Summary Details
| Query: |
Raising children bilingual or not bilingual
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| Author: | Stefan Ploch | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
General Linguistics
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| Summary: |
Re: Query about bilingual children (Linguist 14.2574)
Given the stong views that some seem to have on this topic, I thought it better not to comment any further but rather let everyone come to their own conclusions. He that has ears to hear, let him hear. Finally, thank you to everyone who responded. Stefan Ploch. - --------------------- Julian Bradfield This is not research, but just anecdotes again - but anecdotes about disadvantages. I have friends who were brought up bilingually in two European languages, and who have some desire to write literary prose. They say that they do not feel completely masters of either language, although nobody else could distinguish them from other native speakers. (Both are in the situation of being brought up in X with one X-speaking and one Y-speaking parent. I've never heard such a complaint from friends who are brought up in an X-speaking home, but bilingual because of bilingual environment - for example, Welsh-English bilinguals with a literary bent seem to write as easily in either language, and of course many Indians choose to write in English.) - ------------------- Annabel Cormack I think the first thing to try is going to your librarian looking helpless. You could also corner some helpful cognitive psychologist, or maybe someone in an education department. I don't have very good access to search engines here, because I'm not faculty, but I'll ask around, though, and see if I can track it down. Putting 'bilingualism cognitive development' into Google produces plenty of hits; putting 'delay' in as well produced some hopeful sites. Try: http://www.edu.bham.ac.uk/bilingualism/database/ One of the references I got that way is this: Comparative studies of reading and problem solving in two languages TESOL Quarterly, Volume 4, Issue 2 Macnamara, John Washington, DC, 1970, pp107-116 There are some useful sounding journals, too. And there is a CUP book called Bilingualism in Development by Ellen Bialystok, which may have some relevant discussion and references, judging from the contents pages. - ------------------- Anthea F. Gupta There is a huge literature. Almost any introduction to bilingualism will review the literature (e.g. Romaine, Hamers & Blanc) and many introductions to language acquisition (e.g. Foster-Cohen, Reich). There are also a number of books on this very subject, by people such as Jim Cummins, Ellen Bialystok, Colin Baker. There is a very recent article by one of the leading names in the field which includes an excellent review of the argument, and which makes reference to many earlier works. Genesee, Fred. 2003. Rethinking bilingual acquisition. In Jean- Marc Dewaele, Alex Housen & Li Wei (eds.). *Bilingualism: Beyond Basic Principles*. Festschrift in honour of Hugo Baetens Beardsmore. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 204-228. In brief, you will find little support from linguists for the view that bilingualism creates learning difficulties. Earlier studies that demonstrated this were undertaken where the bilingual children were from underprivileged minorities. If children are from poor backgrounds, or if there is societal prejudice against their language or their ethnic group, they are more likely to have problems than rich children from the dominant ethnic group who speak languages with societal prestige. On the other hand, in societies where there are prestigious groups that routinely raise bilingual children (such as India) bilingualism is associated with doing well. Anyone looking at the evidence can only conclude: ** being raised bilingually is not cognitively harmful and may be cognitively advantageous (or may make no difference at all); ** whether your bilingualism will be an asset to you will depend on the value the society in which you are attributes to the languages you know. ** being born into a poor family or into an ethnic group against which there is societal discrimination can be harmful. - ------------------- Kristine Horner I'm actually surprised by what linguists have told you about children growing up bilingually. Why not check out the following title: Hakuta, Kenji. 1986. Mirror of Language: the debate on bilingualism. Basic Books. It's a rather accessible account of debates about bilingualism. I've used it with students, who found it interesting and relatively easy to read. Although Hakuta's book deals with a range of topics connected to bilingualism, he does provide a balanced discussion of a number of studies on bilingual children: this is particularly the case in chapters 2 and 3, entitled ''Bilingualism and Intelligence'' and ''Childhood Bilingualism''. Hakuta openly sets out to debunk a number of myths about bilingualism, but this does not prevent him from critiquing studies that speak in favor of childhood bilingualism, e.g. Peal and Lambert's (1962) study on French/English bilinguals in Canada. I recommend this book because, like Hakuta, I find it interesting that the question as to whether it is 'problematic' to raise a child bilingually surfaces much more frequently than the inverse question: is it 'problematic' to raise a child monolingually? The wide-spread and popular (or 'folk') stigmatization of bilingualism suggests that greater socio-political factors are involved in the process. As linguists, I think it is interesting to ask ourselves why it is so often the case that monolingualism is taken as the starting point or the default 'position' rather than bilingualism? It was with this question in mind that I responded to your message and immediately thought of Hakuta's book. - ------------------- Saskia Malan If you are starting out on this issue now, there is a very good introduction by Suzanne Romaine which would provide a good starting point for your further studies: Romaine, Suzanne. 