myth-ing the point

For the last Raising Multilingual Children Blogging Carnival of 2014, Annabelle, the host, challenged us to explode the myths that many people hold about bilinguals--are we truly confused?  Are our kids condemned to a childhood of code switching and strange looks from their classmates?  Will our efforts isolate us from our monolingual in-laws?

Nope.

Well--maybe.

But not really.  (So if any of those things do happen, don't blame the second language!)

Here's the best list I've encountered which enumerates and quickly dispels common myths about bilingualism, courtesy Prof. François Grosjean, author, linguist, parent, and all-around expert in this area: Myths About Bilingualism.

For today, I'd like to address the intersection of these two myths: "bilingual children experience language delays" and "being bilingual requires equal fluency in both languages."

Once upon a time, I was a French teacher, an aunt, and a part-time babysitter.  My sister-in-law had suggested that since I knew French, I might as well speak French to my nephew, Carl, while taking care of him one afternoon a week.  So I made the effort to learn vocabulary that had never before appeared in my French conversation or reading ("bouncy chair," "put the pumped milk into the bottle warmer," "what in the world is that foul odor?", "Can't I just cut the onesie off him after a diaper blow-out?") and spent many happy hours reading and singing and taking walks with Carl, all in French.

Tatie and Carl, 2006

And, by golly, at 18 months that brilliant baby was regularly making two- and three-word utterances in French. (I'm not exaggerating even a little bit--I took careful notes each time I was with him, which led to his first four-word sentence at 18 months: "Tatie écrit stylo livre"--Auntie is writing with a pen in her book!)

Clearly, being exposed to two languages from infancy didn't delay his language acquisition (nor did it impede his English ability).

Now, let's take a look at the other end of the spectrum: my daughter Gwyneth.  She's almost three and a half, and her speech in English is often nearly as unintelligible as her French.  

She has a lot to say, mind you, but chances are a stranger would have trouble deciphering it, what with the consonants she mispronounces ("ewewewatow" for "elevator") or drops altogether ("et" for "yet"), the sounds she transposes ("smoothie" becomes "soomie"), her occasional French words ("I a loup and my brover a loup"), her occasional missing words ("I no" which means "I don't know"), her even-less-frequent Spanish words (mostly numbers and bits of songs that she picks up at her Spanish immersion preschool) and the family-specific ideas she tends to reference (such as zerberts, sleep-unders, and tuck-tucks).

Gwyneth, 2014

Thus, when Gwyneth announces, "My wittle eye sawt wit wew!", we know (but no one else does) that she wants to play I Spy.  (She's heard her brother say "I spy with my little eye something that starts with B" and "I spy with my little eye something that is red," so she makes a valiant attempt to express "I spy with my little eye something that is vert," green.) 

See, we know what she means because we speak English, French, and Gwynese.  My wittle eye sawt wit wew.** (Doesn't that just make you want to give her a big squeezey hug?!  So cute.)

Given the fact that she was barely talking at 18 months, and not saying much as a two-year-old, I might characterize Gwyneth's speech as "delayed" (or perhaps just "confusing"), but there's no reason to attribute it to her hearing two languages from birth.  And for the record, both her pediatrician and her preschool teacher have reassured me that her language development is age appropriate, if perhaps on the low end of normal, and she did have an auditory test earlier this year just to make sure that she's hearing her consonants correctly.

Griffin's linguistic development, on the other hand, fell somewhere in between his sister and his cousin--neither astonishingly early nor a little late.  Again, I don't think that had anything to do with the languages he was hearing at home.

I did hear a lot of code-switching from Griffin as a toddler, though, particularly with nouns.  His sentences usually consisted of pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions in English, plus nouns in French.  I'm sure that this is because the majority of books he knew were in French, and we encounter words in books--volcano, hedgehog, leprechaun--that tend not to appear regularly in conversation.

(Code-switching, by the way, is neither a myth nor improper speech, but a normal stage in language development.  It doesn't occur because kids are confused, but rather because some words are easier to access in a certain language and those are the ones that come out first.  Later on, code-switching can be a deliberate choice when a person wants to use a word or phrase in the other language for emphasis, humor, or to identify herself as a member of a group.)

Griffin, 2012

Both of my children understand French as well as English, at least in the situations I've observed, although they both have a clear preference for English.  When prompted, Griffin will speak French, but haltingly.  (Unless we are discussing a book we're reading together, and then his French feels more organic, probably because the phrases and ideas from the story are surrounding us.)  As for Gwyneth, she usually refuses to do anything we ask her to do, so I've stopped encouraging her to reply to me in French, saving my requests for important things like brushing teeth and wearing pants.  (Hey, maybe I should start telling her she has to speak English from now on!  She would almost certain embrace the language just for the sake of rebelling against me.)  

(By the way, the thought of Gwyneth the teenager terrifies me.)

So I can't say that Griff and Gwyn are bilingual, right?  Despite my efforts and their passive understanding of French, they simply are not as fluent in their second language.  In fact, I often suspect that my own French isn't strong enough to be considered fluent--talking on the phone can reduce me to caveman-like stammers, I miss a lot in movies when the characters are speaking fast, using slang, or not facing the camera, I can't engage in political discussions,  some of the literature I studied in grad school reduced me to tears, and my accent immediately betrays me as a Anglophone.

