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Stephen Krashen's Theory of Second Language Acquisition

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Stephen Krashen's Theory of Second Language Acquisition

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How to we learn a language? According to Krashen we only learn a language when we understand the message - comprehensible input. Important to remember when plan for teaching  a second language. Learn the second language before the age of six to be fully proficient and speak without an accent. Makes me wonder if French Immersion should start in SK?

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Stephen Krashen's Theory of Second Language Acquisition (Assimilação Natural - o Construtivismo no Ensino de Línguas)

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Short description of Krashen's 5 main hypotheses on second language acquisition with comments in Portuguese.

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Teaching English Language Learners in the Mainstream Classroom (2nd Edition) Paperback – Oct 8 2014by Pauline Gibbons 

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Teaching English Language Learners in the Mainstream Classroom (2nd Edition) Paperback – Oct 8 2014by Pauline Gibbons 

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Adding English: A Guide to Teaching in Multilingual Classrooms, Oct 19 2016, by Elizabeth Coelho

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Adding English: A Guide to Teaching in Multilingual Classrooms, Oct 19 2016, by Elizabeth Coelho

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How to teach

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adding english: a guide to teaching in multilingual classrooms

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foreign language study / english as a second language

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education / teaching methods & materials / language arts

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foreign language study/english as a second language

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Adding English: A Guide to Teaching in Multilingual Classrooms

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Adding English: A Guide to Teaching in Multilingual Classrooms: Amazon.ca: Elizabeth Coelho: Books

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Factors Influencing Speech and Language Development for Bilingual Children 

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Factors Influencing Speech and Language Development for Bilingual Children 

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Research Portland State University

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Below are a list of general factors which are frequently discussed in research as being influential to the bilingual child's language development and socialization. The factors described below include environmental factors, cultural factors, and those factors that are unique to the child.

Age of Child

When a second language is introduced, this factor refers to evaluating the child's chronological age (age measured by time, in years and months, since a child's birth), maturational age (sometimes referred to as mental age which identifies the child's current level of cognitive functioning), and developmental level of the child's communication (location of the child's achievement on a continuum of developmental milestones). These age and developmental factors may influence bilingual language acquisition.1)

Timing of Exposure

Timing factors influencing bilingual development and the retention of L1 skills include:

Identifying when the two languages are introduced. For example, the introduction of L2 with either simultaneous or sequential exposure.

At what stage in the child's life does the language exposure begin. For example, differences in acquisition may be evident if L1 begins at birth and L2 exposure begins in preschool versus L1 exposure at birth and first L2 exposure beginning in high school.

Language Contexts

This factor refers to the environments in which the child experiences the languages (i.e. home, school, community gatherings, etc.).

Language Opportunities and Use

Input opportunities describe the content, quantity, and quality of shared (i.e. child conversing with parent) or observed (i.e. child watching and listening to adult conversations) language interactions that the child experiences in his/her language contexts. Evaluating language content involves looking at specific interactions to gain a sense of the type of information conveyed during the interaction. Language quantity is the amount of language exposed to the child in all environments. Quality of language is described as an evaluation of the accuracy and complexity of utterances shared with the child or that the child observes in other conversational interactions.

Language use for personal, social, academic, and employment purposes combine with language modalities (i.e., spoken and written language) as another important factor in bilingual language development.

Parental Economic Resources

A myriad of factors exist surrounding living in poverty or in lower socioeconomic status (SES); often with the family involved in dealing with significant stressors which could contribute to potential risks in a child's development.3) Ensuring the availability of safe housing, having the resources to provide food and nourishment, having access to health care services, and having enough financial security to pay monthly bills, are only a few examples of the economic factors with which families may be struggling. As clinicians, it is important to be sensitive to the family's resources and needs. Equally important is to be knowledgeable about community resources available to individuals and families in need. For example, Community Action Agencies provide information about emergency financial services available within a community including: locations for emergency food boxes, energy assistance, rent assistance, etc.).

