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Bilingual language development: whatdo early years practitioners need toknow?Gee Macrory aa Manchester Metropolitan University , UKPublished online: 19 Jan 2007.

To cite this article: Gee Macrory (2006) Bilingual language development: what do early yearspractitioners need to know?, Early Years: An International Research Journal, 26:2, 159-169, DOI:10.1080/09575140600759955

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Bilingual language development: what

do early years practitioners need to

know?

Gee Macrory*

Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

This paper considers what early years practitioners need to know about bilingual acquisition. It

argues that bilingualism is not only an asset in the classroom and the community, but also an

individual and family achievement that requires commitment and determination. The different

contexts of bilingual acquisition are considered, along with the implication for a successful

outcome. In particular, given our current understanding of the processes of language acquisition,

the role of the input in each of the two languages will be discussed; the implications of this for early

years teachers/practitioners are also considered in order to find the most effective ways of

supporting bilingual development in the classroom.

Keywords: Early language; Bilingualism; French; Context; Input

Introduction

Adele is a bilingual French-English child, age 2 years 6 months. Sitting on her father’s

knee, they are looking at a book together and talking about the pictures. Adele climbs

down, holding the book and calls ‘look, Gee—scream’. Seeing my puzzled expression,

she brings me the book and I can see a picture of an ice-cream. Before I get a chance to

respond appropriately, she translates this into French—‘la glace, Gee, la glace’.

What does this suggest about the child’s linguistic competence? Clearly she can do a

number of things here: she knows the vocabulary in two languages, she can

pronounce the words age-appropriately, she can make a judgement that a translation

must be needed and then provide it. For a child so young, this is no mean

achievement. It is not, however, an achievement that is automatic. The background

to Adele’s progress in language development is this: the subject of a 15-month

longitudinal case study of early French-English bilingualism (age 2;3–3;6), she was

originally one of three children in the study, all of whom shared an apparently similar

background in being the first-born children of a French mother and an English

father, living in the UK. Of the other two, one understood but seldom used French

*Institute of Education, Manchester Metroplitan University, 799 Wilmslow Road, Didsbury M20

2RR, UK. Email: macrory@mmu.ac.uk

Early Years, Vol. 26, No. 2, July 2006, pp. 159–169

ISSN 0957-5146 (print)/ISSN 1472-4421 (online)/06/020159-11

# 2006 TACTYC

DOI: 10.1080/09575140600759955

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and the other resisted the mother’s use of French to a notable degree. While the

study was psycholinguistic in orientation, it also served to highlight the social and

cultural aspects of a bilingual upbringing. The case study was carried out through

monthly audio and video recordings, an hour interacting in French with her mother

and an hour in English with her father in a naturalistic play setting. The data were

fully transcribed in CHILDES format (MacWhinney, 1991) to allow a detailed

analysis of the child’s language development in both languages and of the language

used by her parents (Macrory, 2004). In this paper, I will draw on some of the

research findings to illustrate the central argument, namely that early years

practitioners need to be well-informed about how a child experiences a bilingual

upbringing. This case study may be considered by some to be a case of ‘elite’

bilingualism, and clearly there are settings where broader cultural issues bring other

important dimensions. Nevertheless, the findings serve to illustrate a picture that has

resonance for all bilingual contexts.

Numerous reports have drawn our attention to the value of bilingualism. The oft-

quoted Cox Report urged us to note that bilingualism ‘should be seen as an asset in

the classroom’ (1989, p. 56). More recently, the report of the Nuffield Enquiry

(2000), commissioned by the government to establish the national capability in

languages in the UK, devoted a chapter to the linguistic heritage of the children,

underlining the extent to which we need better to capitalize upon this. The

desirability of learning other languages in the primary years of schooling is now

recognised by the National Languages Strategy in the entitlement to learn another

language that all 7-year-olds in England will have from 2010 (DfES, 2002). Implicit

in this is the recognition that the majority of the world’s population grows up

bilingually or multilingually, as, for the majority of the world’s population,

functioning in more than one language is a daily reality. Current estimates suggest

that between half and two-thirds of the world’s population is bilingual (Baker & Prys

