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Overview
Increasingly, children grow up hearing two languages from birth. This introductory textbook shows how children learn to understand and speak those languages against the backdrop of their language learning environments. A narrative around the bilingual development of four young children with different language profiles helps to explain the latest research findings in a lively and accessible manner. The narrative describes how bilingually raised children learn to understand and use sounds, words and sentences in two languages, and how they are able to use each of their languages in socially appropriate ways. Positive attitudes towards bilingual development from the people in bilingual children's environments and their recognition that child bilingualism is not monolingualism-times-two are the main ingredients ensuring that children grow up to be happy and expert speakers of two languages.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781847696304 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Multilingual Matters Ltd. |
| Publication date: | 05/27/2009 |
| Series: | MM Textbooks , #4 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 104 |
| File size: | 438 KB |
About the Author
Annick De Houwer has recently been appointed as Chair of Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Erfurt in Germany. She is also the new Director of the Language Center there. In addition, Professor De Houwer holds the title of Collaborative Investigator to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.A.). Her PhD was based on a dissertation on bilingual acquisition, a topic she has since continued to work on steadily. Her book The Acquisition of Two Languages from Birth (CUP, 1990) is widely cited in the bilingual acquisition literature. Dr. De Houwer has also published on Dutch child language, attitudes towards child language, teen language, and intralingual subtitling. She has extensive editorial experience.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
ntroducing the fancy term for bilingual development: Bilingual First Language Acquisition
What is Bilingual First Language Acquisition (BFLA)?
The family as the primary setting for bilingual development
Developing in two languages from birth: An outline
Milestones in bilingual language development
Normal variation in bilingual language development
Varying levels of development in each language
Negotiating language choice in conversations
Introducing four bilingual families
Key points
Activities and discussion points
Further reading
This chapter sets the scene for the rest of the book.
• It defines the topic of this book. The topic is bilingual development, but as of now I will mostly use the more technical term for it, namely Bilingual First Language Acquisition or BFLA for short.
• It establishes that when children start hearing two languages from birth this usually happens within the family.
• It gives an introductory overview of BFLA children's major linguistic developments.
• It discusses the great range of variation that exists among BFLA children (and monolingual ones) during the ages at which major linguistic developments take place.
• It explains how BFLA children's two languages do not necessarily develop at the same rate.
• It emphasizes the role of the people that BFLA children interact with in helping to explain children's selection of one language rather than another.
• And, finally, this chapter introduces four BFLA children and their families whose bilingual development will be traced throughout most of the rest of this book.
What is Bilingual First Language Acquisition (BFLA)?
Bilingual First Language Acquisition (BFLA) is the development of language in young children who hear two languages spoken to them from birth. BFLA children are learning two first languages. There is no chronological difference between the two languages in terms of when the children started to hear them. This is why in referring to these languages it is best to use a notation that does not imply a notion of 'first' and 'second'. Following Wölck (1987/88) I will refer to BFLA children's two languages as Language A and Language Alpha.
I will be using the term Bilingual First Language Acquisition as a synonym for bilingual development. The term Bilingual First Language Acquisition is just more technical and precise.
My focus in this book is on children under the age of six. There are two main reasons: first, this book wants to describe how children become bilingual the way other children become monolingual, that is, without anyone formally teaching them. Children under the age of six typically learn language without formal instruction. This may change as they start to go to school around the age of six. Second, most of the scientific publications on bilingual development concern children under the age of six.
The definition of BFLA refers only to the context in which young children learn to speak. It differs from Monolingual First Language Acquisition (MFLA), in which children hear just one language from birth (their Language 1). BFLA also represents a different language learning context than Early Second Language Acquisition (ESLA), where MFLA children's language environments change in such a way that they start to hear a second language (Language 2) with some regularity over and above their Language 1. Often, this happens through day care or preschool. The BFLA context also differs from that of Trilingual First Language Acquisition (TFLA) where young children hear three languages from birth (e.g. Barnes, 2006).
BFLA, MFLA, ESLA and TFLA, then, are four different contexts for language learning in early childhood. Whether these different contexts all imply different language acquisition processes and developments is an issue that is beyond the scope of this book. However, I will, at times, draw comparisons between BFLA on the one hand, and MFLA on the other.
This book only talks about contexts where young children are hearing spoken language(s). Some children, though, may have little access to spoken language or it may even be absent. This is the case when children are born into families where the people taking care of them do not speak, but use sign language, or when children have a serious hearing loss that prevents them from hearing speech. If children growing up in these circumstances see two different sign languages from birth they may also be acquiring two first languages. Once there are studies documenting such contexts we may have to expand the definition of BFLA to include these as well.
