科目試験の勉強のためにしばらく、レポｰﾄを書くのをやめていた。
そのせいで、なかなか「レポートモード」にもどらない。
再提出のレポートが２本と新規のレポートが２本。
それで終わりなので、急ぐ必要もないのだが・・
一度緊張の糸がとぎれてしまうと、元に戻すのが大変だ。
早い話、「辛いレポート作り」が嫌で、
どこかにそれらしい資料や、レポートの原形になるような書き込みがないだろうかと、
「ネット漁り」ばかりしている。
最後には諦めて、コツコツと本を読んで、パソコンに文章の細切れを溜め込んで、
レポートを作ることになる。
五年間そんなことの繰り返しなので、いい加減分かっているのだが・・
なかなか懲りない。
[52]
5 Becoming bilingual?the children
New parents who have decided on a bilingual upbringing
often
wonder whether one way of going about it is better than another
and
they may be looking for guidance on how to proceed. So in
this
chapter we shall take a look at the various strategies that
parents
can adopt to make learning easier for the children in a
bilingual
household.
Before going on to describe a number of possible
strategies, I want
to emphasize that there is not really one 'best' way of
proceeding with
a bilingual upbringing. What is the right way for one family
may
not work for another. Also, I think that most parents who are in
a
bilingual situation have a 'gut feeling' about what they would
like to
do with respect to the bilingual upbringing of their children and
how
they would like to do it. I firmly believe that parents should
trust
their own feelings and judgments?and share them with other
parents?and not let 'experts' tell them whether these feelings
are
'right' or what the 'best' method would be.
Strategies
One strategy that parents can adopt is the
one-person-one-language
method. This is where one parent speaks one language with the
child,
and the other parent another language. It is a strategy most
commonly
applied by parents in a mixed-language marriage. Indeed, if the
partner
whose native tongue is the local language doesn't speak the
language
of the partner who comes from abroad, it is the only possible way
to
[53]
proceed. An example would be a French mother and an English
father
(who doesn't speak French) who live in England and who want
their
children to be able to speak both French and English.
A second strategy is to use one language (the foreign
language)
in the home and the other language (the language spoken
locally)
outside the home. This is the strategy usually adopted by
parents
with a single-language marriage. For them it usually feels
most
natural to communicate within the family in the original mother
tongue,
and then to use the local language for all contacts outside the
home.
This method can also be applied by parents with a
mixed-language
marriage in cases where both partners are reasonably fluent in
each
other's language.
If either of these two strategies is used, then the child
learns two
languages at the same time, which is known as 'simultaneous
acquisi-
tion'. According to a third strategy a child learns the second
language
after learning the first, otherwise known as 'successive
acquisition'.
Only one language is used with the child up till a certain age
and
then the other language is introduced (between age three and
five,
for instance).
A fourth strategy is to adopt no particular strategy at
all and to use
the two languages whenever and wherever it is most
convenient:
factors such as time, topic, person, and place decide which
language
is spoken. In a way this 'strategy' is being used by almost all
parents
some of the time. For, even if parents choose one of the first
three,
it is practically impossible to be consistent at all times in all
situations.
If you are able to switch languages, then you find that in daily
life
you are constantly required to do this.
On the following pages a number of families describe how they
have
[54]
applied these strategies and how successful, or not so
successful, they
were in doing so.
The one-person-one-language method
Among the parents I talked to, there were two who told me that
they
had sought professional advice on how to bring up their
children
with two languages. One mother said she had talked to a
child
psychiatrist about it, the other to a pediatrician. The advice
both
experts had come up with was to keep the two languages
strictly
separate: the one-person-one-language method.
This is the strategy described in many academic case
studies of
bilingual children and it is the one that child-care experts tend
to feel
that they can recommend. And certainly, in mixed-language
marriages
where only the partner from abroad is bilingual and the 'local'
parent
doesn't speak the foreign language, it does seem the only way
to
establish a pattern in the bilingual language development of the
child.
One parent who has been using this strategy is Simone. She
is
French and has been living in England for eleven years. She
is
married to an Englishman and she describes his knowledge of
French
as 'very limited'. Their little daughter is almost three. She
wrote
this about their experiences as a family living in the South of
England:
I speak only French to her and her father speaks in English.
