The impact of older siblings on the language environment and language development of bilingual toddlers

Previous research has suggested that the language development of bilingual children benefits from more exposure and opportunities for language use. Typically, this research has used aggregated measures of exposure and use. The role of specific interlocutors and in particular older siblings has received comparatively little attention. In this study, we examine the impact of having an older sibling on the language environment and language development of a group of 31 bilingual Greek–Dutch toddlers aged 16 to 30 months growing up in the Netherlands. Approximately half (n = 14) of the toddlers had an older sibling. With respect to language environment, toddlers with older siblings were in general found to hear and use more Dutch at home than their first-born peers. There were however no differences between the two groups of toddlers in terms of parental language use. With respect to language development, toddlers with older siblings were found to score higher than first-born peers on measures of Dutch receptive vocabulary, productive vocabulary, and morphosyntactic complexity. For Greek, no such differences were observed. The findings are discussed in light of factors including family constellation, parental language proficiency, bilingual parenting strategies, and the wider sociolinguistic context.

Exploration on Way out of Achieving Chinese-English Bilingualism from Early Childhood in China

Worldwide, there has been a number of researchers studying how children acquire two or more languages since bilingualism or multilingualism were increasingly prevalent. China, a monolingual culture is a late participant engaged in the field of bilingualism studies. Recent years witnessed a growing number of Chinese parents who attempted to raise their children bilingual by speaking English to them at home, however, relevant research on bilingualism acquisition in China lagged behind. This article reviews existing studies on early child bilingualism acquisition and bilingual parenting, displays language context in China, and explores solutions to difficulties Chinese parents face. Different from their counterparts in culturally diverse context, these Chinese parents were confronted with unique and more challenges: the quality of English they speak to children; the quantity of English input; the monolingual environment in China; and resistance to English by children. Solutions are proposed to tackle these issues respectively.