How Do Young Bilinguals Learn?
A number of researchers have examined how young bilingual
children acquire vocabularies and literacy skills in both of their languages. Here
are summaries of three such studies:
- Carol Scheffner Hammer and her colleagues (2009) studied 72 Spanish-speaking mothers and their children to examine the effects of maternal language usage upon the children’s vocabularies and emergent literacy development. The investigation took place over two years while the children were students in English immersion Head Start programs and continued throughout kindergarten. The children were regularly given a series of separate English and Spanish vocabulary tests as well as exams which tested their emergent literacy skills in English. The research revealed that over the course of the study, the percentage of mothers who spoke mostly English with their children increased significantly. Also, the children’s English vocabulary and emergent literacy skills increased overall. Children whose mothers spoke primarily in Spanish did exhibit a deeper knowledge of Spanish vocabulary, but not to the detriment of the children’s English skills. Hammer, et al. thus concluded that, “use of Spanish need not be viewed as a threat to children’s developing English abilities” (pg. 117). Additionally, mothers who speak Spanish with their kids are able to produce “well-formed and rich language models for their children” (pg. 118).
- In his study, Raymonde Sneddon (2008) focused upon how young bilingual children can strengthen their language skills through the use of dual language books. The subjects in Sneddon’s study were bilingual primary school-age youth living in London, United Kingdom. The linguistic abilities of the participants were as follows: one child spoke French, two spoke Albanian, three spoke Turkish, and three spoke Urdu. Sneddon made it a point to mention that all of the children had stronger skills in English than in their home or native languages. The children were provided dual language books by their schools. Sneddon reported, “the outcomes of reading simultaneously in two languages appear to have been positive for all the children involved” (pg. 79). The children’s reading skills varied quite a bit, but all of the kids had become (or were in the process of becoming) independent readers. Moreover, Sneddon wrote, “the provision of dual language books by the school signaled to parents and children the importance of valuing and developing their bilingual heritage” (pg. 81).
- Ellen Bialystok and her colleagues (2005) studied interactions amongst languages and writing systems. They did so by examining four groups of first graders: English monolingual, Cantonese-English bilingual, Hebrew-English bilingual, and Spanish-English bilingual. All of the bilingual students received instruction in their second language at least weekly, either during the school day or at separate language immersion programs outside of their schools. Also, the bilingual children spoke primarily in their native languages at home. The researchers administered a series of tests, including vocabulary tests in English and the subjects’ second language (for the bilingual students), as well as phoneme-counting assessments and tests requiring the students to identify words vs. non-words. The testing revealed the Hebrew and Spanish bilinguals were more advanced English-readers than the Cantonese bilinguals. The authors explained this finding as follows: “both facilitation for English reading and transfer of reading across languages was found for bilingual children whose two languages shared a writing system” (pg. 57). Bialystok, et al. also concluded that bilingualism makes two key contributions to children’s early acquisition of literacy: first, it provides “a general understanding or reading and its basis in a symbolic system of print” (pg. 59) and secondly, it offers “the potential for transfer of reading principles across the languages” (pg. 59).
Sources:
- Bialystok, Ellen, Gigi Luk, et al. “Bilingualism, Biliteracy, and Learning to Read: Interactions Among Languages and Writing Systems.” Scientific Studies of Reading 9.1 (2005): 43-61.
- Hammer, Carol Scheffner, Megan Dunn Davison, et al. “The Effect of Maternal Language on Bilingual Children’s Vocabulary and Emergent Literacy Development During Head Start and Kindergarten.” Scientific Studies of Reading 13.2 (2009): 99-121.
- Sneddon, Raymonde. “Young Bilingual Children Learning to Read with Dual Language Books.” English Teaching: Practice and Critique 7.2 (2008): 71-84.