LINGUISTICS
5. The most important things for parents and early childhood educators to know about early childhood bilingualism?
There are number of important things to keep in mind:
bilingual acquisition is a common and normal childhood experience
all children are capable of learning two languages in childhood
knowing the language of one's parents is an important and essential component of children's cultural identity and sense of belonging
bilingual acquisition is facilitated if children have sustained, rich, and varied experiences in both languages
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proficiency in both languages is more likely if children have sustained exposure in the home to the language that is used less extensively in the community; the language that is used more widely will get support outside the home
parents can facilitate bilingual proficiency by using the language they know best and by using it in varied and extensive ways
Misconceptions Towards Bilingual Acquisition
The following are the misconceptions summarized by McLaughlin in Baetens Beardsmore(1982:139-141) which shows that there are no simple black versus white positions with reference to a number of propositions including:
The young child acquires a language more quickly and more easily than an adult because the child is biologically programmed to acquire languages, while the adult is not.
Though it has been pointed that the apparent advantages of early versus late bilingualism, nevertheless doubts have been raised as the explanation for any differences between the two.
Impressionistically, it appears that young children learn two languages with amazing speed and efficiency but it is difficult to prove that whether this is due to cerebral plasticity or due to the greater ease with which children make social contacts, leading to less inhibition, greater motivation and probably greater opportunity for use of language.
The younger the child, the more he is skilled in acquiring the second language. Controlled experimentation has tended to prove that this is not necessarily true for all aspects of language learning. Though young children are apparently more readily able to acquire native-like phonology in two languages, on other aspects such as structural complexity or lexical variety, older learners seem to progress more rapidly.
It is often flawless accent of the young bilinguals that makes so many observers neglect other aspects of their speech in comparison with older bilinguals.
Interference between first and second languages is an inevitable and ubiquitous part of second language acquisition.
There is a single method of second language instruction that is more effective with all children.
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The final myth he mentions of relevance to the arguments being developed is the idea that the experience of bilingualism negatively (or positively) affects the child's intellectual development, language skills, educational attainment, emotional adjustments, and or cognitive functioning.
Becoming Bilingual
Lyon (1996) states that it is easy to misinterpret the term
‘bilingual’. It is a common experience to be told by someone you have heard using two languages that they are not really bilingual. People are more aware of the limits of their two languages use than of their skills. The notion of the ‘balanced bilingual’ has proved largely unworkable and not useful, but there needs to be some way of constraining the use of the term bilingual.
The problem is more acute when children are the subjects.
How can we define a child as bilingual when his/her language is only rudimentary? Many studies do so without further explanation (Lyon, 1996: 213). Is that because they assume that the children of parents knowing to languages are inevitably developing two languages? The dangers are clear. Attention needs to be paid not only to the child’s language, but also to the child’s language environment, which may or may not be what it seems.
Baetens Beardsmore (1982) proposes the creation of a balanced bilingual and bicultural education program can help dispel the danger of problem though it cannot eliminate them completely. It would appear that the problem of withdrawal from one of the two linguistic cultures can best be avoided if the following criteria are borne in mind:
The role of parental attitudes towards bilingualism cannot be sufficiently stressed if problems of withdrawal from one of the two linguistic cultures are to be avoided. Successful results in bilingual education programs have clearly shown a correlation between absence of problem and positive parental support for both languages.
Bilingual education should be paired with bicultural awareness.
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Monoglot linguistic and cultural reference norms should be applied with circumspection in evaluating bilingual and bicultural programs.
Apparent linguistic retardation in one or both of the languages involved in the program should be appraised over a sufficient period of time which takes into account the lack of opportunity to use both languages at all times and which adjusts expectancy levels accordingly.
Teachers working in bilingual programs should be the native speakers of the respective languages or bilingual themselves and should have appositive attitudes towards both of the languages and cultures in their pupils' lives, being careful not to present elements of either culture in a way that might provoke negative transfer or conflicting aspiration.
Below the figure of models of bilingual language acquisition :
GRADUAL DIFFERENTIATION MODEL (Volterra &
Taeschner,1978)
L1 (lexicon) L1 (lexicon and syntactic system) L1 + L2 L1 + L2 (lexicon) (syntactic system)
L2 (lexicon) L2 (lexicon and syntactic system) Mixing syntactic fusion separation SEPARATE DEVELOPMENT MODEL (e.g. Padilla & Lindholm, 1975)
L1 (lexicon) L1 (lexicon and systematic system)
L2 (lexicon) L2 (lexicon and systematic system)