Jones, 1998, p. 134) and that a monolingual existence is neither typical nor

desirable. Indeed a brief look at some simple figures underlines this. We live in a

world that has fewer than 200 nation states. Yet we also live in a world that has more

than 5000 spoken languages, each one as rich and complex as the others. Even

allowing for the variation in the number of speakers that each of these languages may

have (and clearly some are spoken much more widely than others), only one

possibility remains: quite simply, we live in a multilingual, multicultural world. In

such a context, bilingualism is far more than an asset—it is a necessity.

Definitions of bilingualism

What, however, do we mean by bilingual? For some, this means the native-like

control of two languages and many people who are highly competent in a language

learned at school and university may hesitate to describe themselves as bilingual for

this reason. The literature on bilingualism, however, provides a useful distinction

between consecutive and simultaneous bilingualism (McLaughlin, 1984, p. 73). The

acquisition of an additional language after the age of 3 years is generally regarded as

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consecutive bilingualism (and thus seen as some as falling into the area of second

language acquisition, e.g. Romaine, 1995, p. 181). Conversely, children who acquire

another language before this are regarded as simultaneous bilinguals. Thus early

years practitioners may well come into contact with children who have been

acquiring two (or more) languages since birth or who are just beginning to acquire

an additional language. For the purpose of this particular article, I wish to focus on

the needs and experiences of children growing up simultaneously bilingual and, by

implication, what it is that early years practitioners need to know about simultaneous

bilingualism in early childhood, so that they may best support its successful

development. Indeed, given the differing outcomes outlined above, we should

arguably be seeking not only to support, but actively to ensure its successful

development.

In pausing to consider how it is that children become bilingual, it is important to

ask ourselves how much we know—and need to know—about the process that

results in successful bilingual acquisition? This is neither automatic nor magic – far

from it! Clearly, language development is in general given a high priority in training

materials and government guidance. The Early learning goals (1999) and the

Curriculum guidance for the foundation stage (DfEE, 2000) underline the importance

of communication, language and literacy as one of the key areas. Indeed, the

guidance also points out very clearly that young children may speak a language other

than English at home. Further, the value of this is underlined and suggestions made

to allow pupils to make use of their other language (DfEE, 2000, p. 19). Much of the

guidance, however, implies that English may be at the beginning stages rather than

the child being already a bilingual speaker. Thus the guidance does not address the

issue of children who have grown up since birth with two languages. Typically, cases

of consecutive bilingualism will involve English being the additional language being

acquired after another first language has been learned. Where a child has grown up

with two languages, the likelihood also is that one of these is English. Thus the

distinction in the early years setting may simply be between those children who speak

English with a degree of competence and those who are only just starting out. This is

reflected in much government advice about meeting the needs of children learning

English as an Additional Language. The emphasis may be more on support for

English than for the other language, and where English is well established, we are not

always encouraged to support bilingual development to the same degree, although

the Foundation stage profile (DfES, 2003) encourages a holistic approach to

describing and promoting the use of the home language. Equally, much recent

work in this field (see Gravelle, 1996; Drury, 2000; Parkes & Drury, 2002)

emphasises the role of the home language and culture in successful language

learning. Nevertheless, the danger remains that we assume all is well and that the

family context will support the development of the language other than English. This

may be the case even more when children are comfortable with sociocultural

reference points from the dominant culture, as dissonance can at least draw

attention to the bilingual upbringing. It is thus possible to make assumptions that do

not serve young children well.