I learned not to dwell on these perceived inadequacies, however, when I started speaking exclusively in French to my infant son.  I didn't want to feel self-conscious, so I kept reminding myself that even if my kids ended up speaking a second language imperfectly, that would still be much better than only speaking one language, period.

G&G, 2014

However, it appears that Dr. Grosjean would disagree, would insist that the fact that my kids and I are not equally fluent in both languages does not detract from our bilingualism:

"Some bilinguals are dominant in one language, others do not know how to read and write in one of their languages, others have only passive knowledge of a language and, finally, a very small minority, have equal and perfect fluency in their languages.  What is important to keep in mind is that bilinguals are very diverse, as are monolinguals."

In other words, non-native speakers like me can achieve fluency in our second languages, and we can proudly call ourselves--and our children--bilinguals.

ma famille, 2011

*Note to Griffin and/or Gwyneth: "Condemned to a Childhood of Code Switching" would make a great title for your memoirs one day.

**Whereas an autobiography called "My Wittle Eye Sawt Wit Wew" probably wouldn't make the bestseller lists.

Krashen and the Kid

When I was working on my MA in Teaching English as a Second Language at CSU, one of my professors talked about Stephen Krashen. All. The. Time. And for good reason—he changed the way we looked at language teaching, helping the field move from the model of “Here’s a paragraph. Now translate it” to trying to recreate in the classroom how we learn our first language (lots of passive intake before we can make coherent sentences on our own). (Read an overview of his major theories here.)

My professor, Doug Flahive, who boasted of being on a first-name basis with Krashen, liked to tell us about how this language researcher guru started out as an award-winning weight-lifter and how he would wear tank tops even on airplanes. Thus I have always had this unusual image in my mind of a brilliant man testing the Monitor Hypothesis and conducting research on comprehensible input from the weight room. Ten years later, I finally get to meet him (and he’s dressed respectably)!

Krashen has always championed reading as the best way to learn one’s second language, so I shouldn’t have been surprised to see him at a library conference (Colorado Association of Libraries). During his keynote speech, he shared with the CAL attendees summaries of some current research about the benefits of free voluntary reading, both in English (first language) classes and ESL/EFL classes. In a nutshell, according to him, reading is the very best thing we can encourage students to do. Specifically, reading good old-fashioned books from public, school, classroom, and home libraries, as opposed to fancy computerized reading games for kids.

Krashen also took some time to excoriate standardized testing, pointing out that we could get nearly identical results for much less money by testing very small sample groups every couple of years (it would be considered public service for the students, much like jury duty), which would then allow us to spend huge amounts of money on books instead of testing. He also debunked eight or ten spurious studies and articles claiming that activities like playing chess and reading to birds can improve students’ reading.

From his talk, two studies stand out most in my mind. In one, a group of adult Korean women learning English were given Sweet Valley High books to read to fun. (Anyone else remember those? Elizabeth was the nice, bookish one, which her twin Jessica was the feisty troublemaker? Yes, I’ll admit I read those in 6th grade.) The series was too hard for the students, so the teacher tried them on the Sweet Valley Twins series for 4th graders, then the Sweet Valley Kids series for 2nd graders (where, presumably, Elizabeth spends her time coloring inside the lines while Jessica jumps in mud puddles). The Korean women loved the books, read through the easiest series, then the middle one, and by a year later were reading the ones at the 6th grade level with ease. Their English grammar and vocabulary had improved immensely—and they hadn’t been taking English classes during this period. Wow!

Krashen and other researchers have also looked at whether the number of books a child has access to at home is a predictor in how well they will do in school, and indeed, it is, a strong one. He cited a study which found the average number of books for children and teens in the an average Beverly Hills home—250—and also the average number in the nearby inner city—point five. As in, one book in every two houses. Wow. Yikes.

After he concluded his speech, I went up to him and introduced myself. Here’s how it went:

Sarah: I’m a former student of Doug Flahive and am so thrilled to meet you after having studied your research! Now I’m the coordinator of a Reading Buddies program, which we think is very successful, but every time I apply for funding, the grantors want quantitative proof that Reading Buddies works, and I don’t have the means to conduct studies to document that.

Krashen: You don’t have to! Let me do that for you. That’s what I do. I do the research so that people like you can run Reading Buddies. I can’t run a Reading Buddies program, but I can tell other people why it’s a good thing. Here’s what you need to do: read my book (The Power of Reading), sign up for my newsletter [on his website], and get my Twitter feed.

Sarah: Okey-dokey. I’m not on Twitter, though.

Krashen: You need to be. I share important stuff, not what I had for breakfast.

Sarah: Okay.

Krashen: You go run Reading Buddies, and let me do the research for you, kid.

Sarah, to herself: Did this long-admired scholar just call me “kid”?!

So I went home and now I’m getting started on doing everything he told me to! There’s hope for Reading Buddies if Dr. Stephen Krashen, 1977 bench-press champion of Venice Beach, California, is rooting for us, right?!

