Hammer, C. K. et al., (2012). Predicting Spanish–English Bilingual. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 1251-1264.
In this article, the researchers employed usage-based theories in their study in order to examine the language development of bilingual children. The purpose of their study was to investigate the various factors that affect vocabulary and story recall abilities of bilingual children in both of their languages. The researchers targeted the following factors: the children’s exposure to their two language (determined by the length of time that the children lived in the United States), the age at which the children were communicated with regularly in English, the language(s) currently used by mothers, fathers, and teachers
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The researchers utilized 186 monolingual and bilingual kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders from Taiwan. The author’s hypothesized that the bilingual children (Mandarin & Southern Min) would be likely to learn experimentally manipulated phonotactic patterns more readily than their monolingual peers. The researchers provided the parents with a home language use questionnaire. The authors created two artificial languages with the same phonemes. The two artificial phonological systems consisted of four onsets (/p/, /ph/, /l/, and /n/) and eight rimes. The test phase involved a two-option forced-choice judgment …show more content…
The study demonstrated that bilinguals have an advantage in verbal tasks that require sensitivity to structural features of language. This study extends the scope of Ben-Zeev (1977) and Nation and McLaughlin (1986), which focused on syntactic structure, to the domain of phonological structure. Findings from this study suggest that early bilingual experience may enable children to more readily form an abstract representation of phonological patterns. Thus the researchers’ concluded that bilingual children, regardless of whether they actively used a second language at home or simply had exposure to it, had advantage over their monolingual peers in learning the phonological patterns of the new
In America, there is a predominant growth in multiple ethnicities and cultural backgrounds; leading to the usage of multiple languages in the American culture. There is a growing need for many people to learn and utilize multiple languages within the workplace and within one 's own personal life. The importance of bilingualism and the knowledge of multiple languages is ever increasing, and therefore becoming more important for the younger generations. The push for knowing multiple languages and becoming bilingual has many potential negative and positive effects.
In my opinion bilingualism plays a major role in the educational development of children. This is because research has shown that children who are fluent in their home language are more successful in learning a second language. Furthermore, being bilingual offers greater sensitivity to language, more flexibility in thinking and better ear for listening. It also improves a child’s understanding for the native language. Moreover, knowledge of other languages increases a career of opportunities offering several job options.
The study found that bilingual students (in the bilingual school) spent 47% of class time speaking Spanish, the traditional schooling group only spent 25% of class time speaking Spanish, always to other Mexican American students. When looking at the students outside of the classroom bilingual schooled students 63% of their time speaking Spanish to their Mexican American peers. Traditionally schooled children spent 64% of their time speaking English to their Mexican American peers. Prior to the beginning of the study both groups of children reported themselves as speaking Spanish more than English, however according to parental reports Traditional schooled students were reported to use more English than Spanish at the end of the first grade while the Bilingual students were reported to be using more Spanish than English by the end of the first grade. The results of the study found that the language spoken by the parents does not have considerable statistical influence on which language the child uses more, or even whether or the child is in a bilingual or is traditionally schooled. Perhaps most surprising is the finding that traditionally schooled children still result in speaking more English than Spanish with their Mexican-American peers when compared to their counterparts in the bilingual programs. Perhaps because
The first myth of the monolingual brain means that infant’s brains are monolingual and treat two different languages as the same language. This, however, is untrue; infants can learn two languages at the same time and will not get confused between the two. Evidence for the myth of the monolingual brain comes from developmental milestones, differentiated use of two languages, and grammatical constraints on bilingual code mixing. In regards to developmental milestones, bilingualism versus monolingualism has no known consequences for phonological
Pen᷈a-Brooks and Hegde (2015) interpret ethnocultural dialectical variations as the phonological characteristics, properties and rules of the linguistically diverse child’s primary language. When assessing bilingual children it is important to recognize the ethnocultural dialectical variation of the child’s primary language. Since different languages produce different sounds, differ in phonological patterns, and grammatical rules. Pen᷈a-Brooks and Hegde (2015) argue that for a bilingual child their secondary language would be influenced by the rules, and properties of their ethnocultural language. For example in a bilingual Spanish-English child, the American English will be influenced by the dialectical variations of Spanish. For instance
After researching through observation five bilingual children Spanish- English with aged 2; 10, 3; 6, 4; 11, 5; 9 and 6; 2 (year; month) in 5177 utterances in both Spanish and English, and the result had 110 utterances of these children contained language mixing; so, Lindholm and Padilla concluded that “with age, children increasingly differentiate their two language systems” (p.327). As their argument draw out after investigation, Arias and Lakshmanan (2005) had same point,
Bilingualism and multilingualism are well practiced through the World. Despite it being well accepted on other parts of the globe, many areas in the United States tends to turn a cold shoulder to it.. Most education policies concerning bilingual or not based on scientific evidence and research (which has discovered the advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism) but rather pre conceived notions and stigmas when it comes to the practice. After some brief research, I believe we should embrace the "new wave" practices and policies, which are more well informed rather than the past. Researches also need to explore new ways in which the brain retains, recognizes and organizes language learning. Now is the tome to put evidence based practices and
Another studies in the development of phonological awareness in monolingual and bilingual children between kindergarten and second grade was conducted. In the first study both monolinguals and bilinguals performances were the same in tests that required phoneme substitution. The second study replicated these results and demonstrated a significant role for the language of literacy instruction. The third study included two groups of bilingual children and a range of phonological awareness and reading tasks. Spanish–English bilinguals performed better than English-speaking monolinguals on a phoneme segmentation task, but Chinese–English bilinguals performed worse.