Bilingual language development in early years 161

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A bilingual upbringing: the bilingual context

Perhaps the first thing to note about a bilingual upbringing is that it can take place in

a much greater variety of contexts than a monolingual upbringing. Romaine (1995,

pp. 183–5) sets out six possible situations in which children may grow up bilingually,

taking as variables the languages spoken by the parents, the language spoken by the

community and the strategy adopted by the parents for speaking to the child. For

example, there is a considerable difference between a family situation where both

parents speak the minority language and one where only one does. The access to

other social and cultural contexts where the minority language is spoken, and the

role that other family members play, are important variables likely to yield such

different patterns of interaction that an understanding of an individual child’s

particular situation is vital if her progress is to be successful. What we should

appreciate is that some contexts are more fragile than others. It is clearly the case

that, in a UK context, where the language other than English is not spoken outside

the home and is spoken by one parent only (and especially if that parent is not at

home full-time with the child), there will be significantly less reinforcement for the

other language. It is thus the case that we cannot expect children’s two languages to

be evenly balanced—this may vary according to context, as well as over time, as

different experiences and opportunities are offered to the child. Indeed, some

parents report different behaviours from different children in the same family (de

Jong, 1986, p. 44).

A bilingual upbringing: the bilingual child

What task faces the child?

How does the individual child experience a dual-language context? We should

perhaps think, first of all, of the complexity of the task facing the child with one

language. This is itself a major undertaking: the child has not only to master the

syntax, morphology and phonology of a language, but also the pragmatics in order

for her to communicate not only grammatically, but appropriately. In comparison to

earlier views that language learning was a speedy and effortless achievement (a view

that inspired beliefs that children might possibly be endowed with some sort of

special language learning mechanism), there is now a considerable body of evidence

that language learning is a complex, messy and somewhat protracted process

(Macrory, 2001). What, then, might this mean for a bilingual child? What does she

have to do? She has to learn two different phonological systems, where there may be

phonemes present in one language but not in the other. Even more complex,

perhaps, there may be phonemic distinctions that are meaningful in one language

but not in the other; there may be differences in stress and intonation. In the area of

syntax and morphology, numerous differences are possible such as word order, use

(or not) of pronouns with verbs, the construction of tenses and other grammatical

and morphological differences. Pragmatically, there are differences in rules

governing politeness, register, and so on. Further, the child has to learn to function

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as a bilingual—that is, learn also the rules governing code-switching from one

language to another in order to function in her bilingual community. The task facing

Adele, above, was to master all of this largely through interaction with one parent,

sometimes playing with other French-speaking children and adults, and the

occasional visit to relatives in France.

How, then, does a child become bilingual? Is there a recommended ‘route’? de

Jong (1986, p. 36) points out that the one person/one language strategy is one that

childcare experts tend to feel they can recommend. Nevertheless, there are two

issues here: one is the feasibility of this strategy, and the other is the effects of it. We

have to recognise that once the parents speak to each other, one of them by

definition must switch language, so that children must for some of the time be

exposed to code-switching. Related to this is the proficiency of the parents in the two

languages, so that it may always be the same parent who switches language, thus

depriving the child of the possibility of listening in to parents’ dialogue in one of the

languages. This was indeed the experience that Adele had. The context is thus not a

straightforward issue. The possible role of siblings is clearly of importance too, as is

the role of other speakers of the language(s) in question.

What is the experience for the child and what does this sound and look like in real

life? Is it reasonable to ask if young children are confused? Are they delayed in

development? Earlier views of bilingualism in the last century suggested that this

might be the case, thus creating a negative image of the experience—hence the need

in more recent documentation to highlight the positive aspects of it. While the

research community needs no convincing of the benefits of bilingualism, this may be

less the case with those outside it. Siraj-Blatchford and Clarke (2000, p. 30) pose a

number of questions about such issues as the impact of maintaining the home

language on the subsequent acquisition of another language; the sometime

reluctance of children to use a minority language; and the value of learning more

than one language from birth, and suggesting that for some audiences at least, there

is a role for information and reassurance. What, then, does the language of young

bilingual children appear like?

Do bilingual children know there are two different languages?