Griffin's first zuli!

I've been slowly working on completing all the pages in Griffin's baby book and regretting the fact that I occasionally let several months at a time slide by without jotting down notes about his growth and development. For example, I'm on a page that asks about some of his "firsts"--his first bath, first smile, first time he walked unassisted. Those are fine--I did write down those dates. But I don't know his first laugh, his first time walking up stairs, and lots of others.

On the other hand, I can tell you about his first ear infection, his first booger, his first projectile vomit, and his first projectile poop during a diaper change. Or rather, I could, but I won't. Half of you have probably cringed and stopped reading already--and the other half are smiling nostalgically about their child's first projectile what-have-you and remembering fondly the days when the kids were physically messy but emotionally pretty straightforward.

And a few of you are wondering why I wrote down the dates of the weird stuff but not the normal baby developmental milestones. Yeah, me too. My notes also are sprinkled with random Griffin-produced phrases like "choo-choo Boppy" and "pumpkin pénis," yes, pronounced à la française.

(Now let's see how many hits this blog receives for Google searches about pumpkin penises! Roll your eyes all you like--I bet we'll have a couple.)

Anyway, last week Griffin participated in his first language study. The Cognitive Development Center at the University of Colorado is investigating how bilingual children learn new words, positing that kids like Griffin pay more attention to pragmatics than do monolingual children. He had a lot of fun playing the researcher, a student who presented him with various oddly-shaped forms covered with interesting textures and colors, then taught him the names for the new objects, then had him pick similar objects out of a tray of other oddly-shaped objects.

Griffin has always been passionate about transfering objects from one container to another, thus these tasks really resonated with him, so he had a blast. (Also there was a train and tracks to play with, and she gave him a book. That makes for a very good morning for my little boy.)

As for me, I enjoyed observing how very open-minded he was about the whole process. The researcher told him this thing was a "zuli," and he accepted it right away, asked me if I wanted to hold the zuli, and then told her that the round red thing covered in the same sprinkly texture was a "balle de zuli" (a "zuli ball").

In the car on the way home he told me that he liked the zulis!

I also learned a lot by completing the parent questionnaires ahead of time. One task involved looking at lists of words and indicating whether he speaks (not just recognizes or understands) a word or phrase in English, in French, or in both. As I went through the lists, I realized that even though most of his phrases and sentences are in English--even when speaking with me--he probably knows more words in French. Every list of nouns ended up with more words in the "only French" column than the "only English" one. The verbs seemed about even, and he seems to know more function words like pronouns, conjunctions, and adverbs in English than in French.

I think that since he does more reading with me than anyone else--simply because I spend more time with him than his daddy or his daycare providers--he has encountered more words in French in context that are not part of his everyday life. So he knows the names of exotic animals, things you see at the beach, and so forth, in French, but not English, because they don't come up in daily conversation, at daycare, or in the books that his other relatives read to him.

I would also add that his comprehension in English and French is about equal.

But when it comes to actual meaningful communication, getting his needs and wants and interests understood, he relies on English, because that's what he hears most often and because he has all the little pieces to put into the sentences, even if they're not always grammatically perfect. ("That's Daddy's black car! Need me go in her car!")

Now I just have to figure out what to do when he asks to play with the "balle de zuli" here at home!

the drama of teaching languages

As my local readers know, I'm directing a play in French at school this semester, Théâtre sans animaux. My fourth one! It actually counts as a French class and the students get academic credit for it--as well they should, since it's an intense immersion experience. We've discussed the play in French, written about it in French, held rehearsals in French, memorized the lines in French, and dealt with costumes, props, and publicity all in French.

In my mind (and a lot of other people's--see my thoroughly researched Masters thesis if you want proof!), this is an excellent way to learn and practice a language if you can't spend time in a country where the language is spoken. Because, see, we're not reading dorky little stories from a textbook, we're not filling in the blank with the right form of the verb, we're not listening to an unnatural dialogue that has been contorted to highlight a certain grammatical structure: we're actually using the language to accomplish something. (Full disclosure: I do indeed use activities like that in my French grammar classes sometimes.) Our conversations at rehearsals involve hypothesizing ("If my character had a crush on that character, I'd..."), accepting and rejecting and reconciling ("No! I don't want to act like a turkey during the whole scene. Can I just gobble during the monologue and then run over here and sit down?" "Yes, but stick your hand behind your back and shake it to resemble a bird's tail feathers while you run"), stating and justifying opinions ("This is really funny because of what she said about the samurai earlier"), engaging in conversational gambits like introducing topics, turn-taking, and leave-taking ("Gotta go now! I promise I'll know my lines next time!"), and much, much more. Plus, they're learning entire conversations by heart--er, well, they'd better have learned them by April 27!--which means they're internalizing the sound and the feel and rhythm of the language, along with the vocabulary and grammar. And the benefits go beyond just improving fluency, pronunciation, and listening comprehension--their confidence and passion for the language increase.

