Balanced Bilingual Essay

It can be said that the subjects of this study are considered Balanced Bilinguals, because the five subjects speak both languages fluently, however, this depends upon the topic and their location. This will be seen later. Fishman (1971) “argued that rarely will anyone be equally competent across all situations. Most balanced bilinguals will use their two languages for different purposes and with different people. For example, a person may use one language at work; the other language at home and in the local community.” (Baker p 7) I agree with Fishman, because it was clear that the subjects had difficulty maintaining a conversation without switching from one language to another. The subjects are also considered as sequential bilinguals because they learned Spanish; their native language at home and at school. Upon arriving in the United States, they learned English; their second language at school. The subjects received a formal education in both languages and they arrived to the United States at a young age or known as the critical period. There was a gap between the continuous learning of their first language. They began to receive more input in the second language and less input and use of their first language during their high school and college years. This resulted in a loss in the morphology area in

In addition, they can devote more time to the study and practice of L2. The same popular belief that an adult cannot learn a foreign language perfectly can condition one in such a way that, indeed, it will become impossible for them to do so. “It is tempting to believe that children are better language learners than adults because their brains are specially organized to learn language, whereas those of adults are not”. (Bialystok y Hakuta p