‘Bilingual’ people are differentiated from ‘Monolingual’ people by their frequent communication with two or more languages (Barac & Bialystok, 2012). Bilinguals are thought to be smarter than Monolinguals (Rubio-Fernández & Glucksberg, 2012). Smartness is a measure of successfulness in their education (Hatt, 2007, p. 146). Because of this, there is a debate to decide whether the next generation of children should be exposed to a Bilingual education. This has led to research into whether Bilingual education slows the learning of literacy and
What do we know about the effects bilingualism has on cognitive development? Our world is becoming progressively bilingual; in the US 21% of school age children between the ages of 5-17 years old can speak other than English at home and this number is expected to increase in the coming years. On top of social reasons, the positive effects to the cognitive development of the brain when introduced to a second language are of many. The age of acquisition is vital due to the plasticity of the brain, which according to the critical period hypothesis, begins to level after five years of age. In addition to plasticity, bilingual speakers are more capable of focusing their attention to solve complex problems compared to monolingual speakers.
Children are incredible sensitive to the different ways of people speak. Even when they only hear they can understand the difference between the way men and women talking, difference between polite and impolite talk and so on. They don’t get confused when they hear two languages spoken around them. They follow patterns of learning. First language can influence how child use and learn his second language. Bilingual children often use words from one language when they speaking other language. This is called code switching. But this doesn’t mean they are confused about their languages or they are mixing them. Language mixing is a function of normal language learning behavior. It also observed in monolingual children. The former will sort itself out with time, the latter needs to be attended to by the bilingual speakers in the environment. Bilingual children are capable of focusing their attention on relevant information and ignore distractions. Also they have been shown to be more creative, better planning and solving complex problems than monolinguals. They develop a better understanding of language and how to communicate effectively. Also those bilingual children are more flexible in the way they think as a resulting of processing information through two different language systems. A foundation in primary education allows for strong development in literacy abilities when learning in later grades.
In this journal article, Elena Nicoladis analyzes the idea that bilingual children develop certain cognitive functions differently and at a faster rate than monolingual children. She finds that bilingual children learn to think differently depending on which language they are currently using. For example, bilingual children have the ability to describe an event differently depending on the language they are using. This leads to the idea that different languages encode different parts of children's brains.
One of the very interesting parts of being bilingual is that bilingual speakers are able to switch between languages without much effort. It all appears to come to them in a very natural way. Unfortunately, it isn't all so simple as it appears. Experiments have shown that switching between two or more languages comes at a cost. The cost is involved in speech comprehension ( Thomas & Allport 2000 ) and also in speech production, as observed in the study of Finkbeiner, Almeida, Janssen & Caramaza ( 2006 ).
In early childhood, the use of languages explodes, and children show a rapid growth of vocabulary and an increase in vocalized expressions. As children learn to speak, they often learn when engaging in monologues and pragmatics. Although learning a language is an incredibly complex task, young children have little difficulty learning two languages. Parents have an important role in guiding a young child in developing a language. Knowing a second language may be troublesome due to the vast expansion of vocabulary, using correct pronunciation, and a difference in contexts. However; through past studies bilingualism has demonstrated an advantage in children’s executive functions and emotional behavior. In addition, memory advantages have been demonstrated in adults who know more than one language. This essay will focus on diverse methods bilingual’s experience in different stages in their life, along with some
In the past, cognitive studies on language processing and memory retrieval was mostly focused on monolingual speakers. The idea of bilingualism and its effect on memory is relatively new, but it is also considered as a rising topic in the field of psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, and second language studies. In 1993, Javier, Barroso, and Muñoz conducted a research with a group of Spanish-English bilingual speakers. They emphasized that language is a powerful retrieval tool and a cue to the previous events and it serves to organize events in our memory. As the researchers asked participants to describe an event in their personal histories in two different languages, they found out that the participants’ answers were slightly