Bilingualism

Bilingualism and Its Types

Prepared by : Meredith Cas

​INTRODUCTION

​

​Defining bilingualism in just a few words is not easy, as each individual has different bilingual characteristics. There may be distinctions between ability and use of a language, or differences in proficiency between the two languages. People usually become bilingual because they need it in their day-to-day lives. As a result the degree of bilingualism may vary from one individual to another. Bilinguals are not necessarily perfectly fluent in their languages; it is in fact quite common to have a dominant language.

​

​Bilingualism can be attained at any stage in your life. However, it is easier if you have acquired your second language growing up as the brain is more flexible but anyone can become bilingual. The difference in bilinguals who acquired the language later in life is that they often have an accent.

​

​What is Bilingualism?

​ Bilingualism is the ability to speak two languages. It may be acquired early by children in regions where most adults speak two languages. Bilingualism can also refer to the use of two languages in teaching, especially to foster learning in students trying to learn a new language. Bilingualism encompasses a range of proficiency and contexts. A young child entering school may be called bilingual but it may be that she uses her first or home language for domestic and familial purposes and that English is her preferred language for communication outside the home. Or she may be largely monolingual in her first language only when she starts school.

​

​

​ To learn his or her first language, a child spends quite a while listening, repeating, and learning by trial and error during the first five years of life. There’s no way to do the same thing once children have begun school and are trying to learn a second language in a class held for only one or two hours per week. So how do the students learn a second language when the teacher is speaking only that language and they understand only perhaps a quarter of the words?

​

​ First of all, they go by the many clues that help them to decipher the message, such as the intonation, which often conveys a speaker’s intentions, for good or ill, and the context, which in a classroom might be the stated subject of the day’s lesson or the photo illustrating the day’s reading. Second, the students also learn by memorizing word lists, grammatical rules, verb conjugations, and so on.

​

​This way of learning a second language is quite different from the trial-and-error method by which young children learn their mother tongue without even realizing it. One important difference is that with the second language, the child’s desire to communicate is not remotely so strong, especially in a school setting. (In contrast, learning a second language is easier when the learners are immersed in a community where this language is spoken, probably because that gives them more incentive to use it.) A lesser degree of motivation has also been correlated with lower dopamine levels, which is what one would expect for a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and desire.

​

​Practicing a language in an environment where it is spoken is what makes us internalize its grammar. When we are learning our mother tongue, it is through repeated exposure to certain kinds of sentences that we implicitly encode the grammatical rules involved and eventually come to understand and produce our own sentences effortlessly.

​

​TYPES OF BILINGUALISM

​

• ​Early bilingualism - there are two types: simultaneous early bilingualism and consecutive (or successive) early bilingualism.

Simultaneous early bilingualism - refers to a child who learns two languages at the same time, from birth.

• Successive early bilingualism - refers to a child who has already partially acquired a first language and then learns a second language early in childhood.

• Late bilingualism – refers to bilingualism when the second language is learned after the age of 6 or 7; especially when it is learned in adolescence or adulthood.

​

• ​Additive bilingualism and Subtractive bilingualism – The term additive bilingualism refers to the situation where a person has acquired the two languages in a balanced manner. It is a strong bilingualism. Subtractive bilingualism refers to the situation where a person learns the second language to the detriment of the first language, especially if the first language is a minority language.

​

• Passive bilingualism - refers to being able to understand a second language without being able to speak it.

​

​ We are aware that bilingualism is been a natural phenomenon worldwide. We need to study this lesson because it informs us about the types of bilingualism and and its differences so that we will not be confused. Speaking another language enhances a bilingual person's thinking and ideas. It also gives us knowledge about its many benefits such us enhancing our language skills and social skills that we can use in our mere future especially when we are in a communicative setting.

​