To locate a Community Action Agency by State or County, visit: Community Action Partnership: Find a CAA
http://www.communityactionpartnership.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=50
Parent Beliefs and Education

Factors including parent education levels and parental attitudes toward education may influence language development in their children. Research has suggested links in higher parental education levels and parental knowledge of school functions as important factors to foster language and academic growth in bilingual children.4)

Role of the Community

An important factor to consider involves identifying the community role in bilingual language development.5) For example, are there supports for bilingual families available within the community? Examples of community supports might include:

Bilingual professionals in medical, social, and educational services

Head Start programs

Availability of bilingual literature at local libraries

Bilingual religious organizations and other community networks

Aspects of Culture

Cultural values and beliefs including child-rearing practices, value placed on the individual vs. the collective group, and communication styles within the culture may all influence the bilingual child's language development.6)

Attitudes Toward Bilingualism

This factor addresses the references of additive vs. subtractive bilingualism. The way in which the mainstream community views each language has shown to be an influential factor in bilingual language development in children.7)

Comparison of Language Properties

This factor refers to the characteristics of L1 and L2. The extent to which L1 and L2 are similar or different influence bilingual language development in children.

Characteristics of the Child

Cognitive factors and personality characteristics unique to the child may influence bilingual language development. Attention, memory, language abilities, auditory processing and discrimination, motivation, and self-identity are examples of factors within the child that influence language development.

Original Contributor: Jerae Bjelland, Winter Term 2009

References and resources used in creating this page

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Factors Influencing Speech and Language Development for Bilingual Children

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Below are a list of general factors which are frequently discussed in research as being influential to the bilingual child's language development and socialization. The factors described below include environmental factors, cultural factors, and those factors that are unique to the child.

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Why the baby brain can learn two languages at the same time 

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Why the baby brain can learn two languages at the same time 

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Naja Ferjan Ramirez, Research Scientist, University of Washington,

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How do babies learn language? Irene Zaccari, CC BY-NC-ND

Any adult who has attempted to learn a foreign language can attest to how difficult and confusing it can be. So when a three-year-old growing up in a bilingual household inserts Spanish words into his English sentences, conventional wisdom assumes that he is confusing the two languages.

Research shows that this is not the case.

In fact, early childhood is the best possible time to learn a second language. Children who experience two languages from birth typically become native speakers of both, while adults often struggle with second language learning and rarely attain native-like fluency.

But the question remains: is it confusing for babies to learn two languages simultaneously?

When do babies learn language?

Research shows babies begin to learn language sounds before they're even born. In the womb, a mother's voice is one of the most prominent sounds an unborn baby hears. By the time they're born, newborns can not only tell the difference between their mother's language and another language, but also show a capability of distinguishing between languages.

Language learning depends on the processing of sounds. All the world's languages put together comprise about 800 or so sounds. Each language uses only about 40 language sounds, or "phonemes," which distinguish one language from another.

At birth, the baby brain has an unusual gift: it can tell the difference between all 800 sounds. This means that at this stage infants can learn any language that they're exposed to. Gradually babies figure out which sounds they are hearing the most.

John Mayer, CC BY

Between six and 12 months, infants who grow up in monolingual households become more specialized in the subset of sounds in their native language. In other words, they become "native language specialists." And, by their first birthdays, monolingual infants begin to lose their ability to hear the differences between foreign language sounds.

Studying baby brains

What about those babies who hear two languages from birth? Can a baby brain specialize in two languages? If so, how is this process different then specializing in a single language?

Knowing how the baby brain learns one versus two languages is important for understanding the developmental milestones in learning to speak. For example, parents of bilingual children often wonder what is and isn't typical or expected, or how their child will differ from those children who are learning a single language.

My collaborators and I recently studied the brain processing of language sounds in 11-month-old babies from monolingual (English only) and bilingual (Spanish-English) homes. We used a completely noninvasive technology called magnetoencephalography (MEG), which precisely pinpointed the timing and the location of activity in the brain as the babies listened to Spanish and English syllables.

We found some key differences between infants raised in monolingual versus bilingual homes.

