Voilà, va bene! When two languages are spoken at home
All manner of myths abound about children who grow up in a multilingual household. Some claim that such children are highly skilled communicators who can learn additional languages with ease. Others worry that they might grow up with a limited vocabulary and are more likely to be affected by language development disorders. We take a look at how these assumptions stand up to real scrutiny.
Mum tells a story in English, but her daughter asks questions in German. Situations like this are an everyday reality in many families in Switzerland. | Photo: Guido Mieth / Getty Images
Switzerland is a country of polyglots. According to the latest survey carried out on language, religion and culture in Switzerland by the Federal Statistical Office, almost 40 percent of children here grow up in a multilingual household.
Those who grow up with only one mother tongue, and later struggle to acquire the basics of another language, often look on with envy at multilingual children who seem to have picked up two languages quite effortlessly, switching from one to the other with ease and feeling at home in two different cultures. What’s more, it’s claimed that multilingual kids possess exceptional communication skills and find it easier to learn yet more foreign languages.
But can research confirm any of this? “The communication behaviour of children who grow up in a multilingual environment differs from that of monolingual children”, says Stephanie Wermelinger, a developmental psychologist at the University of Zurich. “They use gestures more efficiently, they are more sensitive about reacting to non-verbal cues from whomever they’re talking to, and they are better at clarifying misunderstandings”.
Wermelinger claims that these differences are a result of their everyday experiences. “In order to communicate successfully, children growing up in a multilingual environment have to negotiate their way through a highly variable communication environment and adapt their behaviour accordingly”.
Help from Otto the elephant
Wermelinger is researching into multilingualism and communication, and her conclusions draw on various studies that her team has conducted. One of those studies involved over 100 children aged between two and three years who belonged to one of three groups: some were monolingual, others were growing up speaking both Swiss German and High German, and others were bilingual.
The researchers used a soft toy elephant called Otto for this study. If Otto wanted to go for a walk, the head researcher put three shoes on him. She kept the fourth shoe in her hand, but pretended to be looking for it. If a child wanted to help her and pointed to the shoe, the researcher pretended that the child was actually pointing to a picture placed behind her. This created a misunderstanding. Most of the children who then clarified this misunderstanding were bilingual. “They are probably more used to dealing with misunderstandings”, suggests Wermelinger.
Another study she ran was focused on so-called ‘iconic gestures’ – in other words, hand and arm movements that mimic the shape or movement of an object. She and her team wanted to find out how pre-school children use them. Their experiment involved a book with pictures of different objects. The children’s task was to explain to Lola, a deaf doll, which object could be seen in the book. When Lola placed the correct object in a treasure chest, this lit up. “Multilingual children used both the shape and the movement of the objects more frequently in their gestures”, says Wermelinger. “They gave Lola more information”.
Children who grow up speaking more than one language do indeed seem to have specific communicative strengths. Research results about possible cognitive benefits are less clear-cut, however. “Ten or 15 years ago, there was a real hype about this”, says Wermelinger. “People claimed that these children were better at planning and at coordination. But today, we believe that there’s no universal difference”. She also insists that there’s no clarity about whether those who grow up to be multilingual actually find it easier to learn other foreign languages. “The studies on this vary widely”, she says.
Everyone’s vocabulary is the same size
People also have negative preconceptions about multilingualism. Some parents fear that multilingual children will fail to master any language properly, and could end up with a smaller vocabulary. Even worse, some worry that their children could be overwhelmed by the jumble of languages they hear and might suffer developmental problems. But researchers can in fact dispel these fears.
A study by the University of Zurich has shown that bilingual children aged three to four might well know fewer words in each language than is the case with monolingual children. But their conceptual vocabulary is just as extensive – that’s the vocabulary that is understood in either one, the other, or both languages.
This study was led by Wermelinger’s colleague Anja Gampe using a computer-based language test that she developed specifically for the purpose. They conducted 48 rounds of tests with a total of almost 900 children from the greater Zurich area. They were shown six pictures each time, and heard a word. Their task was to select the picture on a touchscreen that matched the word best. Bilingual children took the test in two different language versions.
Difficult diagnoses for the multilingual
Language proficiency tests are also used in cases of so-called language development disorders – this is when children display significant deviations from age-appropriate language acquisition. But Katrin Skoruppa, a professor of speech therapy at the University of Neuchâtel, advises caution in this regard. Her colleague Salomé Schwob recently investigated how we might identify such disorders in children aged five to eight.
Schwob’s results underscored the current international consensus, namely that language proficiency tests are unsuitable for diagnosing long-term disorders in children growing up in a multilingual environment. “These children can lag behind their monolingual peers in individual language development, meaning that the tests can often be misinterpreted”, says Skoruppa. This is why such disorders used to be over-diagnosed in the past; today, they tend to be under-diagnosed. “If a bilingual child of kindergarten age displays signs of having difficulty with language, often nothing’s done at first because it’s assumed that they are merely suffering from a delay in development”. But this can also mean that disorders go undetected.
The study carried out by Schwob and Skoruppa has revealed the potential of a new approach: dynamic assessment. This involves assessing a child’s ability to process and learn new, unfamiliar linguistic structures. Such an analysis of language acquisition could in theory be integrated into everyday life without the need for lengthy assessments, says Skoruppa. Children with language difficulties could then be placed directly into support groups for speech therapy and their progress documented over a longer period of time. “Persistent stagnation would be seen as a clear sign of a disorder, with a concomitant need for speech therapy”.
Support in cases of dyslexia and autism
Persistent language disorders don’t occur more often in multilingual children than in those who speak just one language. “I often hear this preconception, though in fact there isn’t any causal link”, says Skoruppa. Researchers have also ruled out any causality in the case of reading and writing difficulties. “Dyslexia affects roughly one in ten people and is attributed to a genetic predisposition”, says Irene Balboni, a neuropsychologist who’s conducting research at the University of Geneva and has recently analysed 40 international studies on the topic of dyslexia and bilingualism.
Multilingual families with a dyslexic child are often advised to communicate with them in a single language, says Balboni. But the consequences of this can be serious, because the children can lose access to a whole culture and even their closeness to individual family members. And it’s just not necessary, says Balboni: “Bilingualism has no consistently negative impact on children with dyslexia”. It can even be beneficial in some respects, she says, such as in recognising the phonological structure of a language.
The situation is similar for neurodivergent children. “The myth remains that such children are overwhelmed by multilingualism, and that it hinders their development”, says Stephanie Durrleman, a professor of linguistics at the University of Fribourg. “But a study we’ve conducted clearly refutes this”. This involved investigating a mixed group of over 400 monolingual and multilingual children aged between three and 12 years, some of whom were neurotypical, others autistic.
The researchers assessed their cognitive and communication skills by means of detailed questionnaires for their parents and tasks for the children themselves to complete on a tablet. “Both neurotypical and autistic children benefit from multilingualism”, says Durrleman. “We can see improvements in areas that often cause difficulties among those who are autistic”. These difficulties included attention deficits and the ability to take the perspective of others into account. Durrleman therefore suspects that multilingualism serves as a kind of “natural therapy”.
Ultimately, research has shown that multilingual children are in pretty much the same place as those who grow up speaking just one language. So it seems that it’s time to put aside our preconceptions, our envies and our worries, and simply let each child’s mother tongue flow naturally in their own home.