1995. Bilingualism. 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell. - ------------------- Mark A. Mandel If you don't already know about it, see Francois Grosjean's work in, I guess, the early 1980s and/or late seventies. He was (is) a native French/English bilingual, as we would say, and claimed that rather than having two native languages he really had none. I believe he published at least one book about it. He was on the faculty at Northeastern University, probably in the Psych. Dept., when I was a postdoc there, 1981-83. - ------------------- Maren Pannemann With interest I read your question in the linguistlist with respect to advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism. I would like to draw your attention to work done by Ellen Bialystok, York University. At the ISB4 2003 (International Symposium of Bilingualism) she presented a paper at the workshop 'Cognitive control and bilingualism', suggesting that bilingual children and adults are 'more advanced than their monolingual peers in solving tasks that require control of attention'. ... 'Bilinguals are superior in their ability to focus attention on the relevant information and ignore the misleading cues in order to solve the problems'. 'Bilinguals respond more rapidly than monolinguals, particularly in conditions where the distraction position is most interfering.' The task used by Bialystok was the Simon task. ... Then I can recommend a book written for parents: Eveline de Jong, (1986), The Bilingual Experience, Cambridge University Press (reprinted 1993). This book summarises the experience both of parents who succeeded to raise their children bilingual as of those who failed to do so. Finally, I think one important aspect often not taken into account is that bilingual children often have parents who have a higher/academic education. This has of course a certain impact on the way the child is supported/stimulated in the process of language acquisition. - ------------------- Anat Stavans I read your question on the linguist list and writing to provide some thoughts and info on the mattaer. I have been studying bi and trilingualism from birth to adulthood for the past 15 years (Stavans, 1990 is my dissertation onthe development of trilingualism from birth - Eric). I find the literature over the years to be non-commital in the following sense: 1. Methodological problems: Usually the studies reported are case studies as these reflect long-term follow-up on development. Those studies that are empirical in nature tend to provide measures that while numerically convincing, always seem to represent a utopian average to which no bi or multilingual can relate but rather institutions such as educational systems establish policy based on such results. 2. The study of bilingualism (albeit the mainstream attitude) tends to view bi or multilinguals as ''one entity'' in two ways: first, bilinguals are regarded as the sum total of two monolinguals- they are bilinguals simply by virtue of a phisiological fact namely, the containment of both languages within one body. Bilingualism is a special - third state phenomena which is the priviledge or the handicap of a bilingual individual. (Read anything you can get your hands on by the following: Grosjean,Genessee , Lanza, Stavans, De Hower, and Hoffman). Second, the definition of bilingualism has over the years has been flexed to the extent that almost everyone on the globe (this being a global village) can count as bilingual. There are distinctions to be made between incipient and later bilingualism, functional or instrumental bilingualism, active or passive bilingualism and so on. There is almost no care in these comparisons (bi/mono)regarding issues of pragmetics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics that account for the history of the individual's bilingualism which in my view is an integral part of that individual bilinguality as well as bilingualism. 3. In the eye of the beholder/believer - the split between advantages and disadvantages on bilingualism are a matter of taste, experience, and beliefs. The training of the researchers advocating one or the other view seems to me to have a strong impact on the view they advocate. When reading on this matter keep in mind who is writing. 