The Bilingual Child

THE BILINGUAL CHILD EBRU GÜRSOY (2007177027) GÜLDEN BORAN (2007177050) İPEK BİLGİN (2006177146)

Bilingualism is the ability to speak or write fluently in two languages.
It refers to those children who speak/have been spoken to in two languages in the home since birth and who are spoken to in only or both of those two languages at daycare or school

Aside from the obvious advantage of being able to speak more than one language,it impacts the child positively in the sense of self esteem ,future job opportunities and ability to live and travel abroad.

There are two major patterns in
bilingual language acquisition:
Simultaneous Bilingualism
Sequential Bilingualism.

In simultaneous bilingualism, the child acquires two languages at the same time before the age of 3 years
In the first stage they may mix words or parts of words from both languages in the first stage.
e.g. I like dondurma

Stage 2 occurs at 4 years and older when distinction between the two languages takes place ,and the child uses each language seperately
e.g. I like ice-cream.
Dondurmayı seviyorum.

Sequential bilingualism also occurs before the child is 3 years old, but the child can draw on the knowledge and experience of the first language while acquiring the second language

Ages of bilingual acquisiton One way of categorizing types of bilingual acquisition is by the age at which the two languages are acquired- infants, child, adoloscent, and adult.

Infant or early bilingual acquisiton involves the child learning two languages virtually simultaneosly from the outset. Sometimes this results from having parents who have different native languages, but also speak the other parent’s language.

Early age of bilingual exposure has a significant impact on multiple aspects of a child’s development: linguistic, cognitive and reading.Children who experince early and extensive exposure to both of their languages quickly grasp the fundamentals of both of their languages and in a manner similar to that of monolingual language learners

Child bilingual acquisiton may start quite early in life, but involves the successive acquisition of two languages, as do adolescent and adult bilingualism .

This may be occasioned by the family moving to another country, the arrival of a caregiver who speaks a different language, or the child starting a nursery class or school is taught in a different language from the one used at home.

Adolescent bilingual acquisition refers to the acquisiton of a second language after puberty, while adult bilingual acquisition refers to acquisition after the teen years.

SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES M onolingual children can differ in the types of strategies they use when first to start to talk. Analytic learners Gestalt learners (left brain dominant) (right brained)

Analytic Learnes
learn single words and later string them together in multiword uttereances.
e.g top, kapı, ağaç, çiçek …
then kapıyı aç, topu tut …
learn more quickly in large part because things are usually taught in an analytic manner in the public school

Gestalt learners
Concentrate on acquiring multiwords expressions(You know what? I wanna do it, etc) , which they initially treat as a whole, and only break down into their constituent parts.
e.g. Dışarı çık,
ne yapıyorsun?
bu nedir?

A comparison between analytic and gestalt modes in language acquisition
Basic units of language may be words, multiword utterances, phrases, and/or clauses
Basic units of language are single words.
Gestalt Mode Analytic Mode

Early language acquisition involves acquisition of multiword utterances functioning as single units.
Early language acquisition involves movement from single words to two and three-words utterances
Gestalt Mode Analytic Mode

In and out of bilingualism
A child named Ian was monolingual in English and had American parents. He was exposed to Turkish at the age of 2 at a day-care center in Adana, Turkey while playing with other Turkish children. He would sometimes answer his parents in English, however his control of English was receptive in that he could understand but rarely used it spontaneously.

At the age of three and a half , the family moved back to the USA. Within ten months, he had forgotten all his Turkish words, but had acquired an almost native fluency in English.
Because young children have acquired a second or third language by the speed with which they can lose a language if it no longer serves their communication needs.

Interference
The use of one language’s features while speaking or writing in another language
the interference was observed in three main linguistic domains: syntax, lexicon, and semantics. Accordingly they are categorized as syntactic (Example 1), lexical (Example 2), and semantic transfers (Examples 3).

Ex.1. * Where are my shoe ? * It' s like a scissors. In English some nouns are used in the plural form only as in "scissors," or the plural form is generally utilized due to the fact that they are composed of pairs as in "shoes and stockings." In Turkish, however, these nouns do not necessarily take any plural marker. ( syntactic )

Ex. 2. I like dondurma. ( lexical )
Ex. 3. It's a water star. (To mean "star fish")
The subject knows the Turkish word "deniz y ıldızı " (star fish), and when he is forced to name the same item in English, he tries to translate it. Not knowing what "deniz" (sea) means in English, he uses "water" instead. The translated phrase, however, does not denote to any item in English nor does it help the listener to think of the "star fish," which the subject had in mind. ( semantic )

CODE-SWITCHING AND CODE-MIXING
Several scholars have attempted to define code-switching and code-mixing. Among them are Amuda (1989), Atoye (1994) and Belly (1976). For instance, Hymes (1974) defines only code-switching as “ a common term for alternative use of two or more languages , varieties of a language or even speech styles” while Bokamba (1989) defines both concepts thus:

Code-switching is the mixing of words, phrases and sentences from two distinct grammatical (sub) systems across sentence boundaries within the same speech event.
For example:
Arabic English Turkish
Ene play voleybol
I play volleyball
Teacher: Bak bu araba . (Look this [is a] car .)
Subject: Hayır it's a car.

Code-mixing is the embedding of various linguistic units such as affixes (bound morphemes), words (unbound morphemes), phrases and clauses from a co-operative activity where the participants, in order to infer what is intended, must reconcile what they hear with what they understand
Code-mixing refers to the unsystematic use of two languages in one utterance and view its appearancein the early stages bilingual development

An Turkish Arabic bilingual boy,knew the word for an object in each of his languages,but would choose the one which was easier for hım to pronounce.
FOR EXAMPLE:
Arabic tiyyara English plane
He knew both the English word 'plane' and its Arabic equivalent 'tiyyara'.On the other hand, he preferred the English 'plane' to the Arabic 'tiyyara'.

COGNITIVE ADVANTAGES OF B I L I NGUAL I SM
Growing up bilingual can be a tremendous blessing. In addition to the obvious benefit (i.e., the ability to speak and understand more than one language), recent research has revealed a number of cognitive advantages to bilingualism .

Bilingual children have been shown to have:
1. better metalinguistic awareness (ability to identify and describe characteristics and features of language);
2. better classification skills;
3. better concept formation;
4. better analogical reasoning;
5. better visual-spatial skills;
6. better storytelling skills;
7. better semantic development .

The Bilingual Child

by groz on Apr 13, 2009

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