I believe this is a question that has troubled many parents. Should we give children a bilingual environment at the stage of language development, and will this affect the speed of their language development? Shanshan Liang, Department of Child Neurorehabilitation, Guangdong Maternal and Child Health Hospital
In this article, we combine some literature and basic knowledge to answer this question.
First of all, do children who grow up in a bilingual/multilingual environment speak late?
The answer is no. More precisely, the odds of children speaking early or late are the same whether they are in a monolingual or multilingual (≥2) environment; bilingual/multilingual environments do not lead to a delay in language learning.
Next, we look at the relevant mechanisms and studies.
I. The physiological organs and cognitive mechanisms that cooperate with infants and toddlers learning to speak.
1. Hearing: The prerequisite for speaking is to be able to listen. Learning to speak simply means establishing the relationship between sound symbols and objects, and furthermore, establishing the relationship between sound symbols and abstract meaning. If infants and young children have hearing defects, this will cause a considerable obstacle to their learning to speak. However, children with congenital deafness can still build a sound language system by learning sign language.
2. Neurological system. For children who live in a multilingual environment, their linguistic faculties usually show two patterns.
① SimultaneousAcquisition. Such a pattern of acquisition mostly occurs when children are exposed to two or more languages from the beginning of their lives, or when the second language has a significant exposure before the age of three [1]. Children who acquire two or more languages simultaneously go through the same steps and stages of language development as children who acquire a single language. Although in some cases, children in multilingual environments begin speaking slightly later (not significantly) than children in monolingual environments, their age of speech onset is within the normal range [2]. From the very beginning of speech, children in multilingual environments learn two or more languages at the same time; they do not learn the same word or phrase twice, as one might expect, but they acquire different languages in different expressions, and then the two or more language systems complement each other. Subsequently, they will gradually learn to distinguish between two different languages and will show the flexibility to switch between languages when speaking to different subjects, for example, speaking French to their French-speaking father and English to their English-speaking mother [3, 4].
(ii) SequentialAcquisition. Such a pattern of acquisition occurs after the child has fully acquired the first language (usually around the age of 3 years) before being introduced to the second language, for example, when the child moves to a foreign-speaking country at a young age. A sequential acquisition pattern may also occur when children learn a HeritageLanguage before school and then receive a new language of instruction after school, which also occurs in immigrant families, especially those with minority language speaking parents, such as Chinese, Latino, and African American families. Unlike simultaneous acquisition, the sequential acquisition of two or more languages may result in the gradual rusting of the native or inherited language and unbalanced development of multiple languages in later development due to differences in the frequency of use and applicability of the different languages to each other.
3. Pronunciation organs.
A complete pronunciation process requires the joint collaboration of organs such as lungs, vocal folds, mouth, nose, tongue and lips. The difference between different speech sounds may be the difference between the high and low front and back of tongue position, the wide or narrow closure of vocal cavity, and the tension and relaxation of vocal folds. This requires our articulatory organs to be very agile and able to move accurately to specific positions. During infancy, we not only have to go through the evolution of our articulatory organs, but also have to learn how to move our lips, teeth and tongue in a constant imitation.
Second, the stages that children (before the critical period) go through in acquiring a second language [1].
1. first, they have fully acquired and become proficient in their native language for some time
2. Then, they go through a “silent period” when they are first exposed to the second language. This period can last anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. This silent period is very likely to be the period during which children build their initial understanding and mastery of the second language [5]. The younger the child is, the longer the silent period is likely to last. This is because of their weaker reading, comprehension, and memory skills compared to older children. Children in the silent period who want to express themselves will most likely rely mainly on body language and fragmented vocabulary in a second language.
3. Next, they will begin to use short sentences or imitate sentence construction. Single-word words, matching phrases, and idiomatic usage such as “I dunno” and “What’s this?” are common in children’s expressions at this stage. These syntactic structures have not yet taken shape in the children’s own language system, which means that children at this stage do not have the syntactic knowledge to make their own sentences, and these phrases and idiomatic usages are memorized and reused by them in constant repetition.
4. Eventually, they will begin to make their own sentences. At this time, the sentences they utter will no longer be entirely ready-made sentences that they have memorized, but will be re-created by them through their already acquired syntactic knowledge, combined with their newly learned vocabulary. In the initial stage, they may use a “formula”-like structure, replacing or inserting the words they want to express to form a complete sentence. At a later stage, their expressions become more proficient and fluent, but they still make many grammatical mistakes, such as missing auxiliary verbs and tense verbs (e.g. “I don’t want to eat an apple” is expressed as “I no want to eat apple”). It is also worth noting that some of the grammatical errors made by children at this stage are influenced by their first language; however, more common errors are made by monolingual children when they are learning to speak as well.
III. What experiments have shown that bilingualism/multilingualism does not lead to a lag in language learning.
1. First, cite the Center for AppliedLinguistics report in 2006 that
Although many parents are convinced that bilingualism is the root cause of language delays, experiments have shown that monolingual and multilingual children spend similar amounts of time in the major stages of language development.
2. Second, experimental results from the industry’s leading authority, the Cornell Language Acquisition Lab.
Although some parents and educational practitioners worry that multiple languages may confuse children and thus cause disruptions in the language system; experiments have shown that children do not suffer from language confusion, language delays or cognitive deficits due to multiple languages.
3. According to Babara Abdelilah-Bauer, a renowned linguist and social psychologist, founder of Café Bilingue, a research organization that promotes multilingual communication.
”Multilingual children do not suffer from language delays as a result of learning multiple languages” is a scientifically proven and widely accepted conclusion. In fact, multilingual and monolingual children are equally likely to have delayed language development.
It is important to note here that researchers are not saying that multilingual children do not develop language and cognitive disorders, but rather that multilingualism is not the cause of delayed language development and cognitive deficits. In other words, monolingual and multilingual children are equally likely to have language and cognitive problems.