Free English Language Dissertations - The Inclusion Of Children Who Speak More Than One Language Might Be Seen, In
The inclusion of children who speak more than one language might be seen, in a best-case scenario, as a learning tool for researchers, who might view it as a key into language acquisition processes in general. At the very least, one might expect researchers to treat and to assess bilingual children fairlythat is, the same way they treat and assess monolingual children. However, more often than not, there is a sense of negativity attached to bilingualism.
Takakuwa asserts that there has been a negative connection between bilingualism and cognitive development for many yearsperhaps as far back as the nineteenth century, but that this began to change in the 1960s (Takakuwa 2000). "Bilingualism was said to hamper children's development of intelligence and to lead children to psychological confusion," he writes. He cites the studies of Laurie (1890), Saer (1923), and Smith (1923) to support this. According to these studies, the scores of bilingual children were consistently lower on verbal intelligence than the scores of monolingual children. However, in the area of nonverbal intelligence, each group of children scored the same. Despite the results of the nonverbal portion of the testing, the conclusions that were drawn overwhelmingly stated that bilingualism has a harmful influence on children.
Landmark Study: Peal and Lambert
In the 1960s, the tide began to turn. Views towards bilingualism and its effect on intelligence began to undergo a change. According to Takakuwa, this was primarily due to a study that was conducted in 1962 by Peal and Lambert This study was considered a landmark in bilingual research. According to Takakuwa, "Peal and Lambert's (1962) study is often considered to be a turning point in how bilingualism is viewed in the sense that, after their study, bilingualism was seen as having a cognitive advantage" (2000). In fact, in much of the literature, even in contemporary studies of bilingualism, the ground-breaking efforts and findings of Peal and Lambert are mentioned. However, although they are considered by some to be a turning point in the evolution of attitudes towards bilingualism, later research will show that this shift was short-lived.
In the study itself, the researchers tested French Canadian children at ten years of age, and results of assessments done with bilingual children were compared with the assessments of monolingual children within the same age bracket. The findings were surprising: the bilingual children completed the testing with higher scores than the monolingual children did. To many, this seemed to suggest that bilingualism might actually have some beneficial effects on a child's cognitive development. The researchers themselves asserted that it was possible that bilingual children have "greater mental flexibility" than their monolingual counterparts (Peal & Lambert 1962).
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