Question on bilingual language acquisition from non-native speaker
Barbara Zurer Pearson
bpearson at research.umass.edu
Sun Dec 14 14:40:53 UTC 2008
Dear Info-CHILDs,
I agree that the question of emotional development--both for the child and for the adult-growing-into-being-a-parent--has way less research. But I did come across some (nearly) relevant writings when I was preparing my book.
I recommend work by Aneta Pavlenko of Temple University as well as "literary non-fiction" by bilingual authors. (References are in my book (!), and in the full notes for the book, which are posted on my "bilingualchild" website.)
Yarden is pointing to the problem of how well the parent will be able to relate emotionally to the child. Pavlenko's 2005 book is titled Emotions and Multilingualism. Her website will have references to it and other work on bilingual identity--another place where bilingualism is often a scapegoat for bumps in the path of normal development. While much of what I read is not about the emotions of the small child, you may be able to extrapolate back to that. And it should be enjoyable doing it. The essays, in particular, by people like Ariel Dorfman and Eva Hoffman are great fun.
Good luck with it.
Best,
Barbara
*************************************************************
Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph.D.
Research Associate,
Depts of Linguistics and Communication Disorders
226 South College
University of Massachusetts
Amherst MA 01003
Tel: 413-545-5023
Fax: 413-545-2792
bpearson at research.umass.edu
www.umass.edu/aae/bp_indexold.htm
www.zurer.com/pearson/bilingualchild
----- Original Message -----
From: Yarden Kedar
To: info-childes at googlegroups.com
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2008 8:16 AM
Subject: Re: Question on bilingual language acquisition from non-native speaker
Dear Kristin and everyone on Info-Childes,
As far as I can see most of the discussion so far touched on the plausibility of whether the child would eventually fully acquire the non-native language or not.
One central issue however in my view is whether such 'non-native upbringing' has an effect on the parent-child emotional bond. This is not my area of specialty and so I'm not sure whether any research findings on this have been reported, but I think that before you begin considering the linguistic, cognitive and social (community) factors and implications, it may be even more important to try and think ahead if there might be some limiting effect in not being able to fully express your emotions to your child.
Cheers,
Yarden
--
Yarden Kedar, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Be'er Sheva, 84105
Israel
Tel: +972-8-647-2044
Fax: +972-8-642-8348
On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 12:28 PM, Isenthia <kristinborjesson at yahoo.de> wrote:
Dear All,
thanks a lot for all your answers! Sorry I didn't react any earlier,
but I've only had the opportunity to access the internet again today.
Since you all showed so much interest, I'd like to give some more
specific information so that maybe you'll find it easier to give your
opinion on my particular situation.
So here goes:
I and my boyfriend are native speakers of German. We live in Leipzig,
Germany. My boyfriend only has rudimentary knowledge of English;
enough to follow basic conversations in holiday situations, since we
spent our holidays the last three years in Scotland and England. I'm a
very big fan of the English language, literature, culture and history.
That's why my boyfriend also very often has to watch British films in
the original only with subtitles, although we could in principle watch
them dubbed ;) I asked him what he thought about the idea to bring up
our child bilingually and generally he is ok with that.
The two problems I see are the following: first, I'm not a native
speaker of English, I do speak with an accent, although it's
comparably slight. ALso, being able to talk to my child in English as
I would do in German is going to require some effort on my part, as
I'm aware that I'm lacking vocabulary typical in `child-directed'
speech. But I'd be happy and eager to remedy that ;)
Second problem: So far, I'd be the only person in the child's
immediate environment that'd be using English to him. However, since
my partner shares my liking for the UK & Ireland, it's likely that a
lot of our holidays will continue to be spend there. Also, a very good
friend of mine is English and lives in Glasgow. Then, I'd try to build
up contact to native speakers of English living in Leipzig and I'd try
to see to it that, when the time comes, our son'll go to a
Kindergarten that offers some sort of English-German bilingual
interaction. I'd also be looking forward to provide my child with
English children's stories, music, rhymes etc. I'm aware that it's
totally unclear whether this `enterprise' is going to be successful in
the sense that my son will see anything useful or worthwhile in
speaking/learning a language and about a culture that seems so
unconnected to him and the parent speaking it to him. But I personally
also think that, if my not being able to provide `native-speaking'
input is not considered problematic, it might be worth a try!