You might also be surprised by how many students that I always thought of as shy enroll in a class like this. Taking on the role of somebody else for a play means that the quiet student doesn't have to be himself anymore; he's playing a role, wearing a mask (figuratively and sometimes literally) that enables him to present himself differently than he would in a traditional classroom. Drama in a second language is a valuable gift to give a student.

So this is what I do with my college students learning French in the US--but why not try it at home with your kids whom you're raising with more than one language? You can do improvisations (a la "Whose Line is it Anyway?"), give dramatic readings of poems, act out fairy tales (and then modify them by updating them to modern times or introducing characters from other fairy tales or movies--"Snow White and the Seven Elmos," anyone?), give puppet shows--tons of possibilities exist. Try it at the playgroup, the library, or as an after-school activity too.

To learn more about the theory behind drama as a language teaching technique, get lists of recommended resources, and see messages and files and links from recent online workshops on this topic, visit the following websites: the TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) Drama interest section page, the TESOL workshop on drama theory, the TESOL workshop on readers' theatre, and the TESOL workshop about drama techniques in the language classroom. (The latter three are Yahoo!Groups which require you to sign up to access the materials, but it's a very easy process. As we had literally hundreds of messages in each six-week online workshop, you might want to start with the "files" and "links" sections for ideas before skimming over the archived posts. And if you'd like to know more about the last French play I did, you can read an article I wrote in the drama theory workshop files. Unfortunately it's not posted anywhere else so I can't link to it directly!)

I'm curious--has anyone tried drama in a second language with younger children? Please tell us about it by clicking on "comments" if you have!

And click here to see photos and learn more about our production!

listservs for teachers and parents

I mentioned listservs in an earlier post this week and thought it might be worthwhile to follow up with some details, recommendations, and tips. A listserv is, basically, an automated mailing list in which all messages are emailed to everyone on the list. It's an asynchronous discussion forum. You read and respond to messages at your own pace. In today's post I'm going to describe some of the foreign language teaching listservs that I have found useful both as a teacher and a blogger.

Nandu is a listserv organized by the Center for Applied Linguistics. It describes itself as "the listserv for school district personnel, superintendents, teachers, and teacher educators committed to improving early language programs by sharing information and expertise." Many members seem to be elementary school foreign language teachers. Recent posts have covered the following topics, for example: how to teach about Thanksgiving in the target language (an interesting dilemma, given that it's a fairly unique American holiday), assigning grades to elementary school students who only have foreign language class once or twice a week, and French songs that appeal to children and whose lyrics are comprehensible.

Nandu's messages can also be consulted on the following websites: here for messages posted after May 5, 2005 and here (follow the link for messages prior to that date). You don't need a password. There, you can either search by keyword for specifictopics or choose the "Read Messages" option. Click here to subscribe to Nandu.

Biling-Fam is a list for bilingual families. Messages on this site seem to be less "academic" in nature and more "personal." (For example, Braunstonian, a regular reader of this blog, announced to this listserv that he and his partner are expecting.) Generally, parents write in with questions about raising their children bilingually, looking for advice and suggestions from their peers. Recent posts that caught my eye included: what should bilingual kids call their mom and dad (at last count there were 74 responses to this query!), ideas for light reading in various foreign languages, educational systems in other countries, and discussion of the lyrics of "You Are My Sunshine." Subscribe here.

Another forum that exists for parents raising children bilingually is BBFN (Bilingual Bicultural Family Network), which is less active than the previous one. You can check out BBFN-News' archives here. Subscribe to the list here.

As I don't have bilingual kids (just a nephew who can't talk yet!) and don't teach elementary school (except for some tutoring), the language teacher listserv I follow most closely is FL-TEACH (and have been following for about five years), which is open to teachers of any language at any level (the majority seem to be Americans teaching Spanish and French). This group is extremely lively and supportive. The moderators give the following description of the group: "The topic of this list is Foreign Language Teaching methods including school & college articulation, training of student teachers, curriculum, and the NYS syllabus. We hope that this list will also be used to foster a community in which colleagues can share ideas, outlines, handouts and other teaching materials, syllabi, and bibliographies." While most posts are classroom-related--how to teach ser vs.estar in Spanish, textbook recommendations, suggestions for practicing clothing vocabulary--there is also the occasional rant, requests for books and movies and translations, links to newspaper articles and websites, and much more. I have collected dozens (in fact, probably hundreds) of ideas and recommendations and teaching tips from this listserv. Search the FL-TEACH archive here; and here's where you can subscribe.

Moreover, I subscribe to several listservs for ESL/EFL teachers. The main listserv, TESL-L, has 27,000+ members! I also receive its sub-group, TESLCA-L, for CALL (computer-assisted language learning). The international ESL/EFL teachers' organization TESOL also offers listservs for its members; they are called e-groups and exist for many topics (I believe there is one about teaching young children, but I haven't joined it yet). I do subscribe to TESOL-Drama, their listserv about using theatre in the language classroom. These three I wouldn't recommend as strongly to the average reader of this blog, simply because they are much more academic in nature, in fact geared towards university teaching (except for the drama listserv). You must also be a TESOL member to subscribe to TESOL's e-groups. If you're interested in learning more, visit TESL-L and its branches here (first provide your email address and a password, then select the listserv you want), while TESOL listservs can be found here.