The family as the primary setting for bilingual development
If children hear two languages spoken to them from birth, they will most likely hear them within the (extended) family. As such, the family is the primary setting in which children develop bilingually. There are, of course, many different kinds of families, and children grow up in many different kinds of family settings. When in the following I speak of 'parents' and 'couples' I am referring to all the people who take care of young children on a day-to-day basis. A single parent who has no help from others with a newborn baby may also create a BFLA situation by addressing the child in two languages from the very start.
The typical BFLA situation is the one where a newborn child's parents speak each of two languages when the baby is present. The chances are that during pregnancy, the not-yet-born infant heard mother speak two languages (that's right, infants can hear before they are born–seeChapter 2). But it is just as possible that until the birth the not-yet-born child's mother spoke only one language, and that the birth of the child triggers a change in the mother's language use.
Indeed, childless monolingual couples often become instant bilingual families upon the birth of their first child. This is most often the case when children are born to couples where the partners have different language backgrounds but speak only one language between themselves. After the birth of the baby one of them then starts speaking another language to the infant, and continues using the other language in addressing the other parent. Such changes in home language use patterns can have profound effects on the couple's relationship.
Alternatively, parents-to-be may both be bilingual and speak two languages at home. When the baby arrives, this pattern is just continued. There are also situations where bilingual couples decide to address their infant in just one language, thereby effectively blocking the possibility of BFLA. At the other end of the spectrum, monolingual parents may hire a nanny or 'au pair' out of the desire to raise their child with two languages from the very beginning.
It depends very much, then, on whether parents start speaking two languages to their baby as to whether a child will be raised in a BFLA setting or not. For some parents, it is a conscious decision to raise their child with two languages. For many others, speaking two languages at home is just a matter of course and not a matter of choice, very much the way that it is not a real 'choice' for completely monolingual parents to address their newborn child in the single language they happen to know and live with.
Developing in two languages from birth: An outline
Children who hear two languages from birth do not say much in the first year of life. Through interactions with people who talk to them regularly they do learn to understandwords and phrases in two languages by their first birthday. This comprehension of language grows and grows, and never stops (at least not in healthy, hearing individuals).
After they are six months old, bilingual infants start to babble. This babbling lays the foundation for speech. Then, after their first birthday, bilingual infants start to say things that sound like words. At first, these are mainly single words. Some BFLA children may try to say longer things, but although the melodies of these longer utterances might sound like sentences it is impossible to make much sense of them. As bilingual children start to say more and more 'real' words, their babbling all but disappears.
Around their second birthday, bilingual toddlers speak in longer utterances. These now often consist of two or three words. Between two and three, BFLA children's language production really takes off, with many of their utterances now consisting of four, five, six or more words that are fully fledged sentences. From then on, the sky is the limit, and it is often difficult to keep bilingual children quiet!
Milestones in bilingual language development
The steps I've sketched above are very important in BFLA children's language development. They are so important that they are often called 'milestones'.
The last age indication in the milestones box coincides with BFLA children's fifth birthday. There is still a lot to learn after age five, though (Berman, 2004). The very fact that no adult wants to sound like a five-year-old in any language is clear evidence of that. Not only do BFLA children learn a lot more words, idioms and phrases after age five, they also learn to construct more and more complex stories and become better conversationalists. They may also learn to read and write.
There is a particular order in overall language development that all young children follow. Babbling occurs prior to saying sentences, for instance, and comprehension precedes production. This is true both for BFLA and MFLA children (some of whom may become ESLA children).
Also the overall time frame in which the major developments in language take place is similar across young MFLA, ESLA and BFLA children. It takes about five years to develop enough language skill to tell a good story.
Normal variation in bilingual language development
In spite of the rather fixed order and the overall time frame of five years in which important linguistic milestones are reached there is a wide variation in the ages at which children reach them. This variation exists in both monolingual and bilingual children.
Let us take a closer look at the timing of important milestones. It might not seem much of a difference from the perspective of an adult life, but a difference of six months in the life of a two-year-old is quite a large difference: Six months in the life of a two-year-old means a quarter of her or his lifetime. But the six months between 18 and 24 months of age are the normal age range in which children may have reached the word combination milestone. Some children will be saying two-word combinations when they are one and a half, while others will be ready only at the time of their second birthday. Both possibilities represent the 'normal' variation, that is, the variation that occurs between children that you don't have to worry about. This normal variation is the same for MFLA and BFLA children.