The outdated notion of the ‘confused’ child may, of course, have its origin in the fact

that bilingual children typically do produce mixed utterances, as indeed do bilingual

adults. This is an area that has been of considerable interest to researchers in the

field of bilingualism because of what it may potentially tell us about the bilingual

brain. What indeed do such utterances as ‘dans le bucket’ [in the bucket], ‘je peux

hear un avion’ [I can hear an aeroplane] or ‘the dinner is deja cooked’ [the dinner is

already cooked] tell us? For some time, it was thought that such utterances were

evidence of a single, underlying system. In particular, if it could be shown that young

children at the beginning of language development did not possess translation

equivalents, this would show that they had a single, undifferentiated system. What

became known as the single-system hypothesis (Volterra & Taeschner, 1978) was a

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hugely influential model of bilingual acquisition. In this they proposed that children

start out with a single system, containing words from both languages, and then apply

the same syntactic rules to both languages before differentiating their lexicon and

syntax. This view was one that appeared to be supported by other studies, such as

that of Redlinger and Park (1980), who inferred from the high mixing rates in the

earliest stages of bilingual development that the children found it difficult to

differentiate between the two languages (1980, p. 351). In other words, the view held

for some time by many was that young children were unaware that there were two

languages in their environment.

However, there is increasing evidence that, far from being confused or unaware,

young children are able to differentiate the two languages in their environment from

an early age. First of all, over the past ten years or so, it has generally been accepted

that bilingual children are using two separate linguistic systems from early on in

grammatical development—in other words, the average 2-year-old is developing two

different languages. This view is given further support by research with very young

infants in both monolingual and bilingual environments. It is now relatively well

established that monolingual infants have sophisticated perceptual abilities from an

early age (Jusczck, 1997), and that they are quite capable of recognsing their

mother’s voice within the first few days of life (DeCasper & Fifer, 1980). They can

also distinguish between the maternal language and another (Mehler et al., 1988). In

the case of infants raised in a bilingual environment, Bosch and Sebastian-Galles

(2001) found that Spanish-Catalan children were able to detect the difference

between the two languages below 5 months of age, despite similarities that exist

between the sound systems of the two languages. Pettito et al. (2001, p. 492)

maintain that the process of building up representations of two distinct phonological

systems is well under way by the age of 6 months. Poulin-Dubois and Goodz (2001)

also found tentative support for early differentiation in the babbling of their French-

English bilingual subjects. The current view among researchers in the field, then, is

that young bilingual children are very aware of the two languages in their

environment. Although at a somewhat later stage, the example given at the

beginning of this paper illustrates this point precisely.

Do children acquire the languages in much the same way as monolingual speakers of those

languages?

If bilingual children can indeed tell their languages apart at an early age, and appear

to develop them separately, then should we expect that each of the two languages

develops much as it does for a monolingual speaker of that language? There is indeed

considerable evidence from a number of language pairs that this is the case. In

general, the available research evidence is that bilingual children go through much

the same stages of language development as their peers learning one of the two

languages. A bilingual child learning the past tense of English will learn it much like

a monolingual child, for example. The evidence from my own study does bear this

out, in that the sequence of acquisition broadly followed that which we would expect

for a monolingual learner of French and English.

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Do the languages influence each other?

But is it really as simple as each language following the same pattern as in a

monolingual child? Research studies which have looked at the language development

of bilingual children in some detail suggest the answer is apparently no. There is

increasing evidence that just because a child is aware that there are two languages in

her environment, and because these languages largely resemble their use by a

monolingual peer, it does not mean there is no relationship between the two

languages. It does seem to be the case that there can be some influence of one

language on another. For example, Muller (1998) found that one of the children she

studied appeared to show the influence of French on the word order of his

German—even though German was the language he preferred to use more. This

seemed to confirm earlier findings that this was not because the language from which

something was transferred was necessarily the stronger or preferred language, as

defined by the one that the child seems to use more or be more competent in. Why

might this be so? Remember that the child may be aware of which language is which,

but unsure as to which rules apply to which language. I am not, of course, suggesting

that a young child has a conscious idea of the rules, but simply that a bilingual child

has a bigger puzzle to solve than the monolingual one. One possibility in bilingualism

is that one of the two languages appears to be more straightforward—for example, in

German the verb is sometimes in the middle of the sentence and sometimes at the

end. If the child is learning another language where the verb never goes to the end,

she may be tempted into thinking that this is the ‘right’ option; or perhaps, where

there are these potentially confusing comparisons, the child finds that one way of

doings things is reinforced by hearing it in both languages. For example, in my study,

Adele showed an early preference for questions in English marked by intonation. As

monolingual children learning English do this anyway, it was difficult to say for

certain that this was because of the French. Further, her father also had a tendency

to do this. What was clear was that the input contained some potentially influential

messages about the role of intonation in asking questions.