For additional language-related listservs, check out CCFLT (Colorado Congress of Foreign Language Teachers (scroll down). On this page you can learn about listservs for German speakers, for teachers of less commonly-taught languages, about testing, about technology, about research....

A couple of caveats: Some of these listservs generate literally dozens of messages per day. I learned a long time ago not to have them sent to my school or personal emails. Rather, I set up separate email accounts that I visit every couple of days. Here's what I really recommend: Gmail. In this email program, all messages with the same subject are grouped together, and the first line of the message appears in your inbox. This makes it very easy to a) delete messages which are not relevant to you and b) read all messages on a topic together in chronological order. With any listserv, I would also recommend "lurking" for a while--reading many posts and getting a feel for the topics, the tone, the expectations--before posting messages. Additionally, if you're a new subscriber, check the archives before sending a request for information, for you might find that the subject has been discussed at length already.

Whew! This turned out to be a longer post than I had anticipated, but I really appreciate listservs and wanted to share my top three. Any other recommendations or suggestions?

Article review: "Raising Bilingual Children: Common Parental Concerns and Current Research"

CAL, the Center for Applied Linguistics, has published an online document, "Raising Bilingual Children: Commen Parental Concerns and Current Research," that describes a research study by Kendall King and Lyn Fogle that looked at 24 Spanish-English bilingual children ages 0-5. The conclusions are as follows:

• Although many parents believe that bilingualism results in language delay, research suggests that monolingual and bilingual children meet major language developmental milestones at similar times.

• Despite many parents' fear that using two languages will result in confusion for their children, there is no research evidence to support this. On the contrary, use of two languages in the same conversation has been found to be a sign of mastery of both languages.

• Many parents rely heavily on television to teach the second language; yet this is best considered a fun source of secondary support for language learning. Human interaction is the best method for fostering language learning.

• Contrary to the widespread notion among parents that bilingualism results in "bigger, better brains," parents more realistically can expect their bilingual children to gain specific advantages in targeted areas, such as greater understanding of language as an abstract system.

I really recommend this article--it is brief enough to read in one sitting and serves as a good introduction to issues and ideas relevant to raising children bilingually. It also offers a lengthy bibliography to serve as a springboard for further reading.

I'm curious to find out from parents of bilingual children if this study resonates with you--did you have, for example, the same expectations that learning a second language would make your child "smarter"? And do your observations of your children in general match those of King and Fogle as documented in this article?

Book Review: Introduction to Bilingualism (chapters 7-14): Sociolinguistics

(Click on the following concepts to see previous reviews of Introduction to Bilingualism by Charlotte Hoffmann: Defining bilingualism , Language development in children , Features of bilingual speech , and Contradictory and inconclusive research.)

The rest of Hoffmann's very informative but somewhat dry book concerns bilingualism in social and societal contexts; much of it is not relevant to the target audience of my blog (parents and teachers of children learning second languages), so I'll try to be quick in my summary. Chapter 7 discusses views of bilingualism across the years--for example, some experts in the early 20th century believed that bilingualism leads to "moral inferiority" (p. 138)--and emphasizes the challenge that bicultural bilinguals have in establishing and/or articulating their identities. Hoffmann suggests that parents should help children sort out which groups and nationalities they identify with.

Chapter 7 also addresses the difficulty in assessing bilingual proficiency: the current methods and techniques are unsatisfactory, the setting in which tests are done can render them invalid, they are hard to compare to other tests, the language used and information tested may not mirror a bilingual person's skills and experiences, taking tests is not the normal way bilinguals use language [and I would add, not the normal way any of us use language!], and "formal tests tend to stress linguistic form....[and] may not reveal the bilingual's ability to communicate" (153). Additionally, in other sections of the book Hoffmann points out that many degrees of bilingualism exist; rarely does a bilingual person have the exact same level of competency in both languages, comfortably using both equally well in any given situation.

In chapter 8, Hoffmann discusses multilingual societies by way of historical and contemporary factors, such as the use of French, German, Italian, and Romansch in Italy. Chapter 9 covers language choice and language shift (the latter due to factors like migration, industrialization, and prestige). Chapter 10 develops the idea of language and national identity mentioned in chapter 7, while chapter 11 delves linguistic minorities (focusing on western Europe keeps it from getting overwhelming and allows Hoffmann to discuss topics like assimilation). The book concludes with detailed summaries of three case studies of bilingualism in western Europe: the Alsatians in France, the Catalans in Spain, and migrant workers in Germany.

The discussions of the Alsatian dialect and its speakers were of particular interest to me personally, because I lived in Alsace for a year (1996-7) where I met many young people who understood their grandparents' Alsatian but couldn't speak it themselves. Occasionally the local newspaper would publish articles in Alsatian, though, and all the street signs in my modern, industrialized city (Mulhouse) were written both in French and in Alsatian.

