Simultaneous Bilingual Language Acquisition

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Rationale and Strategy

I originally grew up in a small town and wasn't exposed to different cultures like I am now in the city. I became fascinated with different languages and how amazing it is that children are capable of learning multiple languages at one time. To fulfill the requirements of a class here at State University, I spent two weeks assistant teaching at a bilingual elementary school. I greatly enjoyed this experience and returned home to become a nanny for a family near by my home that are raising their children to be bilingual with the help of the mother who is fluent in Spanish as well as English. While taking care of these children, I experienced language barriers and was faced with an amazing opportunity to witness children learning two languages first hand. I plan to discover the advantages or disadvantages of children being bilingual at a young age. I would like to investigate which language they are more fluent in and their strategies for increasing vocabulary in both languages. I would like to discover the techniques that they are using for increasing their Spanish vocabulary in addition to their English vocabulary.

My strategy for this investigation is to spend time with the family and observe them. I plan to note the toys or other strategies that the family uses to increase the fluency of both languages for their children. I will interview the parents as well as two of the three children since the other child is still an infant. I will observe the children playing and see which language they typically communicate with each other to and how they speak to their parents. I will do research on bilingual children and their language development in order to learn more information and provide the parents with s...

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...abulary Development." International Journal of Bilingualism 6.4 (2012): 541-565. Print.

MacLeod, Andrea, Leah Fabiano-Smith, Sarah Boegner-Page, and Salome Fontolliet. "Simultaneous bilingual language acquisition: The role of parental input on receptive vocabulary development." Child Language Teaching and Therapy 29.1 (2012): 131-142. Print.

Patterson, Janet. "What Bilingual Toddlers Hear and Say: Language Input and Word Combinations." Communication Disorders Quarterly 21.1 (1999): 32-38. Print.

Restrepo, M. A., A. P. Castilla, P. J. Schwanenflugel, S. Neuharth-Pritchett, C. E. Hamilton, and A. Arboleda. "Effects Of A Supplemental Spanish Oral Language Program On Sentence Length, Complexity, And Grammaticality In Spanish-Speaking Children Attending English-Only Preschools." Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 41.1 (2010): 3-13. Print.

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