She
started nursery school at two-and-a-half, because I felt that her
English
was not developing as quickly as her French. I am with her every
day
and there are some situations she has not experienced in
English-
for example going to the swimming pool, taking a plane,
etc.
'We still speak to her as before, but I have already noticed that
she
shows more interest in English, for example she asks what her
father
[55]
is saying, or how he says certain words, often while looking at
pictures
in a book. When our daughter reaches a comparable level in
both
languages, I think I might limit her French to mealtimes and
when
she is with me only, although it is too early yet to make a
decision
on this.'
Another parent who wrote about her experiences with this
strategy
was Joelle. She comes from Switzerland and French is her
mother
tongue. She has lived in England for almost twenty years, married
to
an Englishman. They have two teenagers. She wrote that she
and
her husband have always spoken English together, even though
he
speaks excellent French. They made a conscious decision to bring
up
the children bilingually and chose the one-person-one-language
strategy:
'With Olivia I spoke French and my husband spoke English.
She
spoke very well by the time she was eighteen months?two
years,
always addressing me in French and her father in English.'
She then continues:
'However, things gradually changed because my son refused
right
from the start to speak any French at all. I spoke French with
my
daughter and son till they were about five and two-and-a-half
respec-
tively. Then my son started kindergarten and he would not
even
really answer me if I spoke French?but we went on for about a
year;
longer.
'We decided when our son was about three-and-a-half that
it was
more important for him to talk and master one language rather
than
mess around. I found it too much of a strain to deal with both
children
different languages so we went over to speaking English.'
It is clear that there are some problems with this
strategy. Does
one really want to keep the two languages strictly apart for
different
[56]
roles, even if those roles are so closely linked together, such
as being
a spouse and being a parent? One obvious result is that one of
the
parties involved may feel left out. Joelle:
'We both think that one of the probable reasons our son
wouldn't
speak French was that my husband and I always spoke English
together
and he felt excluded from our "intimate relationship"
language.'
The problem is not always between parents and child. If the
mar-
riage is going through a difficult patch, then the bilingual
situation can
make the problems between husband and wife worse. As one
mother
put it, the situation of speaking one language with the children
from
which the spouse is excluded may lead to the 'creating of a
secret
society in one's own house'.
Inside and outside the house
The next strategy, to use one language inside the house and the
other
one for outside contacts, is generally easier to maintain and it
is the
natural one to be adopted by parents with a single-language
marriage.
And by applying this strategy one particular problem can be
avoided:
there is no chance of someone feeling left out. For this reason
it also
makes sense for parents in a mixed-language marriage where
both
partners speak the foreign language to use only that language in
the
house.
However, one other problem may arise, namely that the
children
may find it difficult to learn the local language, and therefore
may have
a much more difficult time adapting when they start going to
school.
For this reason, parents who apply the 'inside-outside' strategy
often
wonder whether they only need to teach their children their
mother
tongue or whether it is also up to them to introduce the
language
[57]
spoken locally.
'Once we had decided to keep up Dutch with the children, thin
was
to be our only language of communication at home, while they
would
have to learn English at playgroup and through socializing. For
a
while this seemed to work, except that the children picked up
English
very slowly. One day, however, Gideon declared that he wanted
to
practice his English at home. As by that time he had kept his
mouth
shut at playgroup for more than six months we reluctantly gave
in,
thinking that it might give a boost to his confidence.
Bathtime was chosen as the English conversation hour and
on the
very first occasion Gideon did actually start to chat in
English.
Obviously, he had already acquired some command of the
language
but had been waiting for the right time and place to practice it.
But,
whether or not it was beneficial for his confidence, it soon
ruined
mine. For a child's world contains umpteen interesting objects
and
activities whose English name I did 'not happen to know:
soap-dish,
all sorts of bath animals, jumping on one foot, to mention just a
few.
Moreover, lots of objects or areas in the house have acquired a
sort
of proper name in Dutch, such as "pappamammaskamer" for our
bedroom. From the start I was mixing English and Dutch to
an
extent that I had never thought possible. After a
short time we
abandoned the English conversation hour and reinstated the
Dutch-only
strategy.'