4. Personally, there is no one bilingual that can be described or qualified or quantified by one model of either each monolingual system or a fixed model of bilingual. I mean to say, that even when we establish the pros and cons of bilingualism we must take care of not doing so by looking at a bilingual accordint to the ''fixed'' ideal features of a utopian monolingual of the languages he knows, nor according to a made up utopian model of bilinguals as these will fail on two counts: a. the languages (typologically similar or different) may render various types of bilingual productions; b. individual differences in processing language among bi or monolingual individuals; c. the needs and style of communication of the individual in different life situations and social settings may shape the bilingualism in numerous ways that may not be the same across individuals nor within individuals. 5. It is always more difficult to deal with complex systems (multilingualism) than simple ones (monolingualism). On average I do not think that bilinguals experience more learning difficulties than monolinguals but rather a similar distribution of difficulties in both types of individuals is to be found. What may give this impression is what sort of difficulties are we talking about and how those are diagnosed or tested. To do so there have been studies sowing that bilinguals do perform better than monolinguals on both analytic and non-analytic tasks but again it depends which study you read and how that study impresses you as credible / convincing. People to read who think like me would be: Genessess, Grosjean, Kroll, Obler, Lanza, Stavans, DeHower, Meisel and Wei (off the top of my head) also Baker gives interesting layperson descriptions on these issues with the educational twist to it. - ------------------- Douglas Lightfoot I'm not aware of what's in the archives or in recent literature, but am raising my daughter bilingually (English/German), and have read Zweisprachige Kindererziehung by Bernd Kielh??fer (Professor f??r romanische Sprachwissenschaft am Institut f??r Romanische Philologie der Freien Uni. Berlin) and Sylvie Jonekeit (P??dagogin an einem Berliner Gymnasium) (1995/1998. T??bingen: Stauffenburg Verlag). It's a popular text, but includes a section on precisely your question (pp. 90-102: Bilanz: Vor- Nachteile der Zweisprachigkeitserziehung). I haven't read it in a while, but some of the arguments against raising kids bilingually had to do with: not having enough exposure in at least one language to be the ''strong language'', bicultural confusion/identity confusion (familial relation difficulty is also brought up in the context of there possibly be stress in the family partly attributable to two parents from different linguistic/social backgrounds), and some really crazy sounding stuff about kids with two languages having ''intelligence deficits''! Also brought up is the claim that learning a 2nd language somehow weakens the 1st, or strong language. Acquiring literacy in two languages at the same time also seems to be under question. These arguments often seemed to center around immigrant families in Gastarbeiter sort of situations, if I recall right, and some of the negative arguments get very crazy sounding (these kids are emotionally damaged, stutter, etc.). A couple of sources noted for negative effects are: Cummins, J. (1984). Bilingualism and Special Education: Issues in Assessment and Pedagogy. Clevedon. Jones, W.R. (1959). Bilingualism and Intelligence. Cardiff. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1984). Bilingualism or not: The Education of Minorities. Clevedon. You're probably more familiar with pro-arguments, such as better acquisition of multilingual phonology, better cognitive adjustment, more curious/aware of the phenomenon of language (I strongly vouch for this one), positive academic performance in general, and so on. See Cummins (1984) for some of this, too. - ------------------- Jo Tyler Regarding your inquiry to the Linguist List 14.2574: You might find the following article of interest Cummins, Jim. 1976, April. The Influence of bilingualism on Cognitive Growth: a Synthesis of Research Findings and Explanatory Hypotheses. In Working Papers on Bilingualism. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. pp. 1-43. Reprinted in Colin Baker & Nancy H. Hornberger (Eds.). 2001. An Introductory Reader to the Writings of Jim Cummins. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 26-55. - ------------------- Andrew Wilcox Cook, V. 1997. The consequences of bilingualism for cognitive processing. in A.M.B. de Groot & J.F. Kroll. eds. Tutorials in Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic Perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. pp.279-299. - reviews research up to about 1993. The bibliography of >70 references should be useful. The author covers both sides of the debate fairly, I think, though he comes down in the end very much on the ''for'' side. Oller, J.W. 1997. Monoglottosis: What's wrong with the idea of the IQ meritocracy and its racy cousins? Applied Linguistics 18/4:467-507 - an attack on IQ as a construct and as used in assessment, in the context of bilingualism. One might find here support for the view that in some cases where a bilingual disadvantage was found, this was an artefact of testing. - ------------------- |
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| LL Issue: | 14.2784 | |
| Date Posted: | 06-Oct-2003 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
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