Bringing up baby bilingual.pptVIP

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Bringing up baby bilingualScientific perspectives on an eternal dilemma Bert Vaux University of Cambridge October 5, 2007 Introduction Chinese couple on train speaking in broken English to their daughter California Proposition 227 (1998) Telugu and Polish nanny (Gopal) Overview “why not” misconceptions → the current problem why how case studies and recent scientific insights Why not? Common parental worries and problems Common misconceptions Common parental worries and problems parents only feel comfortable in the language they met in (Ernie) parents’ pride in knowing English (Noure) parents wanting their kids to be “normal” (fluent speakers of (only) AmE) “immigrant parents, people who do not feel part of society, believe that if their child speaks Spanish they will either not be able to assimilate easily (difficulty with learning language/culture), or they will not be allowed to assimilate easily (actively excluded by others)” “I think that the only problem with bringing up my brother the way my mother did it is that it cut him off from many social contacts before he started school because he could not speak English” parents seeing E (but not their L1) as valuable socio-economic commodity working on L2 takes away time child could spend on math, etc. Henrik (German) and Donna (Chinese) speak English to their child because they don’t know each other’s language Common misconceptions exposure to n languages → 1/n proficiency (grammar, accent, literary knowledge…) “You get things mixed up sometimes because I feel like I dont have a grasp of one language fully, its always halfway in between of each language” “if you dont have a really good teacher to teach you, you may not be good at the second language, because some people in Hong Kong, they just translate Chinese directly into English, so its grammatically not correct” acquisition delay can lead to social problems children will conflate/confuse the two languages My parents ar