However, there is a very distinct difference between the two sections of the book (Part I: Psycholinguistic Aspects of Bilingualism, with its focus on individuals, and Part II: Sociolinguistic Aspects of Bilingualism, which examined bilingual societies). The latter half seems very well suited to a graduate-level class on sociolinguistics (or to people curious about places where the residents are bilingual), but I would recommend the first half to those wanting to learn more about the effects of bilingualism and how children acquire a second language. Still, this is definitely a tome with a theoretical focus--good for academics and linguists, but not offering a lot of ideas or techniques that a parent or teacher could apply to a would-be bilingual child. The fact that it's no longer a recent book (published in 1991) concerns me, too--I'm sure that in the past fifteen years research has emerged that clarifies some of the issues that Hoffmann admits we don't have answers to or explanations for. Perhaps ways of assessing bilingualism and its effects have also been finessed. But I chose this book to review well aware of its publication date, expecting it to give me a good, academic overview of bilingualism, and indeed it did. My next book review will cover something more practically rooted, I promise. Thanks for wading through all this theory and research and linguistic terminology with me!

(To see a review of a case-study book by a linguist who raised his child trilingually, click here.)

Book Review: Introduction to Bilingualism (chapter 6): Contradictory and Inconclusive Research

Just joining us here at Baby Bilingual? Check out parts 1 (defining bilingualism) and 2 (language development in children) and 3 (features of bilingual speech) of my review/summary of Charlotte Hoffmann's Introduction to Bilingualism (click on the blue words).

Okay, so "Contradictory and Inconclusive Research" isn't really the title of this chapter, but that's the gist. Hoffmann details a number of research studies about bilingualism from the past century, telling us that we can't trust most of them and that the rest aren't large enough in scope to generalize and apply to other groups of learners. (For example, no longer do we believe that bilingualism causes stuttering and left-handedness!)

However, she does cite recent research that drew conclusions about the effects of bilingualism on children; while these studies had shortcomings as far as their generalizability, overall they did find more positive than negative results. Here's what struck me:

One researcher proposes that a higher IQ is "simultaneously the cause and effect of bilingualism" (p. 124), while another concluded that bilinguals "showed greater cognitive flexibility and were capable of more complex analytical strategies in their approach to language operations" (125). (To be fair, other researchers have found that bilingualism has no effect on intelligence, which at least invalidates early research that warned of lower IQ scores for bilingual kids.)

Want to hear more pro-bilingualism? How about "bilinguals may possess greater sensitivity towards verbal and nonverbal feedback cues than monolinguals [because they have a] wider and more varied range of experience than monolinguals, as they have access to two cultures and operate in two different systems" (126). And, "there is no evidence that bilinguals suffer any negative effects in their development on account of their bilingualism, nor do they acquire a split view of the world" (134).

Convinced?

(Or perhaps just convinced there's no way to quantify once and for all the cognitive effects of bilingualism?)

Click here to read part 5 of this review.

Book Review: Introduction to Bilingualism (chapters 2, 3 & 4): Language development in children

Continuing with my book review of Charlotte Hoffmann's Introduction to Bilingualism, I'd like to share some ideas gleaned from chapters 2 through 4. (This is turning into more of a summary than a review per se, perhaps because I'm not yet knowledgeable enough about this topic to poke holes in the author's ideas.)

You've probably heard that we should teach languages to children as young as possible because they'll learn much more easily than adults would. I mean, that's one reason why I started speaking French to Carl the day I visited him and his excited new parents in the hospital. But Hoffmann argues that children are not necessarily better than adults at acquiring language, except with regards to pronunciation: "Children are believed to have greater phonetic-auditory ability, which enables them to distinguish and reproduce new sounds quite easily, whereas adults many experience some degree of interference from their first language" (p. 35-6).

So why do we mostly monolingual Americans curse the fact that we had to wait until 9th grade to take a foreign language in school? Here are some of the qualities that children do have that facilitate their acquisition and fluency: lower inhibitions than adults, willingness to learn via play, great mimicry skills. But kids don't have the same skills and knowledge that adults have developed, like an understanding of how languages work (i.e. they can't transfer concepts from one language to another), abstraction, classification, and generalization. (I don't know what age group she's referring to, though--while this is perhaps true for toddlers, these skills do emerge in elementary school, perhaps earlier.) At any rate, these ideas don't mean that we shouldn't bother to teach languages until the child is a more sophisticated thinker.

Here's what I've read and heard over and over: consistency is important when teaching second languages to children, exposing the kids to the pattern of each person always speaking the same language in the same contexts. (This is known as OPOL: the one parent, one language approach.) Most researchers seem to agree on this point. This prevents the child from seeing language use as arbitrary and confusing (45), and it "helps the child to understand that the two codes are possible and distinct means of communication, existing in their own right, rather than being attributes of certain people." Mixed input can lead to mixed speech--but this does not mean delayed language development (87)!

Research also shows that infants develop receptive language skills very early on (which implies that they should be exposed to both languages from birth). They can recognize and distinguish between human and non-human sounds, familiar and unfamiliar voices; they can also hear nuances of sounds like pitch, stress, vowel length, and intonation. Wow! Infants!

