Bilingual Language Development in Children
Hearing your child say their first words… perhaps ‘dada’ or ‘mama’…is one of the most exciting moments in early childhood. This experience, which happens in all cultures and languages around the world, changes the way children interact with the environment around them. Developing expressive and receptive communication skills is an important process, and every child has their own way of communicating and processing information. This is particularly true in bilingual children. As our society is becoming more multicultural, it is common for young children to be bilingual. This makes it even more important for speech-language pathologists to understand the unique nature of bilingual language development in children. The brains of bilingual children develop differently than their monolingual peers. In many cases, bilingualism can positively affect development in more ways than just language.
Bilingual Language Development from Infancy
In the United States today, more than 20 percent of individuals are bilingual (ASHA, n.d.). While some children may develop bilingualism in infancy, others learn a second language after they have already learned one language. You may ask yourself, “How does bilingual language development differs from monolingual language development?” For example, are infants who are bilingual overwhelmed by exposure to more than one language? Or are they able to tell the difference between the two languages? It may be surprising to know that studies show children who are bilingual do not experience delays in their speech and language development just because they learn more than one language (Grosjean, 2010). Why is that?
Bilingual vs. Monolingual Language Development
Research shows that infants who are bilingual process more vocabulary than monolingual infants. That makes sense since they are learning two separate languages often at the same time. In addition, bilingual children are often able to more effectively process differences between sounds in language. As a result, infants who are bilingual meet the same benchmarks for language development as monolingual infants (Grosjean, 2010).
Benefits of Bilingualism Throughout Childhood Development
Not surprisingly, there are also many additional benefits of bilingualism. Children who speak two languages fluently often have an easier time learning new vocabulary and categorizing words. Apart from language development, being bilingual children can also have improved listening, information processing, and problem-solving skills (ASHA, n.d.). Executive functioning skills are many times stronger in bilingual children, as they are more aware of shifts in their environment and languages (Bhattacharjee, 2012). For young children who are in the early stages of language development, bilingualism may also help to simplify the spelling of words by identifying the appropriate sounds (ASHA, n.d.).
Speech-Language Pathology Intervention
If a child is bilingual and experiencing speech and language delays, they will likely exhibit delays in both languages. Speech-language pathologists can help address these concerns by evaluating and treating speech and language development. If a child is actively learning two languages, it may be helpful to find a speech-language pathologist who is fluent in both of these languages. This way they are able to understand and address the specific nuances of each language (ASHA, n.d.).
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