A comparison of bilingual and monolingual children’s conversational repairs

Abstract

This study examined the conversational repair skills of 2-and 3-year-old FrenchEnglish bilingual children and monolingual French-speaking children. While the ability to respond to requests for clarification has been well researched in monolingual children, it has not been investigated among bilingual children except to examine their ability to repair breakdowns due to the use of a language not spoken by their interlocutor. The present study provides a direct comparison of bilingual and monolingual children's repairs of the types of breakdowns in conversations that are experienced by both populations, e.g., breakdowns due to ambiguity, choice of words, mispronunciations, inaudible utterances, and so on. A methodology of stacked requests for clarification was used to examine the range of response strategies and the overall response patterns of the children. The results reveal no differences between the bilingual and the monolingual children's conversational repair skills. The present findings contribute to the growing body of evidence that bilingualism does not interfere with the language development of simultaneous bilinguals. As well, they extend our understanding of their ability to repair conversational breakdowns of the type that are experienced by all children.

Bilingualism in the Early Years: What the Science Says

“…This offers some reassurance that young bilinguals-like young monolinguals-possess learning skills that can successfully get them started on expected vocabulary trajectories. There is also evidence that bilingual children match monolinguals in conversational abilities; for example, when somebody uses a confusing or mispronounced word, or says something ambiguous, bilingual children can repair the conversation with the same skill as monolinguals (Comeau, Genesee, & Mendelson, 2010).…”

Language Choices for Deaf Infants

“…Introducing 2 languages does not interfere with acquisition of either, 22 -26 whether spoken or signed. 27…”

Omani Young Children’s Language Proficiencies: The Outcomes of a Bilingual Education Program

“…It can be claimed that stronger knowledge of L1 helps better acquisition of L2 (Yeung & Chan, 2012). Hence, these research studies have shown that it is more efficient to implement a bilingual early childhood education program rather than a program solely conducted in L1 or L2 as bilingualism does not interfere with the language development of bilinguals (Comeau et al, 2010). …”

“…For example, a case study conducted by Dastgahian and Rostami (2013) showed that early bilingualism did not cause any delay in language acquisition process. Although it is accepted that L1 knowledge is usually stronger than L2 among preschoolers (Sevinc & Onkol, 2009;Unsworth, 2013), especially in vocabulary (Klassert, Gagarina, & Kauschke, 2014) since, for example, some image representations are more strongly connected to L1 than L2 (Jared, Poh, & Paivio, 2013), similarity has been found in rates and types of language processes such as phonology (Lin & Johnson, 2010) and ability to repair conversational breakdowns (Comeau, Genesee, & Mendelson, 2010). It also has been shown that bilingual children have the opportunity to assimilate new L2 sounds by matching them with familiar sounds in their L1, supporting the propositions of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (Ho, 2009).…”