Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pjpqr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-13T13:23:00.315Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Bilingualism in Early Childhood

Disentangling Myths and Facts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2019

Jürgen M. Meisel
Affiliation:
Universität Hamburg
Get access

Summary

More than half of the world’s population is bilingual. However, ‘bilingual’ can mean different things with respect to individuals’ linguistic competence, ranging from two native competences to basic communicative abilities. Uncertainties about the nature of the attainable linguistic knowledge in both languages leads to negative attitudes towards child bilingualism. Parents might therefore decide against bilingualism. This can contribute to the decline of minority languages. An example is Occitan. It is therefore crucial to disentangle facts and myths concerning risks and benefits of child bilingualism. Since these are well-studied issues, the search for facts can draw on resarch results that provide solid knowledge about the linguistic knowledge and skills of young bilinguals. The focus lies on the acquisition of grammatical knowledge and the ability to use it in communication. The goal is to provide information allowing parents to make informed choices when deciding on whether to raise children bilingually. All recommendations are based on research findings, some of which are summarized in the following chapters. These are organized in such a way as to allow readers to focus on the aspects that are most relevant to them.

Type
Chapter
Information
Bilingual Children
A Parents' Guide
, pp. 1 - 27
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bialystok, E. (2016). Bilingual education for young children: Review of the effects and consequences. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 21(6), 656–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2016.1203859Google Scholar
De Houwer, A. (2005). Early bilingual acquisition. In Kroll, J. F. & de Groot, A. M. B. (Eds.), Handbook of bilingualism, pp. 3048. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×