Bilingual development, parental input and piecemeal acquisition

This brings us to the issue of the input the child receives—it is increasingly

recognised that studies of bilingual children need to consider not just what the child

produces, but what she hears—from both parents and caregivers. A key issue to

emerge from my own study is the way in which the child’s language mirrored to an

interesting degree that of her two parents. Although the study focused on questions

and not other parts of the grammar, it was intriguing to see that the child’s use of

questions reflected what she heard—that is, in English, for example, her preferred

way of asking someone to do something was with ‘Can you …?’, but in French was

‘Tu veux …?’, which is not a direct translation (veux5‘want’), but does reflect the

frequent use of it by her respective parents. In one way this is not surprising, for we

know that children reproduce what they hear as well as producing novel utterances.

The language children produce—in this case as in others—does not necessarily

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parallel that of their parents neatly, but it does demonstrate that the environment

plays a key role in language development.

It also helps support arguments in recent literature that language development

proceeds in a less incremental and systematic fashion than was once thought.

Instead, an increasing body of research into monolingual language development

points to a much more piecemeal route to adult competence (Tomasello, 1992,

2003) than was hitherto supposed, with language being driven not by some innate

language acquisition device as once proposed (Chomsky, 1959), but by a

combination of input, interaction and use in a social context. The questions noted

above were prompted by particular recurrent events and needs, and were much more

common in the child’s language than other questions. This parallels other recent

findings in bilingual development: Serratrice (2001), for example, found that in the

bilingual Italian-English child she studied both languages emerged in just this

piecemeal way. Thus some grammatical structures are likely to be more secure than

others in the child’s repertoire. When the child enters a daycare setting where one

language is extensively used and the other not, the lesser-used language can become

increasingly vulnerable. The impact on Adele’s bilingualism when she began nursery

school at age 3 was evident in the sudden progress she made in English and the

balance of her language use at home altered significantly.

As a final issue, Tomasello (1992) noted the way in which new language recycled and

expanded previously used language. This too was the case with the child in my study in

both languages: ‘you want + noun?’ was expanded to ‘do you want + noun?’ to ‘do you

want to + verb?’ and, in similar vein, ‘tu veux + noun?’ became ‘tu veux + verb?’. When the

question marker est-ce que was first used, it was with the frequently used ‘tu veux’. The

child used not only what she heard her parents say, but what she heard herself say.

Thus we have a very complex picture. On the one hand, the child knows there are

two languages and at an early age can even use them appropriately (see the example

at the beginning of this paper). The role of the parents/caregivers is crucial in

providing the input. On the other hand, similarities and differences between the two

languages may result in some cross-linguistic influence. The use of the languages by

parents may reinforce some unconscious hypotheses that a child holds, and in such

circumstances, this may take a little time to resolve. To complicate matters still

further, there is now evidence from bilingual studies that the two languages may

emerge in a more piecemeal and less systematic way than we may have believed

some years ago. The differential usage of grammatical structures, reinforcing some

more than others, suggests that language overall is more fragile in its development

than we would perhaps like to suppose.

These issues highlight the challenge and achievement that bilingualism

represents—while indisputably an asset, it happens neither instantaneously nor

without effort. It may also be a less straightforward process than has been thought.

