Becoming Bilingual: Acquiring Two Languages

Students who have a home language (L1) other than English are faced with the challenge of learning a new or target language (L2) that has different features from their home language. The syntactic, semantic, morphemic, phonetic, and pragmatic aspects of the two languages may be significantly different. Languages from the same “language family” have similar characteristics and features, whereas languages from different language families will be dissimilar (Crystal, 1987). For example, Spanish and French are both in the Indo-European (Romance) language family and have some similarities such as the use of an alphabetic writing system and similar cognates/word stems. In contrast, Spanish and Chinese belong to different language families and are distinctly different in not only the writing system used, but in other aspects of language as well, including syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and morphemic. The ways in which aspects of language knowledge are similar or different between the two languages influences second language acquisition. Children who are attempting to learn a language from a different language family will find it more difficult than if they were attempting to learn another language from the same language family. As the second language is learned, children build on their knowledge of language by making connections and comparisons between the home language and the target language. Target languages that are distinctly different from the home language will require more effort to learn.

Second language learners’ efforts in distinguishing between the relevant language knowledge in two different systems are sometimes evident in their use of English in composing oral stories (Otto, 1987). Preschool children who are in the process of acquiring English language knowledge and distinguishing that knowledge from their first or home language may produce stories that are less fluent, less cohesive, or both. As a result, their stories might be judged as indicative of lower academic ability and language competency, when, in fact, a complex process of distinguishing between the various aspects of each language is occurring.

Children who are exposed to two languages at home acquire both languages as “first languages” (Piper, 1998). In some homes, each parent speaks a different language with the child; in other homes, the parents use one language with the child and grandparents or other caregivers use the second language. In still other homes, both parents speak both languages to the child, mixing the two languages. It appears that children acquire bilingualism with less confusion when the languages are kept separate by the parent or caregiver who speaks them (Piper, 1998).

When children acquire two languages prior to the age of three, it is termed simultaneous bilingualism (Baker, 1996; Goodz, 1994). This type of bilingualism is usually found in homes where parents speak two (or more) languages. Successive bilingualism refers to instances when children acquire their second language after age three. In many respects, second language acquisition in successive bilingualism resembles first language acquisition. Language is acquired through active hypothesizing of rules, analyzing rules, making errors, and revising the rules. The early stages of language acquisition are similar for first and second language learners, with one-word utterances appearing initially, followed by two-word utterances and then multiword utterances (Genesee & Nicoladis, 1995). The rate of acquisition of vocabulary (semantic knowledge) of L2 learners is somewhat slower only during the preschool years (Bialystok, 1988; Genesee & Nicoladis, 1995).

Becoming Bilingual: Acquiring Two Languages