In families where only one language is spoken at home,
while the
other language is reserved for contacts outside, the children
usually
achieve a reasonable fluency in the home language before they
begin
[58]
to acquire some fluency in the 'outside' language. The
development in
the two languages will usually overlap to some extent, however,
and
this brings us to the next issue.
Successive or simultaneous acquisition?
The point is often raised whether children should learn two
languages
at the same time or one after the other. In practice, there is
often not
much choice in this matter. When a family moves from one
country
to another with children who have already acquired one language,
the
job of learning a second one quite clearly comes after they have
already
acquired a first language.
But parents whose children are born after migration, or
parents with
a mixed-language marriage often wonder whether one way is
better
than the other. Should a child have a firm basis in one language
before
the second one is introduced, or can a child deal with learning
two
languages at the same time from the very beginning? Several
parents
offered their opinions on this matter, while describing their
own
experiences with doing it one way or the other. One of them
was
Kerstin, a Swedish mother of two little daughters who were
brought
up with English and Swedish from the start.
She wrote:
I think it is not more difficult to learn two than to
learn one
language from the start. As babies have to acquire a language
any-
way, there is no reason for them to believe that an object, for
example,
has only one name.
'The older one very confidently switches between the two
languages
and seems to feel equally at home in both, although she sometimes
uses
English words, puts Swedish endings on them, and puts them
into
Swedish sentences. The younger one doesn't talk yet, but
understands
[59]
both languages very well indeed.'
But Simone, the mother who wrote about her experience with
the
one-person-one-language method, also reported:
'It is more work for the parents who have to make a
conscious
decision of speaking the one language, whenever and wherever,
and
it is certainly more work for the child who has to learn twice as
much
as another child.'
The fear of confusing the child if he or she is confronted with
two
languages from the start is also quite frequently mentioned by
parents.
But even if the foreign language is used exclusively at home, the
local
language always plays some role in the child's life, through
contacts
with the outside world. The only way to create a situation where
the
child really learns one language after the other?the successive
acquisi-
tion strategy?is to begin by speaking the local language at home
and
to introduce the foreign language at a later age.
In a way it seems a rather unlikely situation for parents
who have
a common foreign mother tongue to speak the local language with
the
children. But those who want their children to integrate as much
and
as quickly as possible may do just that. However, the
consequence
often is that the children do not learn the foreign language at
all.
For parents in a mixed-language marriage the situation is
different,
especialy if they have always spoken the local language to each
other.
If they feel uncomfortable about the one-person-one-language
approach,
the choice can be made to adopt the 'successive acquisition'
strategy
and to start off with the local language, while the foreign one
is
introduced at a later age. This situation was described by
Anna
Maria. She is Italian and is married to an Englishman. As he
doesn't
speak any Italian, they have always used English together. They
have
[60]
one eight-year-old daughter. Anna Maria wrote:
T had conflicting thoughts about teaching a baby two languages
at
the same time. I thought it might be confusing for the child at
a
particular stage in life before having acquired certain rooted
structures.
Because my Italian at the time had lost its fluency and the baby
would
have been in touch with an English community first before an
Italian
one, the choice to speak English to her was made on those
bases.
'At the age of four my daughter was presented with the
Italian
language and she has been learning it since then?so she is now
taught
in Italian, but we still carry on talking to her in English at
home. She
can now read, write, speak, understand, and think in either
language.'
In the case of successive acquisition, a child more often seems
to be
taught the language more or less formally, rather than picking it
up '
naturally'. In mixed-language marriages where the father is
the
'foreign' parent, this strategy appears to be particularly
appropriate.
Switching languages
Parents who are involved in a bilingual upbringing are
bilingual
themselves and this means that children hear their parents
speaking
different languages to different people. If, then, a parent uses
only
one particular language for communicating with the child, the
child
still knows that this doesn't reflect the parent's way of
communication
in general.
The fourth strategy?to use no strategy at all and to speak
either
language whenever and wherever it is most convenient?doesn't
seem
very suitable in the initial stages of a bilingual upbringing.