At 11 months of age, just before most babies begin to say their first words, the brain recordings revealed that:

Babies from monolingual English households are specialized to process the sounds of English, and not the sounds of Spanish, an unfamiliar language

Babies from bilingual Spanish-English households are specialized to process the sounds of both languages, Spanish and English.

Our findings show that babies' brains become tuned to whatever language or languages they hear from their caregivers. A monolingual brain becomes tuned to the sounds of one language, and a bilingual brain becomes tuned to the sounds of two languages. By 11 months of age, the activity in the baby brain reflects the language or languages that they have been exposed to.

Is it OK to learn two languages?

This has important implications. Parents of monolingual and bilingual children alike are eager for their little ones to utter the first words. It's an exciting time to learn more about what the baby is thinking. However, a common concern, especially for bilingual parents, is that their child is not learning fast enough.

We found that the bilingual babies showed an equally strong brain response to English sounds as the monolingual babies. This suggests that bilingual babies were learning English at the same rate as the monolingual babies.

Parents of bilingual children also worry that their children will not know as many words as children who are raised with one language.

jakeliefer, CC BY

To some extent, this concern is valid. Bilingual infants split their time between two languages, and thus, on average, hear fewer words in each. However, studies consistently show that bilingual children do not lag behind when both languages are considered.

Vocabulary sizes of bilingual children, when combined across both languages, have been found to be equal to or greater than those of monolingual children.

Another common concern is that bilingualism causes confusion. Part of this concern arises due to "code switching," a speaking behavior in which bilinguals combine both languages.

For example, my four-year-old son, who speaks English, Spanish, and Slovene, goes as far as using the Slovene endings on Spanish and English words. Research shows bilingual children code-switch because bilingual adults around them do too. Code-switching in bilingual adults and children is rule-governed, not haphazard.

Unlike monolingual children, bilingual children have another language from which they can easily borrow if they can't quickly retrieve the appropriate word in one language. Even two-year-olds modulate their language to match the language used by their interlocutor.

Researchers have shown code switching to be part of a bilingual child's normal language development. And it could even be the beginning of what gives them the extra cognitive prowess known as the "bilingual advantage."

Bilingual kids are at an advantage

The good news is young children all around the world can and do acquire two languages simultaneously. In fact, in many parts of the world, being bilingual is the norm rather than an exception.

It is now understood that the constant need to shift attention between languages leads to several cognitive advantages. Research has found that bilingual adults and children show an improved executive functioning of the brain - that is, they are able to shift attention, switch between tasks and solve problems more easily. Bilinguals have also been found to have increased metalinguistic skills (the ability to think about language per se, and understand how it works). There is evidence that being bilingual makes the learning of a third language easier. Further, the accumulating effect of dual language experience is thought to translate into protective effects against cognitive decline with aging and the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

So, if you want your child to know more than one language, it's best to start at an early age, before she even starts speaking her first language. It won't confuse your child, and it could even give her a boost in other forms of cognition.

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Why the baby brain can learn two languages at the same time

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Any adult who has attempted to learn a foreign language can attest to how difficult and confusing it can be. So when a three-year-old growing up in a bilingual household inserts Spanish words into his English sentences, conventional wisdom assumes that he is confusing the two languages.

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Are  they? That's discussed in the following article in the New York Times

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Editor's Note: We're resurfacing this story from the archives to show you how learning a second language can improve how you think.
SPEAKING two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century. Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child's academic and intellectual development.

They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual's brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other. But this interference, researchers are finding out, isn't so much a handicap as a blessing in disguise. It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles.

Bilinguals, for instance, seem to be more adept than monolinguals at solving certain kinds of mental puzzles. In a 2004 study by the psychologists Ellen Bialystok and Michelle Martin-Rhee, bilingual and monolingual preschoolers were asked to sort blue circles and red squares presented on a computer screen into two digital bins - one marked with a blue square and the other marked with a red circle.

In the first task, the children had to sort the shapes by color, placing blue circles in the bin marked with the blue square and red squares in the bin marked with the red circle. Both groups did this with comparable ease. Next, the children were asked to sort by shape, which was more challenging because it required placing the images in a bin marked with a conflicting color. The bilinguals were quicker at performing this task.

