Transilvania University of Brașov

Faculty of Languages and Literatures

IInd year; E.F.

Language and Society

Research Proposal:

Second language acquisition in an

infant born into a bilingual family

Student: Ioana-Cristina GUZU

Brașov

2014

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A.INTRODUCTION

We use language every day not just the simple utterance but also body language, written

language, the language of pictures, feelings and so on and so forth. We do not really

acknowledge the entire process and the meaning of it. We make small talk, we frown, we send a

text message, share a picture on social media but we do not see it as it is, language. From a

deeper point of view language is a way of communication that belongs only to the human race.

We often take this for granted, forgetting how hard it is in the first place to start speaking. A

toddler is learning to speak by the very ways of imitating. But this covers only half of the

process. The toddler is creating new “rules” (in a loose meaning of the word) and, as the time

goes by, he matures in the speech production. This transition is not a fast one, the child is

moving from simple to complex not at once, but in steps. The toddler is upgrading his rules of

producing speech to the rules of the adults around him, as soon as he begins to notice the

differences between the two sets of rules. The process of language acquisition is a time

consuming one for every child and it does not develop at once, it is hard and it takes a lot of

patience from the people around the child. If the process is so hard for a monolingual child,

researchers raise the issue whether or not a child with a bilingual family encounters difficulties in

his process of language acquisition.

The acquisition of a second language in bilingual families became a more important issue as the

immigration and emigration grew and that was well acknowledged in the ’80.

Nowadays, thanks to the globalization, more and more bilingual families are born. We have seen

how a child learns to speak, but a how does a child manage to learn two languages? Does he

follows the same pattern or there is more hidden under the cover? What are the chances of the

first language (L1) to interfere with the second one (L2)?

“Language is one of humanity’s greatest achievements, and yet one which virtually all children

achieve remarkably quickly. ‘How much more remarkable then when children learn to use not

one but two languages?’ (Lyon, 1996:1)

Annick de Hower was one of the pioneers in this research study. According to her :

‘simultaneous bilingualism takes place in children who are regularly addressed in two spoken

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languages from before the age of two and who continue to be regularly addressed in those

languages up until the final stages’  of language development.(De Hower,1996:56)

2. Hypothesis

There are good chances for a child born into a bilingual family to learn both languages at the

same speed, without confusing him, and to cope very well with the use of the two languages

3.Questions

1. Are there any differences between a monolingual and bilingual child’s process of developing

his language skills?

2. What is the appropriate age to introduce the L2 to the child?

I’m expecting that the answers to this questions attempt to clarify whether or not is it in the

benefit of the child to learn two languages at a very young age and what is the age the child

should start to acknowledge the second language.

B. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

I came around this issue as my brother of Romanian origin married a Bulgarian woman (they

are currently living in London, England) and there was lots of talking regarding the struggle of

their child to learn more than one language at a young age. They’ve questioned themselves if it’s

better to speak just English around the child and some kind of ‘volapük’ between them, but they

relinquished the idea as this could have made the children feel isolated from the rest of the

family. So they’ve decided to use Romanian and English at home ( G.G. knows Romanian

language). A child born into a bilingual family has much more to cope (by comparison to one

born into a monolingual family) and this leads to a great number of questions from his parents

In this research I used , participant observation, available data and questionnaires.I lived with

them for about 3 months.

My subjects were my brother’s family: G.A. 27 years old of Romanian origin, working as an

engineer, his wife G.G, 29 years old, of bulgarian origin, currently stay-at-home mom and their

son G.M 3 years old. They are currently living in London, UK.

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I have found out that their child, G.M. is drawing data for both languages. When he was unable

to use a word in L2 , he would use the word in L1 and the other way around. He did this

consciously,not confusing the language but using fully the knowledge of the two languages.

The parents are speaking to their child in both languages, they utter the sentence in one language

and after that in the second one, the name one object in one language and after that in the second

one and they keep using this pattern of speaking in every moment that they’re spending with

their child.

C. CONCLUSION

As final conclusions drawn from this research proposal, parents should decide if their child

should be a simultaneous or sequential learner, because in the first context, the simultaneous

should be introduced to the two languages at once, and, in second context, at the age 2.5.

As a piece of advice for all the parents out there, if you want that your child to be proficient in

both language you should ensure equal exposure to the languages.

I’ve found out that are not many differences between a monolingual and a bilingual child’s

process of developing his language skills. It is, in fact, the same process, in benefit of the

bilingual one. The last one tends to develop language skills faster, he becomes his very own

auto-translator, he drawns information from both languages, and generally speaking it’s more

ready for what may have come in terms of learning. Bilingual children also build a whole

identity around the two languages as one bilingual children said:” if someone told me to let go of

one of my language, I would feel as they’ve ripped a part of my own identity”.

D. REFERENCES

1. LYON, JEAN, 1996 Becoming Bilingual: Language Acquisition in a Bilingual Community,

Cromwell Press

2. De Houwer, Annick, 1990 The Acquisition of Two Languages from Birth: A Case Study,

Cambridge University Press

3. Barron-Hauwaert, Suzanne, 2004 Language Strategies for Bilingual Families: The One-parent-one-language Approach,Cambridge University Press.

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