Bilingual Children
Do They Really Have an Advantage?
Russell Rowley
Bilingual Children
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Side One – 2/Multiple languages as a
Hindrance to Child Development...
Side Two – Raising one’s Child(ren) Bilingual
as Beneficial to Their Development...
Methodology – Adult Polyglots
Analysis – Looking at the Polyglot Data
Conclusion – Yea or Ney
Future Work
Why shouldn’t I raise my child(ren)
bilingual?
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Students older than 11 and adults are
observedly faster learners of L2 than children
under the age of 11. (Cook, 133-134)
Children learning more than one 1st language
are known to take longer to develope their
language and communication skills.
Children abondon languages which are not
spoken in their community of peers.
Why might I consider raising my
children bilingual?
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Youth corrisponds to learning sensitivity and
therefore response to “environmental
influences.” (Han, 57)
Critical Period Hypothsis – Humans are only
capable of language learning between two
years and early teens.
“The majority of [L2] students fall by the
wayside before they get to a high level.”
(Cook, 149)
Methodology
Faimous Polyglots
Raised Bi/Multilingual:
Raised Monolingual:
-Maria Gaetana Agnesi
-Pamulaparthi Venkata
(5+)
Narasimha Rao (13)
-Jose Rizal (10+)
-Walter Laquer (11+)
-Ziad Youssef Fazah (50+)
Methodology Incomplete
Unknown:
-Anthony Burgess
-Paul Robeson
-Cardinal Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti (38
languages, 50+ Dialects)
Number of Languages Spoken
25
20
15
10
5
0
Monolingual
Bilingual
L1 Languages
Future Work
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Same Methodology with more data (language
speakers and whether they were raised
bi/multilingual or not).
Survey determining the ease/difficulty with
which people read, write, and speak, then
which was/were their mother tongues.
Each Methodology observing data of equal
numbers from each side, then compared
together.