The collective evidence from a number of such studies suggests that the bilingual experience improves the brain's so-called executive function - a command system that directs the attention processes that we use for planning, solving problems and performing various other mentally demanding tasks. These processes include ignoring distractions to stay focused, switching attention willfully from one thing to another and holding information in mind - like remembering a sequence of directions while driving.

Why does the tussle between two simultaneously active language systems improve these aspects of cognition? Until recently, researchers thought the bilingual advantage stemmed primarily from an ability for inhibition that was honed by the exercise of suppressing one language system: this suppression, it was thought, would help train the bilingual mind to ignore distractions in other contexts. But that explanation increasingly appears to be inadequate, since studies have shown that bilinguals perform better than monolinguals even at tasks that do not require inhibition, like threading a line through an ascending series of numbers scattered randomly on a page.

The key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened ability to monitor the environment. "Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often - you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language," says Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain. "It requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving." In a study comparing German-Italian bilinguals with Italian monolinguals on monitoring tasks, Mr. Costa and his colleagues found that the bilingual subjects not only performed better, but they also did so with less activity in parts of the brain involved in monitoring, indicating that they were more efficient at it.

The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age (and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who learn a second language later in life).

In a 2009 study led by Agnes Kovacs of the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, 7-month-old babies exposed to two languages from birth were compared with peers raised with one language. In an initial set of trials, the infants were presented with an audio cue and then shown a puppet on one side of a screen. Both infant groups learned to look at that side of the screen in anticipation of the puppet. But in a later set of trials, when the puppet began appearing on the opposite side of the screen, the babies exposed to a bilingual environment quickly learned to switch their anticipatory gaze in the new direction while the other babies did not.

Bilingualism's effects also extend into the twilight years. In a recent study of 44 elderly Spanish-English bilinguals, scientists led by the neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan of the University of California, San Diego, found that individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism - measured through a comparative evaluation of proficiency in each language - were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer's disease: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset.

Nobody ever doubted the power of language. But who would have imagined that the words we hear and the sentences we speak might be leaving such a deep imprint?

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Opinion | Why Bilinguals Are Smarter (Published 2012)

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Editor's Note: We're resurfacing this story from the archives to show you how learning a second language can improve how you think. SPEAKING two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world.

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Is it an advantage for Kids' Brains to be bilingual? 

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Is it an advantage for Kids' Brains to be bilingual? 

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Research at the University of Strathclyde, suggests that bilingual children excel at problem-solving and creative thinking.

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Bilingual children outperform children who speak only one language in problem-solving skills and creative thinking, according to research led at the University of Strathclyde.

A study of primary school pupils who spoke English or Italian- half of whom also spoke Gaelic or Sardinian- found that the bilingual children were significantly more successful in the tasks set for them. The Gaelic-speaking children were, in turn, more successful than the Sardinian speakers.

The differences were linked to the mental alertness required to switch between languages, which could develop skills useful in other types of thinking. The further advantage for Gaelic-speaking children may have been due to the formal teaching of the language and its extensive literature.

In contrast, Sardinian is not widely taught in schools on the Italian island and has a largely oral tradition, which means there is currently no standardised form of the language.

Dr Fraser Lauchlan, an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde's School of Psychological Sciences & Health, led the research. It was conducted with colleagues at the University of Cagliari in Sardinia, where he is a Visiting Professor.

Dr Lauchlan said: "Bilingualism is now largely seen as being beneficial to children but there remains a view that it can be confusing, and so potentially detrimental to them.

"Our study has found that it can have demonstrable benefits, not only in language but in arithmetic, problem solving and enabling children to think creatively. We also assessed the children's vocabulary, not so much for their knowledge of words as their understanding of them. Again, there was a marked difference in the level of detail and richness in description from the bilingual pupils.

"We also found they had an aptitude for selective attention- the ability to identify and focus on information which is important, while filtering out what is not- which could come from the 'code-switching' of thinking in two different languages."

