Bilingual Language Acquisition Beginning in Infancy
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to determine how infants and small children are able to acquire more than one language at the same time before they reach the age of three years old. In order to be bilingual does the infant's mother have to be bilingual or can it be taught from a caretaker not associated with the family? This paper will begin with how languages are organized in the brain of infants and what influences the brain.
Bilingual Language Acquisition Beginning in Infancy
Introduction
How one acquires the skill to be bilingual has been a subject of interest to me especially during the infancy stage. During my early school age up to my middle adult age it amazes me how the young brain is able to attain language acquisition.
My first exposure to another language was in junior high school and that language was Spanish. I remember asking the question "Where did you learn to speak like that?" He could not explain it to me only to say it was learned at home from his Latina mother and African American father. Those who were Filipino stated it took them years of studying and practicing the English language here in the United States because they arrived to this country speaking their own language. Some of my acquaintances that are from bilingual homes can understand the other language but not speak it even though they were brought up in a bilingual home. I expected learning another language to be a automatic process but I realize now that it is not. There is nothing that can or cannot be learned including language acquisition.
There seem to be little research in the area of bilingualism in infants. Researchers do agree that how language is acquired is not a pr...
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...n be more auditory? Is it more visual? Is it speech? The auditory process has to play a huge part in the area of linguistics, word order formation and sounds. Several factors seem to play a part in bilingualism as an infant. Supposedly being brought up in a bilingual home environment and being able to hear and see are equally important and would carry the same weight factors just as one part affects the other.
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It is important to maintain children’s home language as it may help them learn and understand a second language. Barratt-Pugh (2000) discusses the benefits of bilingualism and maintaining it through early childhood settings, also mentions the concerns families have for their children maintaining two languages through schooling. Research within the article states that children who speak more than one language will have a higher level of understanding literacy content, form, genre, as well as understand the differences and translating within both languages. This demonstrates a contrast of strengths and experiences with literacy (linguist...
In Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue, infants of linguistic households are required to acquire various alien languages to become native speakers of Earth for the new languages studied. Our society, for the most part, understands that adults acquire foreign languages differently from the acquisition of a second language by a child. Furthermore, most people generally have the understanding that children learn languages quickly and easily compared to adults. Adults, however, are able to acquire foreign languages in fair or controlled conditions. There may be resulting differences between language acquisitions of new languages, but the rate at which adults acquire second languages should not be a factor.
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When most people think of the process of language development in “normal” children, the concepts that come to mind are of babies imitating, picking up sounds and words from the speakers around them. Trying to imagine that a child who cannot hear one single sound a person makes can learn to speak a language is absolutely fascinating. These children range from amazin...
Byers-Heinlein, K., & Lew-Williams, C. (2013). Bilingualism in the Early Years: What the Science Says. Editorial Staff, 95.
Disagreeing the theory that early bilingualism caused delays in lexical development, De Houwer (1995) suggested that bi-and monolingual children's lexical abilities developed very much alike. Meisel (1993) stated that the grammatical development of bi-and monolingual children was the same.
A youngster who is bilingual uses two or more languages in their everyday life. Literacy acquisition is further more than being able to write and read, it is also the experiences that are gained that enables one to read and write. For example a bilingual minor whose home language is Spanish, is learning English , and therefore learning to read and write English. Through the literacy acquisition, and focus would not be on the language being taught but on the reading required to do so. Throughout my childhood, the idea in my head of having to go to a college education was greatly stressed, As a result, it was my expectation as the next generation minor, to continue in my studies and achieve a life of success and prosperity. Learning became the
...n language and the development of literacy. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 13(2), 175-186. doi: 10.1080/13670050903474085
When I was a child my dad, and my grandparents taught me how to speak Spanish before I could learn how to speak English. As I continued to learn more and more words, Spanish became my first language, I spoke it fluently, and English came second. When I was ready to start Pre-K, my dad taught me to write in English other than in Spanish. It was hard to learn how to write my letters without knowing them in English and only in Spanish. I would confuse my E’s
There are three main theories of child language acquisition; Cognitive Theory, Imitation and Positive Reinforcement, and Innateness of Certain Linguistic Features (Linguistics 201). All three theories offer a substantial amount of proof and experiments, but none of them have been proven entirely correct. The search for how children acquire their native language in such a short period of time has been studied for many centuries. In a changing world, it is difficult to pinpoint any definite specifics of language because of the diversity and modification throughout thousands of millions of years.
BILINGUALISM have both Positive and Negative effects on the Child’s linguistic, Cognitive and Educational Development.
The development of the brain of a bilingual individual is better than a monolingual individual. Few years ago, researchers from the University of Washington (as cited in Klass, 2011, para 4.) found that the brains of bilingual infants (from families where two languages were spoken) are able to discriminate the different of the phonetic sound of the languages they usually heard when they grew up than monolingual infants in where their brains were adapted to only identify their mother tongue only. Dr. Patricia Kuhl, one of the members of this research team thus believe that bilingual education can shape infants’ brains and keep them ready for future challenges. Concurrently, a renowned psychologist, Dr. Ellen...
A little over a quarter percent of preschool-aged children came from bilingual households in the year 2008. The majority of these children were also from Spanish speaking backgrounds. Because this growth trend is expected to continue in the years to come, it is necessary to assess the language development of not only monolingual English speaking children, but Spanish speaking children as well. Another reason that this assessment is necessary is because speech language pathologists show a lack of confidence when treating bilingual children in a recent survey. Since there is a shortage of bilingual speech language pathologists, the monolingual ones need to come up with ways to beneficially serve the linguistically diverse children. For example,