Bilingualism

Bilingualism & Misunderstanding

  • There is a lot of research that supports the benefits of bilingualism at all the social, cognitive and educational levels of development.

  • Unfortunately it’s common to hear parent’s being advised to avoid bilingualism (especially for kids who have language or developmental communication difficulties) and stop speaking their home languages. Instead they are advised to use the majority language where they live (this is the case for many bilingual families in Ireland).

  • Research shows that families should speak their first language at home, it’s what they speak best, it’s where they have their best grammar, full sentences and best model of a language.

  • More importantly it is part of their identity and should be part of their children’s identity.

bilingual children with 2 or more languages that are struggling to speak in english

Bilingualism and Language Delay / Disorder

What the research says :

  • “The key finding that emerges from recent research is that the gap between typically developing monolingual children and children with developmental language disorders is similiar to the gap between typically developing bilingual children and bilingual children with developmental language disorders” (Marinis, Armon-Lotem, and Pontikas, 2017).

  • To identify whether a bilingual child has a communication difficulty we need to consider a multitude of factors, for example: how long the child has been exposed to more than 1 language, how and where are they exposed to all the languages and are they given opportunities to converse.

  • To figure out if it is a communication disorders or just normal linguistic variations, your speech and language therapist will carry out a dynamic assessment. Dynamic assessment has great consideration for language variation in culturally and linguistically diverse populations.


Early Intervention is important

  • If you are concerned about your child’s language development in both languages, it’s best to intervene earlier rather than later.

  • A speech and language therapist can help you find out what’s going on, maybe it is just variation in both languages or maybe it’s a more in depth language difficulty that needs support. If this is the case it can be good to collaborate with your child’s teacher, find out what they’ve noticed (it could be different to home) and consider strategies that can support and enhance their learning.