I'm going to quote Hoffmann at length here, because this is important, if considerably daunting:

"The degree of success of OPOL will depend mainly on such factors as whether the parents are consistent enough in their language use, whether the child has enough exposure to the [second language], whether (s)he perceives the need to use both languages, and whether (s)he receives the right kind and amount of social support. Providing the first two conditions, consistency and exposure, are met, the establishment of bilingualism is not usually problematic. However, the maintenance of the [second language]...is much less certain. Some children may not see much point in using the language of one parent, once they realize that he or she also speaks the language of the other....When the child is older the input from the weaker language may be too one-sided, too limited in register and style...for the two languages to develop on the same level. In fact, judging from the parents' accounts (and my own experience), bringing children up bilingually requires considerable effort, expense and ingenuity." (44-5) She implies throughout the book, however, that these efforts are worthwhile.

Speaking of research studies, two theories for explaining children's bilingualism emerged in the 1960s:
1. The unitary language system: The child starts with one language system which gradually separates into his understanding that two languages exist.
2. The separate/individual development hypothesis: The child differentiates between the two languages from the beginning. This theory is growing more and more popular. (Keep in mind, though, that I'm summarizing from a work published in 1991, so I don't know yet where the trend has gone in the past decade and a half.)

Which of these theories you subscribe to determines whether or not you can refer to the "onset" of bilingualism at a certain age. Hoffmann cautions that it is important to keep in mind that it's not always possible to identify when a child becomes aware of the existence of two separate languages and that children don't name the language at first (this is too abstract a concept for them). Code-switching and mixing languages tends to subside with the child's awareness of the separateness of the languages.

Hoffmann lists these cues as signals that the child is aware of the two languages:
· He uses the languages in appropriate contexts.
· He knows who speaks which language in his circle.
· He translates spontaneously for his parents.
· He doesn't like when one parent uses the other parent's dominant language. (84)

These points, of course, raise the question of how exactly does the child grow aware of the fact that he's hearing two languages? While some theories exist--growing familiarity with both languages, social experiences, modeling the adults he encounters--basically there is no certain answer to this question. (85-6)

I'll conclude this part of the book review with some information that ties into the next few chapters, about features of bilingual speech:

The task of processing the languages he hears is more complex for the bilingual child, because "a larger number of features have to be recognized and produced, and this bigger cognitive load may well lead to a later onset of speech production or even an initial period of some confusion" (57). The "semantic load" is larger for them, as assigning two different labels to each concept requires more effort (65). On the other hand, other studies have found no difference between monolingual and bilingual kids' cognitive processes. Hoffmann points out that both sets of children are prone to overextension of meaning when learning to speak, like where "car" refers to any vehicle or "doggie" is any four-legged animal. (60-1) Both monolingual and bilingual children also make the same kinds of grammatical errors, which may persist longer for the latter group (plurals, for example). (68-9)

I'd like to hear from readers--do you agree with the research cited here? Do you think kids have it easier or harder than adults when learning second languages? Do the "pros" outweigh the "cons" when it comes to teaching a child a second language? Click on "comments" to share your thoughts!

Click here for part 3 of this review.

Book Review: Introduction to Bilingualism (preface & ch. 1): Defining Bilingualsim

Introduction to Bilingualism, by German academic, linguist, and mother Charlotte Hoffmann, married to a Spaniard and teaching in England at the time of publication (1991), is part of the respected series Longman Linguistics Library and the type of tome grad students might read as part of their coursework or amateur linguists might read for fun. It assumes a general familiarity with linguistics but not bilingualism, so it really does function as the "introduction" proclaimed in its title. Hoffmann divides her work into two parts: psycholinguistic aspects of bilingualism (including salient definitions, discussions of patterns of acquisition and features of bilingual speech, contradictory research findings about brain function of bilinguals, and lists of sociocultural elements of bilingualism) and sociolinguistic aspects (like social patterns, language choice, identity, and linguistic minorities, illustrated by detailed case studies). I will review it several chapters at a time so as to avoid extremely long posts, I promise!

Hoffmann begins with a very simple description of what it's like to be a polyglot with several languages to draw from: "I use different languages depending on whom I am speaking to or what I am talking about, and I feel a different kind of cultural and emotional attachment to the languages involved" (xii). This sets up her focus on the sociocultural aspects of bilingualism as well as the exploration of theories and facts. She addresses perceived problems with bilingualism (such as the low status of bilinguals in some cultures, like for the Turkish guest workers in her native Germany) but prefers to promote the sociocultural advantages--deepens understanding of two cultures, enriches one's life, provides a "wider range of linguistic resources" (p. 5-6).

Early on the book, Hoffmann concedes that defining bilingualism is a tricky task, as we must take many factors into account (age, background, living situation, education, contact, environment, the function/s that the language fulfills for the speaker, and more) and consider that proficiency is a continuum, not a certain point that a speaker passes and suddenly becomes fluent. In the middle of this continuum is the "equilingual" or "balanced bilingual," originally defined in 1959 as someone "fully competent" in both languages (22). (See my previous book review for a more contemporary perspective of the BB.) Nowadays, being a balanced bilingual doesn't imply native-like fluency in either language, just being equally comfortable in both, according to Hoffmann.

