Ruhr- Universität- Bochum, Fakultät Anglistik
Seminar Child language acquisition
3. Semester

Is Bilingualism an Advantage or Drawback

by: Annika Lüchau

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. INTRODUCTION  2

2. BILINGUALISM 2

2.1. REASONS FOR BILINGUALISM 3
2.2. SENSITIVE AGE PERIOD 3
2.3. PATTERNS OF ACQUISITION 4
2.4. HOW DOES THE CHILD KEEP THE LANGUAGES APART?  6
2.5. CODE-SWITCHING 7

3. BILINGUALISM - ADVANTAGE OR DRAWBACK 9

3.1. BILINGUALISM AS A HANDICAP 9
3.2. BILINGUALS ARE BETTER PERFORMERS 10
3.3. RESEARCH ON THE READING ABILITIES OF MONO- AND BILINGUALS 11

4. CONCLUSION 14

5. BIBLIOGRAPHY 15

1. Introduction

This paper will try to analyse if bilingualism brings an advantage or if it has to be seen as a drawback. At first, an overview of bilingualism is given., how does it come that people can be bilingual and how the term has been defined by different linguists is depicted. Furthermore, the different theories concerning the best age for learning and models describing the acquisition of language are introduced. Then further emphasis is set upon positive and negative effects of learning two languages. A study, in which the reading competence of monolingual and bilingual pupils has been compared, is depicted and an evaluation of the study is given.

2. Bilingualism

The term “bilingual” has been interpreted and acknowledged differently from various linguists. Webster states that bilingual means “having or using two languages especially as spoken with the fluency characteristic of a native speaker; a person using two languages especially habitually […]” and “bilingualism” as “the constant oral use of two languages”.¹ To be bilingual indicates the ability to speak two languages perfectly. Having a similar opinion, Bloomfield defines bilingualism as “the native-like control of two languages.”² Bloomfield also calls those bilinguals who are able to use a second language as well as their natives. In contrast to these positive opinions, other linguists have been of a completely different opinion. For Macnamara, a bilingual is anyone “who possesses a minimal competence in only one of the four language skills, listening comprehension, speaking, reading and writing, in a language other than his mother tongue.”³ The depicted opinions are of an extreme that hardly go together. However, the term bilingualism is many faceted and has not only one connotation, positive or negative.

2.1. Reasons for bilingualism

To become bilingual can have many different reasons: Due to movements for political, social or economic reasons, or because of cultural or educational factors. People who have to speak another language due to the fact that their business partners come from another country, become fluent in the lingua franca of the foreign country and speak this language even as fluently as their native ones. Furthermore, migration can lead to bilingualism when a couple speaking two different languages, instructs their offspring in both languages.

In the latest time, people speaking different languages live in one country. Due to economic reasons, not only marginal groups change their place for living. Globalization forces people to move place because they have to work in a foreign country or earlier in life, to go abroad and gather experiences to have better chances for a well-paid job. Often this results in friendships between people from different cultures speaking different languages. People stay in the foreign country to found a family and their children become bilingual.

Bilingualism can be experience in different ways. In countries whose inhabitants’ language differs from the national language, for example in Africa, they speak a regional language, the language of the former colonial powers: English, French or Afrikaans. Today, English is the language of technique and sciences. To communicate with people of different nations all around the world, people employed in these areas, have to be very good in this language. This can also be called bilingualism somehow. Mackey said that today “in many countries, to be educated means to be bilingual.”⁴

2.2. Sensitive age period

For children it is easy to learn a new language because they have a whole life before them and thus a lot of time for gathering knowledge. The brain is said to be more receptive for new and difficult information. Neuropsychologists investigated that the “hemispheric lateralisation for language, although present at birth, will develop during childhood, and that bilingual experience influences this lateralisation and its behavioural correlates.”⁵ It has been said that all languages that are acquired beyond the critical period, will be from a better quality with those that started to learn in childhood. It has always been a controversial issue, whether the sensitive period exists or not, mostly specialists denied the existence.

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1 Hamers, Josiane F.; Blanc, Michel H., Bilinguality and Bilingualism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, 2000, p.6.

2 Hamers, Josiane F.; Blanc, Michel H., Bilinguality and Bilingualism, p.6.

3 Ibid. p.6.

4 Grosjean, François, Life with Two Languages- An Introduction to Bilingualism, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts/ London, England 1982, p.35.

5 Hamers, Josiane F.; Blanc, Michel H., Bilinguality and Bilingualism, p.74.