Bilingual childrenThe term ‘bilingual’ is used in many different ways by many different people. In this project, we use it in a broad sense to simply refer to children who are growing up with two languages. This might mean children who are being brought up with two languages from birth, but it also includes children who start out learning one language from birth and add the second one later, for example when they enter daycare, go to school or move to a different country. An increasing number of people are moving to a different country. As a consequence, in societies where people traditionally speak just one language, such as The Netherlands, the USA and the UK, it is starting to become more frequent to speak two (or even more). In fact, worldwide, there are already more bilingual children than monolingual children. This means that bilingual children cannot be considered unusual. Although much research has investigated the language of child bilinguals in general, several unanswered questions remain regarding the status of early child bilingualism. For example:
The Early Child Bilingualism project is investigating these questions by examining the language development of children growing up with English and Dutch.
The age factorWhen it comes to acquiring a second language, an early start is thought to hold the key to success, but just how early is early enough? Does it matter if a child is first exposed to a second language at, for example, age 5 instead of age 3? Or at age 2 instead of from birth? The Early Child Bilingualism project is investigating such questions by comparing groups of child bilinguals who were different ages when they first came into contact with Dutch.
The input factorWhen children grow up with two languages, they are typically exposed to one language more frequently than the other. Clearly, children need to be exposed to input from a language in order to acquire it. By ‘input’ we mean the language children hear in the environment around them, for example from their parents or guardians, or from the teachers or other children at school. What if this input is limited? Is limited input from a second language enough to acquire it successfully? And how does the input factor interact with age? For example, it might be the case that when it comes to learning a second language, younger children only have an advantage over older children if they hear a certain amount of input in that language. Or maybe it doesn’t matter how old you are when you first come into contact with a second language, as long as you have enough input in that language? In other words, is it the case that age effects are only observed in children with more than a certain amount of input? And are input effects found across all ages? The Early Child Bilingualism project is investigating such questions by comparing groups of child bilinguals who differ in the amount and type of input they are exposed to. For example, some of the children in the project attend Dutch-speaking schools, where they are exposed to input in Dutch on a daily basis. Other children attend international or bilingual schools, where they are exposed to Dutch less frequently. Children may also differ in how much contact they have with other Dutch- or English-speaking children and the types of activities they carry out in the two languages.
ImplicationsThe results of this project will not only deepen our understanding of bilingualism in early childhood and how second languages are acquired by young children, they will also have implications for our increasingly multilingual society. In particular, they may shed light on the issue of whether early input – and if so, how much input – is crucial to successful second language development. This may have important consequences for the age at which such input should be offered in pre-school education and in the diagnosis of language impairment in multilingual children. |