If children miss some of the milestones, or if they reach them at a much later age than the rough age indications in the milestones box, something is wrong. Perhaps the children exhibiting these delays have a recurrent hearing problem, or there is an undiagnosed neurophysiological or psychosocial problem.
However, people often worry that all children who hear two languages reach the milestones much later than children who hear just one language. In other words, many people think that hearing two languages delays children's language development.
There is no research evidence showing that as a group BFLA children develop language slower than MFLA children. Instead, the combined evidence shows similar ranges of variation, with some BFLA children developing faster than some MFLA children, some MFLA children developing faster than some BFLA children, some BFLA children developing faster than other BFLA children, and some MFLA children developing faster than other MFLA children.
Hearing two languages, then, is not a danger to the language acquisition process. However, professionals who believe that it is and who deal with bilingual children can be quite harmful to them. The greatest danger exists if pediatricians or speech therapists fail to recognize or examine real underlying problems, such as hearing deficits, but instead blame the bilingual context for clear delays in language development.
There is also an idea that the 'solution' for children not learning to speak well in a bilingual setting is to drop one of the languages (see the box with the pediatrician). Apart from the fact that problems such as hearing loss do not go away if parents switch from a bilingual to a monolingual context, it is simply unethical to advise people to give up speaking a particular language and thus prevent them from transmitting much of their cultural heritage to their children. Negative attitudes towards child bilingualism, then, can prevent children from developing two languages in a stress-free way.
Varying levels of development in each language
People often assume that BFLA children know each of their languages equally well. This is not always the case, though. When we look at children's skills in a language we need to distinguish between comprehension and production.
BFLA children may understand many more words and phrases in Language A than in Language Alpha. Or they may understand sentences more easily in Language A than in Language Alpha. However, because of the small number of studies on comprehension in BFLA children we don't really know just how large these differences can be and whether it is possible for children to understand very little of one language but a whole lot of another, even though they have heard both of them frequently and regularly from birth. What little empirical research is available, however, suggests that there is a lot of variation between children in how many words they understand in each of their languages. I write more about this in Chapter 2.
For language production or speaking, there is ample evidence for large differences between BFLA children's two languages: there are children who do not speak Language Alpha at all but who are fluent in Language A. At the other end of the spectrum there are children who are about equally fluent in Language A and Language Alpha, and then there are all the variations between these two extremes, with children speaking one language better than the other to various degrees.
It is not easy to measure differences in how well children speak a particular language. Yet it is clear that BFLA children who speak two languages do not necessarily speak them equally well. A possible reason for this may be that children do not hear each of their languages to the same extent. I discuss the issue of variable knowledge and the possible reasons for it throughout the book.
Both these cases where BFLA children learn to understand two languages and speak either two or just one are quite 'normal'. In every fourth family where children hear two languages they speak only one. The fact that some BFLA children speak only one language, then, doesn't necessarily imply that they have a language learning problem. 'Il rigazzo' in the Case studies box below spoke Italian very well.
If BFLA children do not learn to understand and/or speak either of the languages spoken to them, this is cause for concern: maybe they have a hearing problem, or maybe there are neurological problems. Just as for MFLA children who do not understand much language and/or do not speak, the lack of comprehension and/or speech in any language in BFLA children is a severe problem and needs to be discussed with a speech and language pathologist.
The expectation for normally developing BFLA children, then, is that they will learn to understand two languages from early on and speak both languages, or just one of them.
Negotiating language choice in conversations
You'll be wondering how that works, children who are talked to in two languages but who speak only one? The answer is that people can be bilingual or monolingual, but conversations can be dilingual (Saville-Troike, 1987). For BFLA, this means that one person speaks in Language A, and the other one responds in Language Alpha. For dilingual conversations to work, the people engaged in them obviously must understand the two languages involved. However, in dilingual conversations there is no need for the conversational partners to actually speak the other one's language.
You'll have noticed that in the example from Manuel his mother in the end repeats his Italian rendering of 'biscuits', but translates it into German ('Kekse'). In doing so, she is acknowledging that Manuel said the right content, but in a form (Italian) that she'd like him to change (German).
In using such strategies as translating children's words into the other language, adults are expressing what language they want children to use. They are, in fact, negotiating children's language choice. This means they are trying to get children to select one particular language rather than another one.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "An Introduction to Bilingual Development"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Annick De Houwer.
Excerpted by permission of Multilingual Matters.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
1: Introducing the Fancy Term for Bilingual Development: Bilingual First Language Acquisition
2: From Birth to the Comprehension of Words
3: Saying Words and Starting to Combine Them
4: Making Sentences
5: Preschool and Beyond
6: In Conclusion: Bilingual Learning in Context