In the study, a total of 121 children in Scotland and Sardinia- 62 of them bilingual- were set tasks in which they were asked to reproduce patterns of coloured blocks, to repeat orally a series of numbers, to give clear definitions of words and to resolve mentally a set of arithmetic problems. The tasks were all set in English or Italian and the children taking part were aged around nine.

During the research, Dr Lauchlan's post at the University of Cagliari was funded by the Sardinian Regional Government (Regione Autonoma della Sardegna).

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child development; child psychology; language acquisition; literacy; learning disorders; numeracy; educational psychology; add and adhd

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Bilingualism 'can increase mental agility'

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Bilingual children outperform children who speak only one language in problem-solving skills and creative thinking, according to research led at the University of Strathclyde. A study of primary school pupils who spoke English or Italian- half of whom also spoke Gaelic or Sardinian- found that the bilingual children were significantly more successful in the tasks set for them.

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Sequential/Successive Bilingualism – Research Portland State University

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Sequential/Successive Bilingualism – Research Portland State University

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How to overcome challenges with learning two languages in early childhood

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Definition of Sequential Bilingualism

Sequential bilingualism occurs when the child has exposure to the first language (L1) at birth and then begins to have exposure to the second language (L2) later in childhood or adulthood.

Although the focus of this page will be dedicated to the bilingual child, it is also important to consider adult bilingualism in clinical interactions.

Dispelling a Common Misconception

Some individuals believe that exposing a child to two languages concurrently in infancy or childhood will result in a slowed period of language development. However, according to research, this belief represents an oversimplification of the dual language acquisition process that occurs for sequential bilinguals. Sequential bilingual children begin their language acquisition, much as monolingual children do, with L1 skills developing over time. At the point where introduction of L2 occurs, the effect on future development of skills in L1 are dependent on many factors including those listed under Factors Influencing Speech and Language Development for Bilingual Children.

There are multi-faceted components that can affect the sequential bilingual child's acquisition of L1 and L2. In situations where the young child whose L1 is a minority language undervalued in the dominant, mainstream culture, the child may be at risk of regression, diminished proficiency, or incomplete acquisition in L1. Recent research has focused on how increasing L1 exposure and support, by encouraging parents to promote the use of the home language, affects sequential bilingual children. For example, continuing the development of a strong base in L1 at home has been linked to later academic success.

Profile of Language Characteristics for Sequential Bilingual Children

Note: Please refer to the Simultaneous Bilingualism page in order to get a more complete picture of bilingual language characteristics. Note that some of the information may be included on both pages. This is due, in part, to the overlap that occurs in bilingual development for simultaneous and sequential bilingual children. The inclusion of information for each is also an outcome of research and the fact that many researchers are not able to differentiate between simultaneous and sequential participants in their research studies. Consequently, research is often categorized with the general term "bilingual".

Challenges

There are many challenges to providing a comprehensive description of bilingual language acquisition and typical language characteristics for both sequential and simultaneous bilingual children. Below is a list including some of these challenges:

Paucity of research focusing on typical bilingual language acquisition paired with the heterogeneity of bilingual individuals and the unique factors influencing their language development make it difficult for researchers to reach consensus regarding the bilingual experience.

Much of the research that is available does not differentiate between sequential and simultaneous learners.

Of the research studies that have been conducted, many focus on a specific population group which makes it difficult to apply the research results to other bilingual populations. For example, Spanish/English bilingual studies may achieve different results than Chinese/English- or Russian/English-focused studies.

Research often does not differentiate between bilingual individuals who are in additive bilingual situations vs. subtractive bilingual situations. For example, it could be argued that research conducted in Europe examining bilingual or multilingual language acquisition of a combination of Romance languages (i.e. Spanish, Italian, French), where multilingual skills are more culturally valued, may achieve different results than studies on children of immigrant populations in the U.S. where L2 is more highly valued by the mainstream population than L1.

Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary acquisition involves social interaction and cognitive development. 3) With regards to the bilingual child, there is great variability in bilingual lexical acquisition.

