Parental language input patterns and children's bilingual use

Abstract

This article reports on a study that addresses the following question: why do some children exposed to two languages from early on fail to speak those two languages? Questionnaire data were collected in 1,899 families in which at least one of the parents spoke a language other than the majority language. Each questionnaire asked about the home language use of a family consisting of at least one parent and one child between the ages of 6 and 10 years old. The results show that the children in these families all spoke the majority language, but that minority language use was not universal. Differences in parental language input patterns used at home correlated with differences in child minority language use. Home input patterns where both parents used the minority language and where at most one parent spoke the majority language had a high chance of success. The “one parent–one language” strategy did not provide a necessary nor sufficient input condition. Implications for bilingual families are discussed.

Linguistic diversity among Australian children in the first 5 years of life

“…In keeping with previous research, both parental use of languages other than English (De Houwer, 2007;Duursma et al, 2007) and generations since migration were significantly related to Australian children's language use throughout the first five years of life. Frequent and rich exposure to languages facilitates the acquisition of these languages by children in early childhood (Hammer et al, 2011).…”

Home language policy of second-generation Turkish families in the Netherlands

“…To begin with, parents' perceptions and practices play an important role in determining the attitudes of children towards the immigrant language as well as their bilingual development (De Houwer 2007;King and Fogle 2006;Leung and Uchikoshi 2012;Li 1999;Spolsky 2012). King and Fogle (2006) found, in their research with families who pursue Spanish-English bilingual FLP, that the parents' own language learning experiences had an effect on how they shaped their linguistic interactions with their children.…”

Language attrition and reactivation in the context of bilingual first language acquisition

“…Despite such beliefs, however, research on family languageuse patterns suggests that 1P/1L is not necessarily the optimal model, and in many cases does not translate into active bilingualism. For example, results from a large-scale survey of 3390 BFLA children in Flanders carried out by De Houwer (2003) indicates that in 27% of the families where one parent spoke Dutch, the majority language, and the other parent spoke another language, the children did not speak that other language (see also De Houwer 2007. On the other hand, in families where both parents spoke the minority language or both parents spoke the minority and the majority language, children had higher chances of being actively bilingual.…”