My son Rowan has two names for me: ‘Appa’ and ‘Daddy’. ‘Appa’ is Korean and the other is probably already familiar to you. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to which he chooses to use, and he applies them pretty much interchangeably. This is a classic example of what Alexiadou and Lohndal define as language mixing or ‘code-switching’ which they suggest is “a ubiquitous phenomenon characterizing bilingual speakers”.
The linguist François Grosjean, in his book ‘Bilingual’, suggests that children can become bilingual in two ways, either by acquiring languages simultaneously (at the same time) or successively (one after the other). He goes on to say that “most linguists would agree that up to the age of four, children are in simultaneous acquisition mode, whereas from age five on they are in a successive mode.”
Rowan, then, is in full-on simultaneous, code-switching mode, mixing up words in Korean and English whenever he feels like it. Even though as parents we’re aware of the linguistic phenomena in play, we do wonder if he’s getting confused. I mean, wouldn’t you be if you had two people talking at you constantly in languages neither of which you understood much of at all? The concerns we have are along the lines of: “Is he going to learn more slowly than other kids because he has to deal with two languages?” and “Will he be able to communicate comfortably with his friends or will they be befuddled by his unique blend of Korean and English?”.
Advantages of Bilingualism
Well, the good news is bilingual children who code-switch are fine; mixing languages does not indicate confusion, rather can be seen as a sign of language ability. In fact, listening to and using two languages has positive effects. Ellen Bialystok, a psychology professor at York University in Canada has shown that bilingual children are more able to focus on pertinent information and tune out what’s not relevant as a result of having to pick apart information coming at them in two codes. The development of a bilingual brain can have knock-on effects in later life too, such as better focus during tests and a greater safeguard against brain diseases such as dementia.
The Bad News
The bad news is that he’s going to have to put in a hell of a lot of work to become fully bilingual. It turns out that while young children are extremely proficient at naturally acquiring language, this doesn’t automatically translate into language ability in later childhood or as an adult. Erika Hoff, a psychology professor at Florida Atlantic University and an expert on language development, says “acquiring a language requires massive exposure to that language…For bilingual development, the child will need exposure to both languages.” Unfortunately, South Korea is an extreme monolingual environment. Rowan hears Korean at nursery, Korean with his grandparents, Korean with his cousins, Korean at the park and Korean in the supermarket. He simply doesn’t have as much English exposure as we’d like.
So what are we doing to combat this? Below I’ve set out the strategy that we’ve adopted. It’s based on a mix of theory and intuition and for the moment, it seems to be working.
Talk, Read and Sing
Sound advice from linguists and doctors is to talk, read and sing as much as possible to your young children. This is to give exposure to the minority language (that is, the language less frequently heard), which needs to be fostered in-person, with the parent or family member present with the child. Whacking on Peppa Pig and thinking she’ll do the trick of exposing your child to useful language is simply insufficient. Yes, kids might learn some vocabulary from TV shows once they’ve reached “successive mode”, but for the first few years, human interaction is critical. Reading and singing with your kids gives them great exposure to real, rich and varied language and it gives you and them a chance to experiment, repeat, do silly voices, and concoct new words which does them the power of good in their language acquisition journey.
Video Calls with Friends and Family
While this strategy might seem obvious, giving the child as much exposure as possible to the minority language is key. If you’re living abroad as I am, this means regular video calls to friends and family back home, making sure my son is present and involved. Again, this might be through song or simply having his English grandparents repeat familiar words and phrases or ask him questions about his day. Being regularly exposed to native speakers in immersive environments is the best way to acquire a second language and due to a lack of English in Rowan’s immediate environment, this is our solution.
Home-Outside the Home Strategy
Some parents believe the best way to encourage bilingualism in their child is to divide languages between Mum and Dad. In our case, this would entail me speaking English to him at all times and my wife addressing him solely in Korean. This strategy may work well in some cases, however in one Belgian study, households adopting the “one person one language” strategy did not have a particularly high success rate, with only one in four children becoming bilingual.
A better strategy, if both parents are competent speakers, is for them to exclusively use the minority language at home. This is what Grosjean calls the ‘home-outside the home’ strategy. The child will still get lots of input in the majority language outside the home, but this will be balanced out by the exclusive use of the minority tongue at home or out and about. It doesn’t matter if the non-native speaker of the minority language in the family is a low-level user; hearing and interacting in the minority language is what’s important for the child. At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, the more exposure a child has to the minority language, the better their odds of learning it.
Bridging
Karen Beeman and Cheryl Urow point out that successful bilingualism relies on “contrastive analysis” or the child comparing and contrasting elements in the two languages to get a clearer idea of how they both function and the differences between them. This doesn’t need to be conscious or explicit, rather it can be done through reading, talking and sharing. The idea behind this is to create a “bridge” between languages. For example, I might read something to Rowan in English and his mum might ask him if he enjoyed it or not in Korean, or re-cap the story in her language. This process is all part of exploring the two languages and acts as an awareness-raising exercise, with the potential to encourage increased flexibility of language use further down the line.
Final Thoughts
As previously stated, we use a mix of all of these strategies. While we tend to stick to the “home-outside the home” technique fairly religiously, we’ll sprinkle in a dash of bridging here and there. I think this, combined with reading, singing and interacting with minority language speakers as much as possible (whether that be online or face-to-face) gives a good balance that should hopefully allow Rowan to develop linguistic competence in both English and Korean in the future.
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Previously Published on medium
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