Several Factors Influencing the Heterogeneity of Vocabulary Acquisition

Patterson and Zurer Pearson 4) list the following factors which contribute to the variability of vocabulary acquisition in bilingual children:

Language input amounts

Language input contexts in which input is experienced in each language (i.e. home, school, community environments)

Level of proficiency at the time input occurs

Timing of initial exposure

Proportion of exposure (i.e. estimated percentages of time exposed to L1 or L2)

Loss of L1 as L2 is introduced and developed (i.e. subtractive bilingualism)

Common Measures of Bilingual Vocabulary Used in Research
Total vocabulary = total sums of L1 and L2 vocabulary
Total conceptual vocabulary = total sums of L1 and L2 vocabulary with subtraction of what are called "translation equivalents" which are words represented in both languages that share meaning (i.e. "cat" in English and "gato" in Spanish). These translation equivalents are also called doublets. Singlets represent words present in only one language

An additional measure would involve evaluating and reviewing vocabulary in each language separately.

Research Summary

Vocabulary Acquisition Research Findings:

In order to develop vocabulary in a language, children must attach meaning to a referent or word form. An initial step includes making a phonological representation of the word (i.e. a representation based on the speech sounds of the word). Hoff 5) found bilingual toddlers performed similarly to monolingual peers in repetition of nonsense words which suggests comparable phonological memory skills between monolingual and bilingual children.

Sequential bilingual language learners, much like the simultaneous bilingual first language learners, experience vocabulary development that is similar to monolingual peers and show evidence of distinct lexical systems in each language. 6)

Studies have evaluated whether bilingual children use mutual exclusivity 7). In studies of the mutual exclusivity constraint, findings assert that children often assume that an object has only one label 8). Typically, children exclude objects that already have a name when assigning the meaning of a novel word. Davidson and colleagues 9) investigated the extent to which bilingual children would preserve mutual exclusivity within a language (i.e. accept two names for an object when the two names were from the same language). Their study design was based on research indicating bilingual children were more likely to accept two names for an object when it was apparent that each name was from a different language. Results showed that while bilingual children in the study did use the mutual exclusivity constraint, they did not use it to the same degree as their age-matched monolingual participants. 10)

In addition to the mutual exclusivity bias, bilingual children also use word learning strategies including the basic-level word bias in which children use conceptual information for linguistic encoding and the whole object or shape bias in which children use the most general meaning possible given the situation to encode lexical information. 11)

Pearson and colleagues 12) found a lack of preference for learning L2 words that corresponded to words already known in L1. This suggests it is not necessarily the case that knowing a word in one language will make it easier to learn the word in a second language.

Content vocabulary (i.e. nouns, verbs, adjectives) may be correlated to the amount of input a child receives in the language; whereas, function vocabulary (i.e. articles, prepositions, bound morphemes) do not appear to be as strongly correlated to the quantity of language input. 13)

Phonology Research Summary

Acquisition of bilingual phonology requires mastery of the knowledge and production of phonetic inventories, syllable and word shapes, phonotactic complexities, and phonetic differences in both languages. 14) Phonetic inventories represent the speech sounds a child produces in babbling and/or production of words and sentences. Syllable shapes, word shapes and phonotactic complexities refer to the acceptable rules for word structure in a language. For example, in the English language, a word never begins with "/tl/". In addition, English word shapes allow the combination of 4 consonant phonemes (speech sounds) used consecutively as in the word "twelfths" which phonetically is represented as /twɛlfθs/. In Spanish, however, only 3 consecutive consonant phonemes are allowed as in "estrella" (stars) represented phonetically as /ɛstɾeja/. Phonetic differences would include examples such as the distinction of the speech sounds /l/ and /r/ in English; whereas in many Asian languages this distinction is not made. In these Asian languages, the /l/ and /r/ phonemes are allophones. An allophone is a sound that, although it is acoustically different from another phoneme, does not alter the meaning of the phoneme in that language. In the example listed above, sound production for /l/ and /r/ are used interchangeably in many Asian languages, and the use of these phonemes do not alter the meaning of the word.

