Key Issues in Bilingualism and Bilingual Education - Term Paper Example

For the normal baby good policy for language development, being exposed to two, three or more languages is simultaneously is a good policy for language development Recent researches have recognized the influence of the environment on the mental development and many attempts have been made to identify factors that provide advantages in cognitive development, one of which being bilingualism. A bilingual child is a child who learns two languages simultaneously in non-school settings. This occurs from the child’s exposure to two or more languages at home through one or both of his parents or outside it through a grand parent, a relative, a friend or a daycare worker. Psychologists and linguists have wondered whether bilingualism affects intellectual development since as early as the 1920 when Saer (1923) and Smith (1923) executed numerous studies on the topic since then have attempted to determine whether monolingual and bilingual children differ in intelligence as measured by standard tests. Many of these investigators found out that bilingualism has a considerable effect on intellectual functioning. Nowadays bilingualism is tightly attached to intelligence. However, until the year 1962 due to many factors of which we can highlight racism, Bilingualism was considered as a problem see a handicap that prevents the child from adapting with his school mates and gives him an introverted character. Early studies showing bilingual children to be “handicapped” in speech development and academic achievement happened when they analyzed children’s intelligence without taking in consideration their socio-economical status. In fact most of the studies that proved that multilingualism hampered the child’s development were made on children coming from very low class environments and therefore suffering from dissatisfaction of their physical needs. These children are logically not scholarly advanced due to the preceding circumstances that out shadow the advantages offered by being bilingual. One of the most important researchers in that matter, O Doherty, (1958) suggests that it is necessary in any consideration of the influence of bilingualism on intelligence to distinguish between two types of bilinguals, genuine bilinguals and pseudo bilinguals. The pseudo bilingual knows one language more than the other and doesn’t use the second language in communication, the genuine bilingual masters both at an early age and feels comfortable communicating with both languages. When researchers distinguished between fluent bilinguals, they found out that fluent bilingual children develop more flexible mental capacities and frequently out-perform limited bilinguals of the same national origins as well as English monolinguals. What sets these kids apart from any second language learner is that they learn both languages in the period from 1-5 years, the primary language learning period. In addition to that, unlike older children that are tutored a second language, bilingual children’s language learning process comes without the help of a teacher or a teaching program. Several writers assume that learning two languages from childhood has favorable effects on thinking process. Existing research on the effect of bilingualism on early childhood’s cognitive development has failed to reach a substantial conclusion. However, it has generally been found that second language learners in the period of the primary language development period achieve higher levels of proficiency on long terms than those who begin later, to the extent of a native-like level of fluency. “The bilingual child does those things without effort because circuits in his brain have literally been wired by early and constant exposure to the language” (Davis 2004, 39). The preceding facts demonstrate how “elastic” and adaptable a young human brain is. The brains of both a bilingual and a normal child are created are genetically endowed to allow them learn more than one language; it’s only the experience that determines whether the potential will be used. If we take the example of the United States, the increasing diversity of the United States makes it logical to assume that many children in this country grow in bilingual home environments. According to figures found in U.S. Census Bureau reports, in the year 2000, 17.9% of the population spoke a second language, in addition to the English native language, in their homes. Subsequent research studies, have found evidence of an intellectual advantage in bilingual children. The groundbreaking work of Peal and Lambert in the latter year, “The relation of bilingualism to intelligence”, and (1962) identified bilingualism as a possible advantage to intelligence and cognitive functioning. “Peal and Lambert’s research was considered a watershed as it reoriented the way researchers approached the issue of bilingualism, by carefully reviewing the major shortcomings of the previous studies, they pointed out that bilinguals were defined at best inadequately and at worst totally haphazardly and arbitrarily” (Ng and Wiggleworth,2007, 189). This revolutionary research was executed on ten-year olds in Canada; by administrating the same verbal