second language

Thu Dec 6 13:27:40 UTC 2001

Dear Annette K-S,
I did NOT want to spend time on Infochildes today, but yours
is the 4th (!) query this morning  that is right down my alley
and it's barely 7 am!

I'm of course, tremendously prejudiced in favor of helping
children be bilingual, and I've always shared Lucy Wong
Fillmore's outrage at telling people not to speak the language
they can have the best relationship possible with their
children in.  On the other hand, I'm uncomfortable going against
the grain of clinicians' advice--even in cases as this is, where
there is no scientific evidence that children with speech "problems"
shouldn't be bilingual, if their environments are.  Clinicians, though,
usually have a pretty good sense of things, and so while I
think there's no evidence against, there's also no good evidence the
other way, to tell us that we introduce the two languages with
impunity for *all* children.

You seem to intimate that your grandchild has an articulation problem,
so I don't think if one's careful, there will be any issue of
cognitive overload.  And if the child's hearing is less than
perfect, it may mean that his command of French pronunciation
will be less than native-like.  (However, that shouldn't be a
problem, because kids can get away with a lot.)

If it were my grandbaby, I would suggest introducing French,
but somewhat  carefully.  The child's 4, so your daughter can
discuss it with him, explain it, get him to notice things etc.
She can start with games and songs and the other things of cultural
exchange.  (What about Tintin?  Or Asterix? Are they still
around?  Do they have modern counterparts?)  See how
those go down.  Then the next step will be the playgroup.
But it is possible that the child will not pick up the language
like most children do, and it could be frustrating for him,
but less so, if it's anticipated and prepared for.  And who knows,
it could work beautifully--especially if there are *children* he
admires who speak French, too.

I will close with one "clinical experience" we had in our
Miami study of the bilingual babies (some of whom we followed
until they were past 5).  I hope I get the details right. and that
I don't violate any privacy concerns. The story gets a little
long, so I'll understand if many readers don't make it to the
end.

It is unbelievable to me, but there was
one child whom we recorded monthly for the 2nd year, and
quarterly thereafter, who became deaf under our noses.  (Her
parents were graduate students and very aware, and she
also became deaf under their noses, without their catching on.
I can at least report that it was our lab that eventually sent
her for hearing tests at age 5--our last screening for hearing
had been when she entered the study at 3 months.  And in
Kim Oller's lab, no less!)

Anyway, the child had been exposed to mostly Spanish early on,
and so in the graphs of her in our mid-90's studies, she's the
85/15 exposure girl.  At 2, she was average in Spanish (not
stellar, as one might have expected in hindsight), and she also
knew some English.  (Her dad was a "gringo", but he had learned
Spanish at least at the 2-year-old level and was comfortable
with the wife's project to make the kids bilingual.)

At 2, a sibling was born and they wanted the child to start
daycare--in English.  She did it, but she didn't really catch on
to the English like one would have expected.  The mother had
nieces and nephews who became bilingual with much more
ease than this child.

We noticed that in the recording sessions the child was
pleasant enough, but not particularly cooperative.  She also
had a low-pitched (Tallulah Bankhead?) voice.  It was so
cute: an adorable red-head, who spoke "sexy" Spanish.
At about 30 months, they saw that she had fluid, and so they put
the tubes in her ears.  Still no dramatic progress in English;
she remained more comfortable in Spanish, although I'm
dying to have someone go back to her 2 and 3 year old
tapes to evaluate the Spanish carefully.  For the next 2 years,
she spoke passable Spanish and gibberish English.  We
decided that she had decided that English was gibberish
and so that was all one was required to output.  It seemed to
us a "pragmatic" decision on her part.   FINALLY,
at 5 (!), a hearing test revealed a progressive neuro-sensory
loss.  She was given hearing aids and switched to "English-
only", given how much lost time she had to make up in
English.  When I see the parents, as I occasionally do,
they say she is doing "fine."  But since I'm not in Miami
anymore (except to visit MY grandson, who despite being
Cuban-American, does not seem to be becoming bilingual,
alas), I haven't been in a position to follow up.  I'm pretty
sure we could still find the family.

The sibling born when this child was 2 had the same
neuro-sensory loss, but with earlier onset, so when
he didn't have any words at 2+ (when L was 5), he got
hearing aids etc. at the same time as his sister.  And
he has been exposed to English-only.  I believe also that
his speech is much more impaired than his sister's,
as she seems to have had "enough" input in those first
2 years to get the basic rhythms and pitch of what it
means to speak.

Now that I tell this, it sounds like your grandson will
have a breeze in French (by comparison), and it's criminal
that we never wrote this up.  Maybe this will be the
first step towards such a case study.

Bonne chance--and all that.

Barbara

At 09:27 AM 12/6/2001 +0000, you wrote:
>A personal question to blingualism experts please.  My grandson is almost 4.  He is for the moment monolingual - English - and has a slight speech impediment for which he has speech therapy.  It seems to be entirely at the articulatory level as far as I can see.  He had a hearing problem for some time and now has grommets and hears far better.  My daughter is bilingual French-English and would like her son to learn French too.  She feels that she herself should continue speaking English to him.  But there is a French playgroup he could now join and he does anyway hear French from time to time in his environment.  The question is would it be wise/unwise for him to start hearing another language at this time, when he is still having speech therapy for English?
>Any advice most welcome.
>Annette
>--
>________________________________________________________________
>Professor A.Karmiloff-Smith,
>Head, Neurocognitive Development Unit,
>Institute of Child Health,
>30 Guilford Street,
>London WC1N 1EH, U.K.
>tel: 0207 905 2754
>fax: 0207 242 7717
>http://www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/units/ncdu/NDU_homepage.htm
>________________________________________________________________

********************************************
Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph.D.
Research Associate, Project Manager
NIH Working Groups on AAE
Dept. of Communication Disorders
Arnold House, 117
UMass-Amherst 01003

413.545.5023
fax: 545.0803

bpearson at comdis.umass.edu
http://www.umass.edu/aae/