Again, thanks a lot for your comments and `reading' suggestions. I'll
definitely have a look at those.
Best Wishes
Kristin
On 11 Dez., 13:35, "Barbara Zurer Pearson"
<bpear... at research.umass.edu> wrote:
> Dear InfoChilds,
>
> This was frustrating for me yesterday to be on the road, aware of this
> thread, but not able to join in--till now.
> Here are my two-cents (and of course, a recommendation of my own book for
> Kristin's friend).
>
> Raising a Bilingual Child (by Zurer Pearson :) came out this year from
> Random House, and I think I can say, has been well-received both by parents
> and the research community. In addition to what I tried to make a balanced
> review of the research, there's a section where I talk about why we don't
> have the studies one might want to design to answer a question similar to
> Kristin's. There are also several extended testimonials from non-native
> parents with multilingual families. (Check out some background and reviews
> about it atwww.zurer.com/pearson/bilingualchild(--and at Amazon).
>
> People seem to have strong opinions about whether non-native parents will do
> children a disservice by speaking non-natively to them. The issue rarely
> comes up, of course, if the language the parents are speaking non-natively
> to children is the community language. No one has thought to research it,
> since children so clearly surpass their parents in the community language.
> (The question is framed somewhat differently for immigrant and guest worker
> communities, but I don't get the impression that this literature would be
> relevant for Kristin's friend.)
>
> My own opinion is that a parent who *wants* to speak a non-native language
> to a child should be encouraged to do so. The child will lose much less
> from the parent's disfluencies than she or he will gain from the extra
> practice. Practically speaking, it's not optimal to have *any* single
> individual be the only source of input for a child. Among the many parents
> I spoke with for my book, non-native parents seemed to understand that
> principle more readily than many international couples, and they took active
> steps to involve native speakers somewhere in the child's routine--through
> schools, sitters, travel, media, etc. I especially enjoyed one parent's
> comment that he hesitated to speak only Yiddish with his child since he
> didn't know if he knew it well enough to carry it off. Ten years later, he
> feels funny speaking a language other than Yiddish to any child, not just
> his own.
>
> These days, parents can find a virtual community to help them out. Kristin's
> friend might like one of the internet sites with discussion groups etc.www.biculturalfamily.org (with an on-line magazine one can subscribe to)www.multilingualchildren.org
> humanities.byu.edu/bilingua (especially for non-native parents, but it
> doesn't look like it has changed much since I first looked at it)
> (among others).
>
> Good luck to the friend--and others contemplating the same move.
>
> Barbara
> *************************************************************
> Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph.D.
> Research Associate,
> Depts of Linguistics and Communication Disorders
> 226 South College
> University of Massachusetts
> Amherst MA 01003
>
> Tel: 413-545-5023
> Fax: 413-545-2792
>
> bpear... at research.umass.eduwww.umass.edu/aae/bp_indexold.htmwww.zurer.com/pearson/bilingualchild
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Isenthia" <kristinborjes... at yahoo.de>
> To: "Info-CHILDES" <info-childes at googlegroups.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 6:04 AM
> Subject: Question on bilingual language acquisition from non-native speaker
>
> > Dear All,
>
> > I'm not entirely sure whether this is the right place to pose my
> > question. However, a friend of mine suggested I'd try here to get some
> > information on the following issue.
>
> > I'd like to know whether there are any studies investigating the
> > question of whether or not a non-native speaker of a language (with
> > fairly high competency) should try and raise his child bilingually
> > nevertheless. I'm simply interested in views on that question.
>
> > I'd be very happy if you could help me with suggestions or references
> > on this.
>
> > Thanks a lot.
>
> > Best,
> > Kristin
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