Literature on production vs. receptive language?

Thu Feb 21 16:54:53 UTC 2013

Dear Barbara, Annick and others,

I am so happy that someone has brought this topic up. I was reading Annick’s message and I was thinking that’s exactly the case of my 4 year old son Blake who has been raised bilingually (English-Spanish) in the UK (I am Spanish, dad is English) from birth. We live in an area where there are not many Spanish speaking people, and dad and I speak English together, so the Spanish input he has been exposed to has come almost exclusively from me (other sources: DVDs, songs, skype with grandparents, and around 3 visits to Spain a year). I have worked full time since he was about 1 year old and he has been the only child until very recently. His first words were in Spanish although when he learnt the same words in English he soon stopped using them.

Blake is clearly a very competent native speaker of English but he’s only a passive Spanish speaker who understands Spanish perfectly but has always found it very difficult to speak it. In fact, he has always been quite stubborn about not speaking Spanish, even to me, regardless of my constant begging. I think he wasn’t even 3 years old when he looked at me in the eye and said for the first time: “Mum, I am English. I don’t speak Spanish.” I have heard this many, many times. 

It never even mattered to him that other people would not understand him, like his grandparents, he would just refuse to speak Spanish (except for using few Spanish words about food, toys , family members etc.). So we decided to take drastic action and we spent 10 weeks in Spain last summer hoping to give him a bit of a language immersion experience. He was around 3 and a half years old then. We stayed with the grandparents (so Spanish was language used everywhere, even at home) and he attended a nursery/day care 9am-2pm Monday-Friday (where he had a chance to socialise in Spanish). After 1 week, we could see that his attitude towards Spanish was already changing although he was still finding it hard to speak it. But it was only a week later that he was happily speaking Spanish in full sentences, just like that, we couldn’t believe it; it happened like magic, like the Spanish speaking had been finally switched on.  I would say that he went from no use of Spanish at all (except for some vocabulary) to speaking Spanish like an intermediate (English) second language learner in just 2 weeks. He made some grammatical mistakes, like overproduction of overt subjects, problems with ser/estar, imperfect, verbal morphology, but I did see evidence of use of postverbal subjects and correct word order for instance. He also never code-mixed (has hardly ever done), which I have found very interesting. My thinking is that it was the experience in the nursery which pushed him to start speaking the other language, not the fact that we were in Spain (that did not see to affect him at all in the past). 

Please let me know if anybody would like to know a bit more about Blake’s experience. I should say that his active bilingualism lasted for around a month after we came back to the UK but he is now more capable of switching his Spanish on when he feels he has to (speaking to family members for instance or when I insist he speaks Spanish). We are planning another long visit to Spain this summer including spending time in the nursery so if anybody is interested in finding out what happens, please do get in touch.  Blake now has a little 1 month old brother – so if anyone has funds for a proper longitudinal study...

All the best,

Laura

Dr. Laura Dominguez
Head of Linguistics
Modern Languages
University of Southampton
________________________________________
From: info-childes at googlegroups.com [info-childes at googlegroups.com] on behalf of Barbara Z. Pearson [bpearson at research.umass.edu]
Sent: 21 February 2013 14:54
To: info-childes at googlegroups.com
Cc: Barbara Z. Pearson
Subject: Re: Literature on production vs. receptive language?

Dear All,
I missed this point when Annick originally made it, but it would be great to hear cases, even anecdotally, from the people who experienced this sudden switch from passive to active bilingualism--and be able to probe the details of their background and perhaps the level of their preschool L1.

I have never heard of someone who is a passive "speaker" becoming fluent in a week, even in a strong immersion situation.  I have had people describe cases where it took a week or more for someone who had been very fluent and then didn't use the language for a long period to regain their former fluency.  The heritage language studies also provide a lot of counter-evidence.

I realize this is veering off Helen's original question, but I guess it is potentially a new thread.  If anyone can give us some specifics on this, please write in--through the forum or off-line. It would be a great help to the field (and to parents around the world frustrated by children's reluctance to speak the "other" language.)  I, for one, would have to change the advice I give families and what I tell students.

Till soon, I hope,
Barbara

************************************************
Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph.D.
Co-director, Language Acquisition Research Center (LARC)
Research Associate, Depts of Linguistics and   Communication Disorders
c/o 226 South College
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst MA 01003
413-545-5023

bpearson at research.umass.edu<mailto:bpearson at research.umass.edu>
http://www.umass.edu/aae/bp_indexold.htm
http://www.zurer.com/pearson
On Feb 21, 2013, at 9:26 AM, William Snyder wrote:

Interesting point!

- William

On Sat, Feb 16, 2013 at 3:52 PM, Annick De Houwer <annickej at yahoo.com<mailto:annickej at yahoo.com>> wrote:
Dear William, Helen and other members--

The case that William adduces is similar to that of many children who grew
up hearing two languages from birth but learned to speak only one of them
fluently (a common case - see my 2009 book on Bilingual First Language
Acquisition). The other language could then be not produced at all, or just
in single words, or in two word utterances, even when the child is 4 or 5.
Preschool aged children who did say something at least in this "other"
language have been reported to become fluent speakers of the language in
about a week after they were in changed circumstances (for instance, when
they went on vacation and HAD to use the hitherto hardly used language in
order to be understood). There are very few linguist-documented cases,
though, and details about precisely which structures are then being used
are, to my knowledge, lacking.

Best to all,
Annick

Annick De Houwer, PhD
University of Erfurt, Germany and NICHHD, USA
European Research Network on Bilingual Studies ERBIS, www.erbis.org<http://www.erbis.org>

On Saturday, February 16, 2013 1:17:28 PM UTC+1, William wrote:

Dear Helen (et al.)

Karin Stromswold has done some potentially relevant work on the
syntactic abilities (in comprehension) of a child who, during his
pre-school years, was producing only one-word utterances, but who
tested normally on comprehension measures of syntax. What I don't
recall is whether she tested him on RCs....

With best wishes,

William

On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 8:50 PM, yvne... at gmail.com
<yvne... at gmail.com> wrote:
Dear All,

I am interested in research into how much production is relevant for
language acquisition (e.g. does a child need to actually produce
relative
clauses in order to acquire them? Might he have a full representation of
RCs
in his grammar, but never have uttered one?).  I'm interested in the
relationship of production to acquisition in general with respect to
syntax
and morphology.

Is there literature that makes specific claims about this?  I welcome
feedback from both theoretical and clinical perspectives.

Any references you can point me toward are greatly appreciated.

Best,

Helen Stickney

--
Department of Linguistics
Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences
University of Pittsburgh, 2831 CL
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
http://www.pitt.edu/~hes41/
Office: +1 412-624-5918

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