second language

Thu Dec 6 14:29:31 UTC 2001

Oh dear, sorry to have contributed to your email deluge today!  But
thank you so much for your thoughts on this.  Kyra's "mother tongue"
has now *become* English after university and living here for so
long, so she has always spoken to Misha in English.  But they go to
France often and she'd like him to get used to hearing French.  My
feeling was that it would not have a detreimental effect at all on
his developing English. I just wanted to know what others thought
before responding to her request for advice.   Thanks again,
best wishes
Annette

At 8:27 am -0500 6/12/01, Barbara Zurer Pearson wrote:
>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/

--
________________________________________________________________
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
________________________________________________________________