Abstract
This contribution concerns early language awareness in young children under 6 years of age who have been exposed to more than one spoken language and who have not yet received any formal literacy instruction. Multilingual exposure may have taken place from birth, or children may first have heard a single language to which another language was added after some time. The review concerns children whose multilingual proficiency includes well-developed comprehension skills in two languages (relevant studies concerning trilingual children are scarce).
Language awareness is here defined as the totality of metacognitive skills needed to allow reflecting on language as an object and the monitoring of one’s own language use and that of others. Characteristic for bilinguals is that in addition to reflection on aspects that monolinguals may also be aware of, e.g., the phonemic make up of a word in one particular language, specifically bilingual aspects of language use may be reflected on or monitored.
Behaviors showing language awareness reviewed here include children’s requests for translations, spontaneous or prompted translations, sound play, performance on tasks designed to test children’s phonological awareness (PA) and their ability for morphosyntactic error detection, showing a realization that people may understand two languages, discussing languages and who uses them, language choice patterns, repairing one’s language choice or other aspects of one’s own language use, and corrections of other people’s language usage. The review concludes with a brief discussion of bilingual children’s theory of mind (TOM) development and other aspects of their sociocognitive development that may relate to language awareness.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
De Houwer (2009) gives a detailed overview of the developmental course in BFLA. Paradis et al. (2011) focuses on the developmental course in both BFLA and ESLA. In addition to describing structural and lexical features of BFLA children’s language development, De Houwer (2009) also discusses the use of translations by BFLA children and their language choice; the little information on trilingual acquisition is also referenced. In addition, De Houwer (2009) gives extensive attention to the role of children’s bilingual learning environments. This role is the sole focus of Grüter and Paradis (2014). Hammer et al. (2014) is a highly valuable resource for finding information about journal articles published in English between 2000 and 2011 on language and literacy in typically-developing bilingual children between zero and five. The pioneering Galambos and Goldin-Meadow (1983) chapter reviewed above was later published as Galambos and Goldin-Meadow (1990) and has become somewhat of a classic in this form. Barac et al. (2014) reviewed article-based studies of early bilingual phonological and morphosyntactic awareness between 2000 and 2013 and Barum-Martin et al. (2014) offered a meta-analysis of 22 studies of phonological awareness in bilingual children with English as one of their languages from pre-kindergarten to grade 8. These reviews are, however, not limited to children without early literacy instruction. Stuart-Smith and Martin (1999) is a necessary backdrop to most of the studies covered in Barac et al. (2014) and Branum-Martin et al. (2014) because of its keen and linguistically informed focus on the many methodological issues that arise in assessing bilingual children’s PA, many of which are ignored in more recent studies (Stuart-Smith and Martin (1999) was not reviewed above, since it concerns children between six and seven who were receiving literacy instruction). Finally, Barac et al. (2014) reviewed articles published in English between 2000 and 2013 relating to cognitive development in children exposed to two languages in early childhood.
Afshar, K. (1998). Zweisprachigkeit oder Zweitsprachigkeit? Zur Entwicklung einer schwachen Sprache in der deutsch-persischen Familienkommunikation. Münster: Waxmann.
Barac, R., Bialystok, E., Castro, D., & Sanchez, M. (2014). The cognitive development of young dual language learners: A critical review. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 29, 699–714.
Bialystok, E. (1986). Children’s concept of word. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 15(1), 13–32.
Branum-Martin, L., Tao, S., & Garnaat, S. (2014). Bilingual phonological awareness: Reexamining the evidence for relations within and across languages. Journal of Educational Psychology. doi:10.1037/a0037149. First published online June 16, 2014.
Brito, N., Sebastián-Gallés, N., & Barr, R. (2014). Differences in language exposure and its effects on memory flexibility in monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual infants. Bilingualism, Language and Cognition. doi:10.1017/S1366728914000789. First published online 11 Nov 2014.
Brojde, C. L., Ahmed, S., & Colunga, E. (2012). Bilingual and monolingual children attend to different cues when learning new words. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 1–11.
Byers-Heinlein, K., Chen, K. H., & Xu, F. (2014). Surmounting the Tower of Babel: Monolingual and bilingual 2-year-olds’ understanding of the nature of foreign languages. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 119, 87–100.
Clyne, M. (1987). “Don’t you get bored speaking only English?” Expressions of metalinguistic awareness in a bilingual child. In R. Steele & T. Threadgold (Eds.), Language topics. Essays in honour of Michael Halliday (pp. 85–103). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Comeau, L., Genesee, F., & Mendelson, M. (2007). Bilingual children’s repairs of breakdowns in communication. Journal of Child Language, 34, 159–174.
