingual infant greets his English grandfather with the word 'Hello' but his Greek grandmother with 'Yassu'. This differentiation represents a significant advance in both the child's pronunciation and conscious use of language. Some vestiges of confusion from the infant stage are nonetheless transferred to the 3-5 year bracket. For instance, some children show a preference for double-barrelled repetitious word combinations when naming something; an English-German bilingual boy, for example, when pointing to a fire, says 'Hot / Heib!'. Baker (1996) argues, in various places, that these apparent confusions can be explained by the child's preference for the sound of a particular word, and its unwillingness to part with it even when it makes no sense in his second language. Nonetheless, these confusions excluded, the pre-eminent feature of a child's language development between these years is its ever greater skill in separating its two vocabularies (Bialystock, 2001). Facility in separating vocabulary is not usually however matched by the ability to separate the different syntactical structures of the two languages that it speaks (Coady, 1997).

Stage 3 - Ages 6-7

The final stage of language development for bilingual children is that between the ages 6-7. The characteristic feature of this stage is the rapid and near total differentiation of the syntactical structures of their two respective languages (Bee & Boyd, 2003). By the seventh year, in the example of an averagely advanced child, there will be very few occasions when the child confuses either the vocabulary or grammatical structures of their different languages. This separation is not total, for there will always be instances when one language interferes with the other, but the child no longer perceives his two vocabularies and grammars as one great language replete with synonymous words and structures.

Moreover, by this stage, bilingual children can near unfailingly identify the appropriate language with which to speak to relative and strangers alike (Saunders, 1978: p.56). In the later instance, where strangers are met, the child responds immediately to the language used by the stranger and can switch between the two languages used by different strangers. There is relatively little written however on the question of whether a child feels intimidated to use a particular language when in the presence of strangers. For instance, a Portuguese-Japanese bilingual child, living in Japan, but speaking Portuguese in its house, may feel intimidated to use Portuguese when in the presence of Japanese visitors. Questions as these remain relatively under-investigated and promise much fruitful information for future researchers.

Conclusion

In the final analysis, the literature of the language development of bilingual children can be said to have already gathered much fascinating and revealing information about these early years of a child's life; moreover, it appears likely that an equally large and high quality yield will be gathered by linguists of future decades. A particularly interesting question is the one raised at the outset of this review: that is, how, linguistically, do children respond in the presence of strangers? A number of empirical scientific experiments could be established to test various hypotheses related to this question.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baker, C. (1995). A Parents' and Teachers Guide to Bilingualism. Multilingual Matters, New York.

Baker, C. (1996). Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. (2^nd Ed.). Multilingual Matters, New York.

Barrett, M. (Ed.) (1999). The Development of Language.Psychology Press, Hove.

Bee, H., & Boyd,D. (2003). The Developing Child.(10^th Ed.). Harper and Row, London.

Braidi, S.M. (1999). The Acquisition of Second Language Syntax. London, England: Arnold. Cisero, C.A., & Royer, J.M. (1995). The Development and Cross-language Transfer of Phonological Awareness. Contemporary Educational Psychology 20, 275-303.

Baker, C., & Jones, S. P. (1998). Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Multilingual Matters, New York.

Bialystok, Ellen. (2001). Bilingualism in Development: Language, Literacy & Cognition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Coady, J. & Huckin, T. (1997). Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

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Cummins, J. (1999). Alternative paradigms in bilingual education research: Does theory have a place. Educational Researcher 28 (7), 26-34.

Davies, A. 2003: The Native Speaker. Myth and Reality. Bilingual Education and Bilingualism Series. Multilingual Matters, New York.

Duran, R.P. (1985). Discourse Skills of Bilingual Children. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 53, 99-114.

Eckman, F.R. (1995). Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy. Elbaum Press, Columbia.

Ervin-Tripp, S. M. (2000). Bilingual Minds. Bilingualism: Language & Cognition. 1: p. 10-12.

Gibson, E. & Levin, H. (1975). The Psychology of Language Acquisition. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Hamers, Josiane and Michel H. A. Blanc, Bilinguality and Bilingualism. Cambridge, 1990.

Hodes, P. (1976). A Psycholinguistic Study of Reading Misuses of Yiddish-English Bilingual Children. PhD. Dissertation, Wayne State University,

Karna, H.T., & Lara, M. (1992). The Support Factor as Empowerment and Teachers' Perceptions of Bilingual Programs. Journal of Educational Issues of Language Minority Students 11, 187-206.

-- Lemberger, N. (1996). Factors Affecting Language Development from the Perspectives of Four Bilingual Teachers. Journal of Educational Issues of Language Minority Students, 18, 17-34.

Mackey, William. (1972). International Bibliography on Bilingualism. Blackwell, Oxford.

Pickersgill, M. (1998). Bilingualism: Current Policy and Practice. In S. Gregory, P. Knight, W. McCracken, S. Powers & L. Watson (Eds.), Issues in Education (pp. 89-97). Cambridge University Press, New York.

Quirk, R. (Et. Al.). (1989). The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Saunders, G. (1988). Bilingual Children: From Birth to Teens. Multilingual Matters, New York.

Santrock, J.W. (2004). Child Development. Brown Publishers, Iowa.

Wei, Li (ed.) (2000). The Bilingualism Reader London. Routledge, New York.

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