There is a temptation to assume that it is effortless, to be impressed by it. But the

findings that children may show some delay and/or show some influence of one

language on another should not be regarded in a negative light. On the contrary they

are evidence of the child engaging in problem-solving—if we adopt the perspective

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outlined above (see Tomasello, 2003), then how much more important is the

context and input that will allow the apparent contradictions and puzzles to be

resolved? Bilingual children may not be confused, but there is little doubt that they

and their families face an intriguing and challenging task. Once children are in

settings outside the home, the emergent bilingualism may well be vulnerable. If we

consider again the different situations outlined by Romaine (1995) (see above),

there are clearly some contexts that are less conducive to the successful development

of bilingual skills than others. For example, where the sole source of the non-

dominant language is a parent who works outside the home, the input is likely to be

very limited. It is noteworthy that, of the original three subjects in my study, the

child who resisted his mother speaking French was from a very early age in a daycare

setting that was wholly English-speaking.

Implications for early years practitioners

If we truly believe that bilingualism is an asset, then we need to accept that this is as

much our responsibility as is the fostering of one language in a monolingual child.

How can we do this?

First, we need as clear a profile as possible of individual children’s bilingual

contexts and, particularly where the access to one of the languages is limited, we

need to take all steps possible to maximise the child’s exposure to the lesser-used

language as well as the dominant language (in the UK, for example, this is English).

This can be achieved by ensuring children of the same language background have

the opportunity to play and work together, and by the provision of books, toys, tapes

and television programmes as well as visitors and parents in the early years setting.

This also needs to be provided within a context of appropriate cultural input, for

example, by stories, foods and festivals.

Secondly, if we accept that the child’s own use of the languages impacts upon

successful development, then opportunities to use as well as hear these are key.

Where a child has no peers who speak her other language, tasks to be carried out at

home with the parent or caregiver (and siblings, if appropriate) are vital. Not only

does this provide more opportunity for the child to speak and interact, but it

provides a link between home and daycare/school that may serve to prevent the

lesser-used language being associated only with home. This relates to the issues of

who speaks which language with the child; as noted above, the one-person/one-

language approach is generally hailed as the best—but if one language is likely to

have little opportunity to flourish, then language according to context may be

preferable (see Deuchar & Quay, 2000, p. 6), so that, for example, the less often

used language is used by everyone in the home context. Too often, parents may feel

that they should encourage the language of the school in the home setting rather

than supporting the other language. We need to make explicit a policy of actively

promoting bilingual development.

Thirdly, there are important subject knowledge implications for early years

practitioners. We need to be very aware of what bilingual language development

actually involves: mixing languages is normal and typical, as may be the possible

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effect of one language on another. We should not assume that if a child’s English

shows some atypical features that there is necessarily a problem. Linked to this is the

importance of understanding the typical sequence of monolingual acquisition in the

dominant language. Further, children’s ability to code switch is a skill that should be

acknowledged and fostered as part of the linguistic development of a bilingual. A

related concern is how we monitor children’s bilingual skills through the early years

and beyond. Ideally, some understanding of the typical developmental path for

different languages is needed, so that assessment can focus not just on the

acquisition of the dominant language used in the early years setting.

Another issue is that of cultural subject knowledge. This is something that extends

beyond the superficialities of familiar food and customs, to an appreciation of the

implicit rules that govern social settings and the possibly different—but still

implicit—cultural expectations that some children can bring to them (Drury, 2000,

p. 82). Although the case study cited here is of a child whose other linguistic and

cultural heritage was French, and some might argue that this is relatively close to a

British perspective on education and childcare, there are nevertheless culturally

derived assumptions that may impact upon parents’ expectations of schooling (see

Gregory, 1996; Alexander, 2000).

And finally—and possibly, most important—as professionals we work not just

with bilingual children, but with their families and communities. We need actively to

work in partnership with parents and families, who can provide us with valuable

insights into language use, their children’s progress and their own expectations. On a

practical level, for example, involving parents in monitoring such elements as

vocabulary growth could yield vital information, as well as convey the importance we

attach to bilingual development. Typically, parents work very hard to bring up their

children bilingually, be this a case of so-called ‘elite’ bilingualism or not. Even in

apparently privileged contexts, bilingualism is not a given. The aspirations and hopes

of all families entitle them to the support and nourishment of well-informed (not

simply well-meaning) professionals.

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