L2 influences

[Fred Genesee]

I do not know of specific studies taht address this issue, but an obvious
set of counter-examples is
immigrant children or children of parents who speak limited or accented
English but have ample
exposure to same-age peers who speak English fluently -- such children do
not acquire their parents' accented or
"broken" English, but learn the variety spoken by their peers.

At some point, peers are a more influential model than parents -- either
because there are more peer than parent models
or because of identity issues.

Fred Genesee

At 01:32 PM 18/10/2004 -0400, Shelley Velleman wrote:
>A question has arisen in a Mass. school system as to whether a
>kindergarten teacher whose first language is not English could have a
>negative impact on her normally-developing students' English language
>development by being a poor role model.  (She occasionally omits
>function words, but is quite intelligible.)  Since being bilingual is
>clearly not a disadvantage, it seems obvious to me that exposure to a
>person with a slightly different system should do no harm to a child's
>first language system.  (And, for example, over the past 28 years I've
>so far been unable to detect any negative linguistic effects on my
>husband, who was raised by such an ESL speaker i.e. his father.)  But,
>does anyone know of any literature that would specifically, directly
>address this question?
>
>Thanks.
>
>Shelley
>
>

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