and non verbal tests of intelligence to both bilingual and monolingual students, it was indicated, for everyone’s shock, that bilingual students had a distinct advantage in both tasks. Unlike convergent thinking determined by IQ tests divergent thinking is a more creative, imagination and free thinking skill. A variety of different perceptions, conceptions and emotions attached to each word allows a wider context of thinking. Bilingualism was proven to be tightly tied to the development of an analytic orientation to language. In addition to advantages in basic intelligence, bilingual children are proven to be able to think in more symbolic terms which consequently leads to having a more precise vocabularies in both languages and enhanced ability of text and speech analysis. Bialystock, one of the leading authorities on bilingual research, holds that cognitive development or complexity is the result of two processes, analysis and control. The first, analysis, is necessary to master grammar and syntax, the second, control, aids in understanding content. Bialystock reports consistent findings that bilingual children have a significant advantage in the control mechanism. According to him, a bilingual child would be more likely to understand the symbolic nature of words, due to their ability to identify the same object by more than one name. Bilingual children tend to take global views at the context of the pronounced of written speech rather than focus on the literal meaning of each word. Bilingualism offers another extremely important advantage which is tolerance tolerance. Multilingualism is directly and inevitably attached to multiculturalism. Therefore, we can discover another role of bilingualism, it is strongly related to the development of sensitivity communicative skills. It was proven by researches that bilingual children are characterized by a flexible brain and a relevant capability of grasping differences. One of the most important contributors in researches on bilingual children, Leopold (1949), after a medical observation of his own child, realized that a bilingual child learns early to separate the sound of a word from its referent. He explains his view in the following statement: “I attribute this attitude of detachment from words confidently to bilingualism. Constantly hearing the same things referred by different words from two languages, she had her attention drawn to essentials, to content instead of form”(Baker 1988, 27). Ianco Worrall’s research suggests that bilingual children may be more sensitive to cues in the way a question is rephrased as they have extra demands placed upon then by choosing between two languages. They have to be aware of which language fits which interposal communication also to avoid interference between the two languages. They are obliged as well to pick up clues when to switch languages. In conclusion, a child raised in a bilinguial environment, gets many advantages that we can summarize in four major points,(1)a deliberate language planning in the early development years (2)exposure to a variety of linguistic models of which he learns comparative thinking(3)the privilege of having a bilingual and biliteracy instruction (4)fostering emotional bonds tying him to the second language’s culture. Due to the preceding factors, many nowadays parents choose to provide a bilingual environment for their children by hiring foreign nannies or by speaking a second language at home. Parents exposed to such research supporting the benefits raising their children to be bilingual seem to be eager, according to popular press reports, to incorporate a second language into their daily routine. Appendix The database used to find the dissertations was www.allacademic.com’s researcher database. The rest of the sources were picked up from the library. Various keywords were searched in both the library’s and the site’s database. The first keywords used were “bilingualism (language development)”. Later in the researching processed, the research was focused on a two specific keywords “bilingual” and “child” which let to the limitation of the searching field and ended up providing the majority of the sources used in the paper. Towards the end of the researching phase, the focus was on the name of the revolutionary study, “The relation of bilingualism to intelligence” which gave access to more focused on the initial topic sources. All the used sources are secondary sources. Sources  Books : -Bee Chin Ng, Gillian Wigglesworth, Bilingualism: an advanced resource book, Routledge, 2007. -Colin Baker, Key Issues in bilingualism and bilingual education, Multilingual Matters, 1988. -Douglas Davies, Child development: A practitioners guide, Guilford Press, 2004. -Wallace E. Lambert, Language, psychology, and culture, Stanford University Press, 1972. -Dorothy Bishop, Kay Mogford, Kay Mogford-Bevan, Language development in exceptional circumstances, Psychology Press, 1993. Dissertations: -David L. Rodman, Socio- economic status as a meditating factor in the relationship between bilingualism and the cognitive development of pre-school children, 2008. -Kimberley Cuero, Harriett Romo, Raising a multicultural bilingual child, University of Texas San Antonio. Read More