There is evidence of cross-linguistic competition occurring, in which the phonemic inventory of one language influences the phonemic inventory of another. 15) An example to illustrate this would be a bilingual Spanish(L1)/English(L2) child who uses Spanish vowels in English words or uses a trill, or rolled r, as in "el rio" in the English word "run".

Speech production is most accurate in phonemes that are shared between L1 and L2. One should note, though, that it may be likely that these phonemes are common, early developing phonemes existing universally in most languages.

L2 may be spoken with an accent if exposure occurs later in childhood; however, there is conflicting research related to the timing of the "critical period" referring to the latest age L2 can be learned with accent-free pronunciation. 16)

Morphosyntax Research Findings

Children who are sequential bilingual language learners may experience greater types and occurrences of morphological errors than their monolingual peers. 17) These error patterns may present similarly to those made by children with specific language impairment (SLI).18)

Wartenburger and colleagues 19) conducted a study using fMRI brain imaging to look at cortical representations of grammar and semantics in bilingual adults who had various ages of acquisition and proficiency levels (i.e., one group had L2 exposure at birth with current high proficiency in L2, another group consisted of later L2 acquisition with high proficiency, and the last group consisted of later L2 acquisition with low proficiency at the time of testing). They found that age of acquisition appeared to affect grammar processing more than proficiency level, in that either more activation was needed or less efficient representations were visible when L2 was exposed later in childhood.20) However, it was noted that this does not necessarily correlate to lowered performance in L2, as studies have found that more complex linguistic tasks require greater cortical activation. 21)

Marchman and colleagues 22) examined the correlation of lexical and grammatical associations as they related to simultaneous bilingual language development in children and how these associations differed from general language-learning abilities within the child (i.e., a child who is good at learning words is also good at learning grammar). They examined vocabulary and grammar in both languages of 113 simultaneous English/Spanish toddlers between the ages of 17-30 months. They found that grammar skills in one language were strongly tied to vocabulary growth in that language which suggests strong within-language lexical-grammatical associations. Results also indicated that grammar was only weakly related to vocabulary and grammar development in the other language which suggests there is a less strong link between cross-language associations.23) This study represents further support for the provision of consistent language-rich exposure in both L1 and L2 for bilingual language learners. In this study, vocabulary development in each language was strongly linked to grammatical development in the paired language.24) This study has important clinical implications when considering interventions designed to address grammar for bilingual children as the study results would suggest that, in order to make gains in grammatical acquisition in both languages, it would be most beneficial to target vocabulary in each of the two languages.

Literacy Research Findings

Children use their knowledge of how words are pronounced when decoding unfamiliar words they haven't read before. This knowledge can be orthographic (i.e. based on the memory of other words with similar letter sequences) and phonological (i.e. familiarity with listening and producing sequences of sounds). 25) These processes are the same for monolingual and bilingual children.

Languages can have orthographic transparency or opaque orthographies when writing or decoding in the language. For example, Spanish represents a language with orthograpic transparency because it has consistent sound representations in written words. In lay terms, this means that the way it is written is the way it sounds and vice versa. English, on the other hand, represents a language with opaque orthographies since there are many variations in the way we write and pronounce words. When bilingual children are asked to decode nonsense words, children from L1 languages with high orthographic transparency may demonstrate greater decoding accuracy with transparent orthographies than children reading languages with opaque orthographies. 26) Implications of this study include increasing target word familiarity with English (opaque orthographic) words and ensuring that bilingual children have multiple strategies for decoding and spelling new words. These strategies could include increased reading experiences, increased phonological knowledge and awareness, and explicit instruction in the structures of L1 and L2. 27)

In word decoding and spelling, children typically use memory, phonological knowledge, and invention to facilitate spelling of unfamiliar words. 28) Bilingual children who are learning English may have a limited store of memorized representations for English words and a limited phonological knowledge about the pronunciation of different words. 29) For these children, learning to read and spell in the second language involves formulating new phonological representations and acquiring orthographic rules that are language-specific. 30)

There is evidence that children learning English as a second language may rely on sentence context more often than monolingual children to read words they have difficulty processing. 31)

Jimenez, Garcia, and Pearson identified strategies used by bilingual 6th and 7th graders who were successful English readers. These strategies included searching for cognates (i.e. words that are related across languages like "president" in English and "presidente" in Spanish), full or partial internal translating of text from one language to another, resolving unfamiliar vocabulary using context and prior knowledge, monitoring comprehension, and asking questions while reading. 32) These strategies involved metacognitive processes that incorporated reviewing, evaluating, monitoring, and questioning text.

