What is "normal" in bilingual children?

[Fred Genesee]

Marita:

I would like to add to Annick's comments, which I agree with based on our
experiences in Montreal --
the amount of exposure children get to each language, especially children
exposed to more than two languages,
is important. We have found that often children progress faster in the
language that they receive more exposure to.
Since exposure can be quite variable in children exposed to 3 languages,
let alone 2, it would be important to make
sure that any judgements about teh child's language development are based
on the language to which the child
has the MOST exposure. This has a better chance of providing indications of
the child's capacity for langauge. Looking
at the language to which the child has least exposure might be telling you
more about exposure than capacity.  This is
all particularly true if you are basing your judgements on vocabulary --
vocabulary development, in our experience in
Montreal, seems to be particularly sensitive to exposure; although I must
admit that this comment is more intuitive than
empirically-based. We know that young bilingual children often do not score
at teh same level as monolingual children
on vocabulary measures if you look at each language separately. If you look
at their combined vocabulary (different types), then
you often find taht their vocabulary is equivalent to that of monolinguals
-- this, of course, assumes adequate exposure to
each language.

It might also be worth pointing out that language impairment, or delay,
even in monolingual children, is difficult to identify when
children are as young as the son of your friend since the kinds of
difficulties such childre have are often not qualitatively different from
normally-developing children. What distinguishes many children with
language impairment/delay is their difficulty in reaching age-appropriate
levels of
competence. But, of course, in the beginning, all children have impariments
to the extent that they have not mastered the target system -- only
time can reveal which children are truly delayed.

Given all this, I think Annick's suggestion that, at the moment, a useful
thing to do would be to ensure that the child has lots of rich, consitent
and naturalistic exposure to all three languages is good advice -- in my
opinion, this is adivsable for all bilingual and multilingual children.  It
has been
our experience that exposure to the target languages from same-age peers
can be particularly important for bilingual children -- it looks like peers
may be
as, or more important, language models than adults at some point in
children's early langauge development -- again, just an impression. We have
found that
bilingual children often gravitate toward the language of their peers, even
if that means, sometimes, moving away from the dominant language of the home.

I hope this is helpful.

Fred Genesee


At 11:57 AM 30/09/2003 +0200, Marita Boehning wrote:
>Dear members,
>   I was recently asked for advice by a mother of a 3;5 year-old son who
>learns 3 languages as his mother tongue.  Turkish is the language coming
>from the father, English from the mother and German from everywhere else
>(as they live in Germany) and sometimes from the parents, too.
>As I haven't dealt with much research on bilingualism, I have hardly any
>idea, what is normal for a child who has to acquire 3 languages
>simultaneously. I looked at the German equivalent of the CDI (ELFRA-2),
>and it turns out his results equal a 2;5 year-old.
>Would a year delay be "normal" for such a child or is intervention
>indicated? And if intervention, then are there special approaches for
>those children?
>
>Thanks for any help!
>
>Marita Boehning
>
>
>
>******************************
>Marita Boehning
>Department of Linguistics
>University of Potsdam
>P.O. Box 60 15 53
>D - 14415 Potsdam
>Germany
>
>*****************************
>
Psychology Department
McGill University
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