Bilingual Learning

1. How children acquire second languages?
How do children acquire second languages? This is another one-million dollar question. And I am sure this one has long intrigued linguists, biologist, psychologists, educators and alike as well.

It turns out second language acquisition shows parallels but also a lot of differences to first language acquisition. And second language acquisition theories were developed along the lines of first language acquisition theories. More details...

2. Stages of children’s second language acquisition
Beginning from birth, babies everywhere follow a similar pattern to acquire their first languages according to their individual biological timetable—from crying, cooing, babbling to one-word utterances, two-word phrases, full sentences, and eventually, to complex grammar.

How about stages of children’s second language acquisition? Do Children follow similar patterns and reach similar development milestones as they acquire their first languages? More details...



3. Never too early to learn a second tongue
Three college professors conducted a study of 150 children in bilingual Spanish-English schools who were either from Spanish-speaking homes (new to English) or English-speaking homes (new to Spanish), as compared with English-speaking children in monolingual English schools.

They found out that an early age of first bilingual language exposure had a positive effect on reading, phonological awareness, and language competence in both languages: early bilinguals (age of first exposure 0-3 years) outperformed other bilingual groups (age of first exposure 3-6 years). More details...

4. Being bilingual boosts brain power
It is generally agreed that learning a second language early in life can bring children invaluable skills, such as viewing the world with different lens, better reading abilities, better academics performance and etc.

But do you know that learning a second language can help boost children’s brain power. In another word, being bilingual may make your child stronger, quicker and smarter? More details...



5. Bilingualism and cognitive development
Does bilingualism help a child’s cognitive development? This issue has been a hotly contested debate over the decades among language researchers, educationalists, psychologists and sociologists.

It was not until the early 1960s a turning point was reached in the way that bilingualism and its positive effects on cognition were viewed. Several studies lend support to bilingual children demonstrate higher levels of meta-linguistic awareness, which involves the ability to think flexibly and abstractly about language, and thus have higher abilities to analyze linguistic input. More details...

6. More resources on bilingualism and its effects
Thanks to Elizabeth L. Webb, a program Specialist for Foreign Languages and International Education in Georgia Department of Education, this bibliography makes it easy for parents like me to get better understanding about this issue. And the best part is: all these resources are compiled and put together neatly, each with a brief introduction or summary. More details...