First or Second Language Acquisition

[Elizabeth Bates]

Where on earth did the advice come from to avoid introduction of two
languages simultaneously with a perfectly healthy child?  There is
nothing in the literature on bilingual language development that would
justify such a conclusion.  I would avoid bilingual input ONLY in the
case of a child who has some kind of handicap that presents a risk
factor even for the normal acquisition of a single language.  The
usual rule in this literature (c.f. McLaughlin, Taeschner, Hakuta
and others who have written on the topic) is to arrange things so
that it is maximally clear to the child WHICH language is spoken in
WHICH context.  This can be done with mother vs father, parents vs.
grandparents, upstairs vs. downstairs, anything that makes it easy
for the child to keep the two input contexts straight.  To be sure,
there is often some mixing, and slight "delays" in the very early
stages (as children work out which words go in which context), but
as far as anyone can tell within this literature, these delays are
in no way associated with a long term delay in either language.
And "delay" is a relative term.  If you look at the first 50 words
in each language in very young bilingual children, considering each
language separately, they look somewhat behind in the second year of
life.  However, if you add their non-overlapping terms together (e.g.
first 20 words in Language 1, first 30 words in Language 2), you
typically find that their totals are right on target compared with
monolingual children.  By the third year of life, most studies agree
that children understand the separateness of their two codes thoroughly,
often picking up words in translation pairs (e.g. actively seeking a
way to code a new concept in both languages), with no measurable delay
in either language.

In short, I would recommend to your friends that they proceed with
naturalistic language input in BOTH languages to BOTH children with
no further delay.  In fact, active and interactive weekends-only with
the father could easily suffice to get the English going, even without
a tutor.  (I'm skeptical that "tutoring" in the didactic sense is
appropriate in this age range anyway; what we are really talking about
is an English-speaking babysitter who interacts intelligently with
the children, in naturalistic contexts).

There are others who are more expert in the literature on early bilingualism
than I am, and I hope they will join in (and disagree with me if that
seems appropriate).  -liz bates