speech delay and bilingual education

[Annick De Houwer]

Dear Beate,

Just a very quick reply --- but please advise your friend NOT to give up
speaking the language she usually speaks with her child and feels
comfortable with. There is absolutely no evidence that shows that this would
help; on the contrary, there are many (unpublished, anecdotal, but still!!)
reports that when mothers stop talking their usual language to their child
in pre-school age, some children get very upset and even stop speaking
altogether for a while. I take up this issue (and others) in my brief
article, 'Two or More Languages in Early Childhood: Some General Points and
Practical Recommendations', first published in AILA News and since 1999
available through the website of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and
Linguistics at http://www.cal.org/ericcll/digest/earlychild.html.

Also: you do not mention that this child has been tested for hearing
difficulties? This is often a 'blind spot' in bilingual situations: many
people expect bilingual children to develop slower, observe delayed
development, ergo bilingualism is the cause and must be eradicated, and
hence there is no search for other explanations. Unfortunately I know of
several families that had this happen to them and where after my advice to
have hearing checked it turned out the children had large hearing losses.

Best regards,


Annick De Houwer


****************
Annick De Houwer, PhD
Associate Professor

UIA-PSW
University of Antwerp
Universiteitsplein 1
B2610-Antwerpen
Belgium

tel +32-3_8202863
fax +32-3-8202882
email annick.dehouwer at ua.ac.be


Van: "beate luo" <beate at fcu.edu.tw>
Datum: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 08:55:12 +0800
Aan: <info-childes at mail.talkbank.org>
Onderwerp: speech delay and bilingual education


dear all,

my friend, a German living in Greece, is educating her children bilingual.
However, her 4 year old son's development is retarded (motor skills as well
as cognition and speech) by about one year. He has started logotherapy two
months ago. The therapist advised the mother to stop talking German to him
as this would negatively influence his development and would actually be the
reason for his speech delay. His mother's Greek is not very good and to stop
talking to him would influence their communication a lot. She asked me if it
would be generally advised against bilingual education in the case of speech
delay and if it wouldn't be possible to do the therapy in Greek but the
exercises at home in German as she is doing it at the moment. As I am not a
specialist in this field, I would like to forward her questions to you.

This boy started to communicate orally only when he was already 2.6. His
Greek was understandable only for his family until about September this
year. In German he is lagging far behind in pronunciation and grammar but
his vocabulary is somewhat bigger than in Greek. His mother told me that her
son is not learning by himself and needs a lot of practice. He'd never been
asking a lot and seems not to be interested in new things. He used to be
very introverted but is now that he is going to kindergarden more open and
socially active. There are still a lot of things he should know but still
does not. Just a few days ago he learned the difference between day and
night. To explain to him the differences between summer and winter has taken
his mother several weeks. He as well needed a long time to learn the names
of colors. And he can use a word only in the context in which it appeared
when he learned it. In another situation the same word has to be learned
again. He is not analyzing his speech but learning whole phrases. But his
mother said that her impression was that he had no difficulties with the 2
languages as he can easily switch from one to the other and that he knows
with whom to speak which language. She as well noticed that he could
transfer what he had learned from one language to the other. She therefore
is reluctant to give up speaking German to him and has asked for advice. She
is experiencing a lot of pressure from the therapist, the
kindergardenteachers and others who blame her son's speech delay to the
bilingual education - something neither his mother nor I believe is true. As
my friends family as well is not very supportive, she is now looking for
advice from specialists.

I would very much appreciate any information or reference I could forward to
her. Thanks in advance.


Sincerely yours,
Dr. Beate Luo

Feng-Chia University
Foreign Lanuage and Literature Teaching Section
Dept. of Humanities
100 Wen-Hua Rd.
Hsi-Tun District, 407
Taichung City
Taiwan, ROC
e-mail: beate at fcu.edu.tw





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