But
parents who use one of the other three strategies often report
that a
child at some point refuses to speak the foreign language, the
language
[61]
that has been exclusively used for contact between parent and
child.
One of the reasons for this may well be that if the parent is
seen, or
rather heard, by a child to switch languages the child wants to
do
the same thing.
The example a parent is offering a child can also have a
positive
effect. As an answer to my question whether she would describe
her
child as being or becoming bilingual, Simone wrote:
'It is rather early to say, but what is sure is that she
is completely
fluent in French while living in England. She does not seem to
mind
speaking two languages?indeed she hears me speaking both,
depend-
ing to whom I am speaking. As things stand now, I would think
she
has every chance of becoming bilingual.'
It is often said that the various strategies only work if
parents are
really strict about keeping the languages separate. I think
better
advice to parents would be for them to be flexible, for only then
can
children learn what it means to be bilingual: to be able to
switch
languages according to needs and circumstances.
Rules
One question I asked the parents was whether they had any
specific
rules for dealing with the bilingual situation at home. It seemed
to
me that this was the sort of thing that would be interesting and
helpful
for new parents, or for those who are faced with a particular
problem.
But the answers turned out to be different from what I
expected.
Only a few parents told me that they had any specific
rules. One of
them was Angelina, a Spanish mother who lives in London. When
we
talked about how parents can provide enough stimulating material
in
both languages?in this case reading material?she told me:
[62]
'My way of making it attractive for them to read in Spanish
has
been to buy Spanish cartoons. I don't allow English cartoons in
the
house, so you could say I have bribed them into reading Spanish,
for
otherwise they would probably have seen no use in doing
so.'
Generally, though, parents who tried to create some kind of
regula-
tions often encountered some unexpected consequences. The
problem
with rules is that children have unique ways of drawing up
their
own principles that are bound to counteract their parents'
intentions.
It was Janine who told me the following story:
' "Now that you are in France, you must speak French",
Rachel's
grandmother had said when we were there on a holiday. My
daughter
actually made an effort but, the next time grandmamma came to
visit
us in England and I had hoped for a follow-up of the French
lesson,
Rachel decided: "Now that you are in England, you must speak
English
to me." '
The one rule that was mentioned frequently was this: out
of
politeness, parents will not speak the foreign language in the
company
of children or adults who would not be able to understand it,
especially
at home or when being invited to someone else's house. One of
the
first times that we tried to apply this rule at home the
following thing
happened:
'After we had been living in London for eighteen months and
Gideon
was just starting to express himself in English at playgroup,
we
invited one of his playmates over for lunch. Our Dutch au-pair
asked
the little boy via kind of sandwich he ivied like and then posed
the
same question to Gideon, also addressing him in English. Gideon
burst
into tears and cried (in Dutch): "Scot is English so you speak to
him
[63]
in English. But I am Dutch, so you must speak to me in
Dutch."'
The bilingual development
One mother noted about her children:
'To be bilingual still means for them that their command of the
one
language is better than that of the other, while even their best
lan-
guage is never quite as good as it would have been if they had
had to
know only one language. So it always seems a matter of gaining
on
the one hand and losing on the other.'
Whatever strategy or rules are being applied, it is almost
always
the case that, at any one time, the child is more fluent in one
language
than in the other. The respective languages spoken by the child
will
each feature as the more important or 'dominant' language in
different
stages of the child's bilingual development. Whether both
languages
are spoken at home from the beginning or whether it is only
the
foreign language, the language spoken at school will gradually
take
over for most or all purposes. The use of the foreign language
may
even disappear altogether for a shorter or longer period of time.
We
may see this happen in particular with children of primary school
age.
The important thing to remember is that bilingualism for a
child
is not the same as bilingualism for an adult. First of all, for a
child
bilingualism is even more of a process than it is for an adult,
and in
relation to children we should therefore always talk about
becoming
rather than being bilingual.
Secondly, there is a difference in degree of proficiency.
When saying
that a child knows two languages, one means to indicate that she
or
he has a certain fluency in those languages in accordance with
her
or his age. A child doesn't have the same command of a language
as
[64]
an adult. By age five a child will have acquired most basic
language
skills, but there remains a lot to be learned with respect to
vocabulary
and more complex sentence structures, whether a child is
learning
one or two languages.
