Читать книгу Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL): A Methodology of Bilingual Teaching - Bernd Klewitz - Страница 8

These perspectives are confirmed in an extended “Bilingual Speech Production Review”, conducted at the Graduate School of Hanover Medical School (MHH–Medizinische Hochschule Hannover; MHH-Review: 2013). Conducted as a systematic review of studies from the last 50 years the review investigated speech acquisition in bilingual infants (under the age of four) and children (up to 12 years of age), amounting to 66 studies, analyzed thematically and summarized in terms of methods, key findings and underlying theories. Main findings suggested that bilingual children, only in a few cases, developed speech at a slower rate than the monolingual comparison group but showed “qualitative differences and increased variation in speech production”. The review also stated that “more recently researchers have moved away from investigating whether there are one or two phonological systems and accept that there are two systems that interact” (ibid.: n.p.). These interactions (details in chapter 2) between the stronger (L1) and weaker (L2) language had positive and negative effects working both ways. The fact that positive transfer becomes “more evident with increased age and length of exposure to a second language” (ibid.) will be an important parameter when studying CLIL programs which often begin with Year 7 students and aim at successive bilingualism.

Apparently, it is hardly possible to quantify sufficient linguistic input in both simultaneous and successive bilingualism:

We do not know what the ‘normal’ amount of exposure to a language is. The number of child-directed utterances or, more specifically, of verbal interactions varies enormously across families, monolinguals as well as bilinguals. Consequently, we have an only approximate idea of what the minimum amount of input is for a child to be able to develop a native competence. It should definitely not drop below 20 per cent of the total amount of verbal interactions a child receives. More reduced amounts of exposure to a language may suffice to trigger linguistic development, but this will happen at a significant slower rate and it is unlikely to result in native competence (Meisel: 177 f).

Among the benefits and advantages of child bilingualism, as could be seen, was the opening up to another culture and the ability to, at least in part, express the same ideas in two languages. In order to facilitate this, although not measurable in definite numbers, a minimum threshold level of language exposure does exist and children would profit enormously from verbally rich environments. The result of such an acquisition process—especially from early on—“will almost certainly be vastly superior to what is normally achieved in foreign language classrooms” (ibid.: 185).