Bilingualism In The Early Years Essay

Literature 1 (Journal article)

Bilingualism in the Early Years: What the Science Says

Krista Byers-Heinlein & Casey Lew-Williams

Learning Landscapes

Overview:

The journal mainly focus on explaining questions regarding outcomes of bilingualism and appropriate methods to teach bilingual children which helps readers to approach bilingualism from the individual development aspect and compare bilingualism with monolingualism from micro aspect.

Summary:

In the journal, confusion on different languages shown by children is regarded as code-mixing and is stated that is a normal process of language development which is due to the limited vocabularies bilingual children have. Besides, it is suggested that high-quality, high-quantity, and balanced exposure

Shin

Routledge

Overview:

This chapter mainly discuss the relationship between bilingualism and identity. It leads readers to approach bilingualism at the macroscopic level ranging from social identity to culture development.

Summary:

First, aversion to English from native Malays after the official language shifted from Malays to English is used as an example to indicate that language will affect social harmony. Language loss might occur due to this kind of language policy as well.

Next, Four-stage model of ethnic identity development (Tse, 1998, as cited in Shin, 2013) and research on children cases (Caldas & Caron-Calodas, 2002, as cited in Shin, 2013) are used to prove that children are more aware of bilingualism and their identities is easier to be affected by it than adults.

After that, whether children should develop in both languages and take part in both cultures is discussed. While some scholars found that bilingual group is more likely to possess positive self-identities, others stated that there is no strong relationship between bilingualism and identities (Nicholas, 2009, as cited in Shin,

Response from ESL students shows that though ESL sometimes generate negative labelling on children, thus affect their school life and daily life. There is also a view that sometimes language education might even weaken student’s native language and culture.

Evaluation:

First, I agree that some language change or language policy related to bilingualism might lead to language loss. Crystal (2014) proposed three stages of sequent events that explain how a language become endangered. His studies indicate that after bilingualism emerges, the new language might replace the old one and lead to a language extinction. From that we can see second language or bilingualism may influence the existence of a language.

However, as Tse’s four-stage model of ethnic identity development theory mainly focus on the study of minority entering societies and rarely focus on majority’s aspect, the view that children’s identities are easier to be affected by bilingualism is in lack of comprehensive evidence. Therefore, bilingualism’s influence on majority and other factors that affect an ethnic’s identity can be considered in order to identify bilingualism’s impact on identities more