Cecile, who is French and lives in Oxford, England, with
an English
husband, gave the following description of the bilingual
development
of her two sons, who are now seven and three-and-a-half years
old:
'My older son learned French first; but when he went to
playgroup
at two-and-a-half he became very fluent (and better) in English.
During
that period we also stayed five months in Spain where he went to
a
nursery school?he learned a lot of Spanish but forgot it within
four
months of coming back.
'Since going to nursery and primary school, English is the
dominant
language, the one he can use with all the "nuances", subtleties,
etc...
His spoken French is more basic?he could not really have a
proper
conversation with an adult in French for instance.
'My younger son, who is now three-and-a-half, started to
speak
English when he was two-and-a-half; he now seems to know
the
French equivalent for the most basic words?but his sentences tend
to
be in English. And with both of them, they will answer in
English
even if we speak to them in French.'
Another important point to realize is that the different
languages
being learned during the bilingual development will have an
influence
on each other, also referred to as 'interference'. Parents are
often
aware of this interference, as shown in the following account.
Elisabeth
and her husband are both English. The elder of their two boys is
now
almost six years old. The family have lived in Holland since
before he was born. She wrote:
[65]
'Vocabulary is probably more limited in each language than it
would
be if only one was spoken. English words are used in Dutch
sentences
and vice versa, also word order mistakes occur quite often,
expressions
are literally translated and used in the other language, which
can give
a rather untidy effect.'
The influence of one language upon the other and the
actual mixing
of the two languages are sometimes regarded as the more
worrying
aspects of a bilingual development. The fear of children getting
con-
fused appears to be related to the fact that bilingual children
often
seem to be mixing the two languages.
However, even in adult bilingualism it is unavoidable that
some
degree of interference between the two languages occurs. But I
also
think that parents can help children to reduce some of the mixing
that
takes place. They can point out some of the differences between
the
two languages?for instance by playing games, such as 'Who will
guess
the French for ... ?'?and they can gently correct their
children's
language use. Most importantly though, as the children get older
and
develop their linguistic skills, a lot of the interference will
disappear
of its own accord.
Temperaments and talents
At some of the interviews I did, parents would begin or end the
con-
versation by commenting that of course it all depended on the
children
themselves. They would remark that children have different
tempera-
ments and talents, and that some of them thrive in a situation
where
others feel quite bewildered. As Joelle put it:
'Olivia liked it and Benedict didn't! But I think that
tempera-
mentally they are very different anyway?Olivia is an extrovert
and
[66]
Benedict an introvert.'
Not all parents realize to what extent their children's
characters
may influence the course of events. When parents abandon the
attempt
to bring their children up bilingually, they may feel that they
them-
selves are to blame for not being consistent enough or for not
dealing
well with some of the difficulties. They are not helped by those
parents
who, successful in bringing up their own children with two
languages,
believe that the procedure that has worked for them will work
for
others too.
Until quite recently, children from a bilingual background
were
often perceived as having a handicap. And if these children
didn't do
well at school, their bilingualism was seen as the cause of their
failure.
Nowadays, however, it is assumed that children with average
intelli-
gence will be able to cope with a bilingual upbringing and will
even
benefit from it in other learning situations.
But intelligence alone cannot explain children's reactions
to bilin-
gualism. Children have an innate ability for learning language,
but
those with a talent for language?especially for its
communicative
and creative aspects?will learn a second or third one more easily
than
others. Some children, for instance, seem to have 'an ear' for
different
languages and pick them up effortlessly, but other children may
have
a much harder time before they can express themselves
adequately.
The difficulty is that parents, at the time when they opt for
a
bilingual upbringing, often don't yet know their children's
tempera-
ments or talents. This is true for those who decide to create a
bilingual
home environment for their children from birth onwards and it
is
also true for couples who move abroad with young children. But
as
the children grower older parents gain a lot of first-hand
experience and
[67]
recognize that individual children have different talents and
react in
different ways to similar situations. Parents should therefore
always
try to choose a course of action that best suits their own and
their children's needs.
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