While becoming a balanced bilingual is perhaps ideal, this is not necessarily a reasonable goal for many people who speak more than one language, as most people bilinguals are dominant in one language. (The child, Noam, described in the previous book is not a balanced bilingual by these standards because he doesn't have equal ability in his different languages--but Faingold considers him one.)

Hoffmann contrasts the balanced bilingual with the "perfect bilingual" (or "ambilingual"): someone who has equal knowledge and ability with two languages and can use either one with equal comfort and fluency in any given situation. Hoffmann points out that "true ambilingual speakers are very rare creatures. Who ever has identical linguistic input and output in both languages? And who would habitually use both languages for the same purposes, in the same contexts?" (p. 21). In my opinion, having that second language to draw from when English doesn't work as well for me is one of the thrills of being bilingual. (And yes, I regularly find myself speaking French with other Americans--it just makes sense to use French when discussing what we do when we teach French, for example.)

Moreover, when we are defining bilingualism, some researchers and linguists take into account function--what language does the speaker use for which purpose and to what degree? For example, if an immigrant can understand the second language but not write or read it, is he bilingual? Again, it's a continuum--it's all relative. After a long discussion of possible definitions of bilingualism, Hoffmann basically says that there isn't any one definition that both captures all the salient aspects and pleases academics and bilingual speakers alike. But here's the one I like the best so far, cited by Hoffmann (p. 26) from Skutnabb-Kangas' 1984 work Bilingualism or Not (p. 90):

"A bilingual speaker is someone who is able to function in two (or more) languages, either in monolingual or bilingual communities, in accordance with the sociocultural demands made of an individual's communicative and cognitive competence by these communities or by the individual herself, at the same level as native speakers, and who is able positively to identify with both (or all) language groups (and cultures) or parts of them."

One final comment: Hoffmann points out that "bilingual" does not necessarily imply "bicultural," which might be the case with me teaching French to baby Carl. (Without regular trips to France, contact with French relatives, participation in French customs and traditions, and lots of input about France, he won't "feel" French. But that's not what his parents and I am aiming for, and besides, with so many countries that speak French, it would be hard to pick which one we wanted him to identify with!)

So that's what the academics have to say, according to Hoffmann's 1991 book. Fifteen years later, I'm curious: What do the bilinguals reading this blog have to say? What is your operation definition of a bilingual? Where do you fall on the continuum? What are the most important aspects for you? Click on "comments" to post a reply! (Or, if you would like me to profile you or bilingual kids you know in greater detail, email me at babybilingual (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll do a separate post!)

Click here for part 2 of this review.

I think it's a good idea--but what does the research say?

Here's what I'm doing to learn more about bilingualism and second language (L2) acquisition in infants and children:

1. Blog searches for anecdotal evidence: My searches through this Blogger site have turned up thousands of blog entries about the topic. After looking through the first 500+ results, I determined that most of them weren't too relevant. (For example, a search for "French children bilingual" turned up a message about a bilingual waiter who brought French fries to the writer's children.) Many are about current controversies about bilingual education in the US and Canada--less relevant to what I'm writing about. What I was particularly interested in finding were blogs by parents raising their kids bilingually, and quite a few did turn up; many of these, however, don't seem to post regularly about their children's language acquisition process. Some do, though, and I've taken note of them and will list them here soon. What I did discover, though, is that so far I'm the only aunt with a bilingual baby blog out in cyberspace!

2. Websites for parents of bilingual kids: I have found some sites that look like practical, well-informed resources for parents of bilingual children. When I've examined them more carefully, I'll add them to the list of links in the margin.

3. Interviews: Well, conversations with friends and colleagues who are raising their children with more than one language aren't really "interviews" per se, but I'm definitely going to pay attention to what language teachers do with their own kids. Many of my colleagues in the foreign language department are either from other countries or married to people from other countries, which means that the couples have had to decide which language(s) to use with their children; most of them have used both to some degree. I respect their choices and I think they know what they're doing. Perhaps I can convince some of these teachers to write in here and share their strategies and rationales!

4. Library research: Maybe I'm just a masochist, but I always did enjoy library research and writing papers. I still do some of that these days, even though I'm not required to publish anything for my teaching job. While I'm very interested in hearing about what real people are doing with their bilingual children, I also want to know why and how it works (and why it doesn't when it doesn't)--what does second language acquisition theory have to say about teaching the L2 to infants and children? So I recently borrowed a dozen or so books from the university library, some qualitative case studies (i.e. how one child learned an L2 over the course of his childhood), some quantitative and theory-based, some handbooks for parents. As I go through those I'll report back here with my impressions and questions. This blog may end up looking like an annotated bibliography of my research crossed with my journal about babysitting my nephew!

5. Conferences: As a French teacher, I present at one or two language conferences a year. Typically I gravitate towards sessions about techniques for teaching older learners. But now, I'm also going to seek out information about languages and children. And the next one is in July--a four-day conference of nothing but French teachers! I plan on picking people's brains about materials to use with children learning French--books, songs, websites, and so on.

Let me know if you can think of anywhere else to look for more information, please!