What do parents expect? Children's language acquisition in a bilingual community

Abstract

Parents play a decisive role in fostering and monitoring language development in their children. Furthermore, in bilingual settings, they make crucial choices about language, and decisions about whether to raise their children bilingually or monolingually in the early years. But what is the state of their knowledge about the normal course of language development and the advantages of bilingualism? A survey was made of 200 parents attending baby and child clinics in North Wales. Results show that parents know less about language development than they know about other areas of child development. In addition, findings suggest that, where only one parent speaks Welsh, parents may be uncertain as to how to raise their child bilingually. Opportunities for bilingualism are being lost, and, with them, the potential benefits for the child, and for the future of the Welsh language itself. Both monolingual and bilingual parents (and therefore their children) would benefit from more and better information on how parents might facilitate language development.