Narrative Research Findings

Gutierrez-Clellan conducted a study in which story recall and story comprehension tasks were measured in Spanish-English bilingual children. These children demonstrated greater narrative recall and story comprehension in English. 33)

Gutierrez-Clellan also found that bilingual children may show poorer performance on the narrative recall than spontaneous narrative production tasks for one of the languages. 34) These results suggest that narrative assessment tasks in L1 and L2, which appear to be comparable, may not pose similar processing demands on a bilingual speaker. 35)

Recent research has suggested a relationship between reading skills, narratives, and vocabulary in Spanish-speaking bilingual students. Uccelli and Paez found that kindergarten Spanish story structure predicted first-grade English narrative quality and Spanish narrative quality was best predicted by kindergarten Spanish vocabulary. 36) This study emphasizes the importance of encouraging the vocabulary and narrative development in L1 for bilingual children entering educational settings.

Narrative structures differ by culture. Research has shown that different narrative elements are valued in different cultures. McCabe and Rollins cite examples of cultural differences in narrative production in which children emphasized different narrative elements during elicited narrative tasks.37) These may include emphasizing family connections and relationships rather than focusing on sequential events as is evidenced in narratives produced by children in Latino cultures. Another example cited narratives produced by Japanese students which consisted of concise, haiku-like conveyance of experiences with little attention paid to narration of the event's details.38) These represent two examples in which the production of narratives can differ greatly in narrative structure and may present a challenge to the SLP who is evaluating the child to determine the presence of a language disorder or difference. This study emphasizes the importance of making these distinctions between cultural differences in narrative structure vs. the presence of language disorder.39)

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Sequential bilingualism occurs when the child has exposure to the first language (L1) at birth and then begins to have exposure to the second language (L2) later in childhood or adulthood. Although the focus of this page will be dedicated to the bilingual child, it is also important to consider adult bilingualism in clinical interactions.

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Concurrent versus simultaneous bilingualism  

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Concurrent versus simultaneous bilingualism  

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Is it easier and more efficient to learn one language after the other? Or is it possible for young children to learn two languages at the same time?

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The current study compares simultaneous vs. successive bilingualism through a mixed-method research design with four four-year-old Korean-English bilingual children who were born and raised in the USA. Two simultaneous bilinguals were exposed to Korean and English from birth, whereas two successive bilinguals were exposed to Korean from birth, but to English between 18 and 24 months. Three direct assessment tasks (i.e. narrative, vocabulary, and syntax tasks) were used to assess children's multiple language domains in both Korean and English. A caregiver report supplemented direct testing. Findings indicate the simultaneous bilinguals often performed better in English than in Korean, whereas the successive bilinguals often scored higher in Korean than in English, but with some exceptions. For instance, one simultaneous bilingual demonstrated high Korean grammar performance even superior to successive bilinguals. Results suggest that simultaneous bilinguals do not necessarily differ from successive bilinguals solely due to the timing of language exposure; this could be due to varied language experiences. Furthermore, children's varying performances on each task indicate that bilinguals' language subskills develop differently, sometimes referred to as bilingual profile effects. Findings have implications for defining simultaneous vs. successive bilingual acquisition, challenging views that age of exposure alone differentiates bilingual children significantly.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Einaudi Center at Cornell University.

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Simultaneous vs. successive bilingualism among preschool-aged children: a study of four-year-old Korean-English bilinguals in the USA

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The current study compares simultaneous vs. successive bilingualism through a mixed-method research design with four four-year-old Korean-English bilingual children who were born and raised in the USA. Two simultaneous bilinguals were exposed to Korean and English from birth, whereas two successive bilinguals were exposed to Korean from birth, but to English between 18 and 24 months.