Cruz-Ferreira, M. (2006). Three is a crowd? Acquiring Portuguese in a trilingual environment. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Davidson, D., Raschke, V., & Pervez, J. (2010). Syntactic awareness in young monolingual and bilingual (Urdu-English) children. Cognitive Development, 25, 166–182.
De Houwer, A. (1983). Some aspects of the simultaneous acquisition of Dutch and English by a three-year-old child. Nottingham Linguistic Circular, 12, 106–129.
De Houwer, A. (1990). The acquisition of two languages from birth: A case study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
De Houwer, A. (2009). Bilingual first language acquisition. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Dickinson, D., McCabe, A., Clark-Chiarelli, N., & Wolf, A. (2004). Cross-language transfer of phonological awareness in low-income Spanish and English bilingual preschool children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 323–347.
Galambos, S., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (1983). Learning a second language and metalinguistic awareness. In A. Chukerman, M. Marks, & J. Richardson (Eds.), Papers from the nineteenth regional meeting (pp. 117–133). Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
Galambos, S., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (1990). The effects of learning two languages on levels of metalinguistic awareness. Cognition, 34(1), 1–56.
Genesee, F., Boivin, I., & Nicoladis, E. (1996). Talking with strangers: A study of bilingual children’s communicative competence. Applied Psycholinguistics, 17, 427–442.
Groba, A. (2014). Der Erwerb von Adjektiven in der bilingualen und monolingualen Entwicklung aus psycho- und neurolinguistischer Perspektive. Doctoral dissertation, University of Erfurt, Erfurt.
Grüter, T., & Paradis, J. (Eds.). (2014). Input and experience in bilingual development. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hammer, C., Hoff, E., Uchikoshi, Y., Gillanders, C., Castro, D., & Sandilos, L. (2014). The language and literacy development of young dual language learners: A critical review. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 29, 715–733.
Idiazábal, I. (1984). Conciencia bilingüe del niño bilingüe. In M. Siguan (Ed.), Adquisición precoz de una segunda lengua (pp. 55–63). Barcelona: Publicacions i edicions de la universitat de Barcelona.
Leopold, W. (1949). Speech development of a bilingual child. A linguist’s record. Vol. 3. Grammar and general problems in the first two years. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Paradis, J., Genesee, F., & Crago, M. (2011). Dual language development and disorders: A handbook on bilingualism and second language learning (2nd ed.). Baltimore: Brookes.
Pavlovitch, M. (1920). Le langage enfantin. Acquisition du serbe et du français. Paris: Champion.
Pitts, C., Onishi, K., & Vouloumanos, A. (2015). Who can communicate with whom? Language experience affects infants’ evaluation of others as monolingual or multilingual. Cognition, 134, 185–192.
Ronjat, J. (1913). Le développement du langage observé chez un enfant bilingue. Paris: Champion.
Siegal, M., Surian, L., Matsuo, A., Geraci, A., Iozzi, L., Okumura, Y., & Itakura, S. (2010). Bilingualism accentuates children’s conversational understanding. PloS One, 5(2), e9004. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009004.
Silva-Corvalán, C. (2014). Bilingual language acquisition. Spanish and English in the first six years. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Silvén, M., & Rubinov, E. (2010). Language and preliteracy skills in bilinguals and monolinguals at preschool age: Effects of exposure to richly inflected speech from birth. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 23, 385–414.
Stuart-Smith, J., & Martin, D. (1999). Developing assessment procedures for phonological awareness for use with Panjabi-English bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingualism, 3(1), 55–80.
Tare, M., & Gelman, S. (2014). “We call it as puppy”: Pragmatic factors in bilingual language choice. In I. Arnon, M. Tice, C. Kurumada, & B. Estigarribia (Eds.), Language in interaction: Studies in honor of Eve V. Clark (pp. 191–206). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Verhoeven, L. (2007). Early bilingualism, language transfer, and phonological awareness. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 425–439.
Yow, W., & Markman, E. (2011). Young bilingual children’s heightened sensitivity to referential cues. Journal of Cognition and Development, 12, 12–31.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
De Houwer, A. (2016). Early Multilingualism and Language Awareness. In: Cenoz, J., Gorter, D., May, S. (eds) Language Awareness and Multilingualism. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02325-0_6-2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02325-0_6-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-02325-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02325-0
eBook Packages: Springer Reference EducationReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Education
Publish with us
Chapter history
-
Latest
Early Multilingualism and Language Awareness- Published:
- 27 December 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02325-0_6-2
-
Original
Early Multilingualism and Language Awareness- Published:
- 16 July 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02325-0_6-1