the consequences of bilingualism on language development
TRANSCRIPT
The consequences of Bilingualism on Language Development
By. Semi Kim
Who is bilingual?A bilingual is a person who can speak, understand, use, read, write, think, or even sing in two languages fluently
Morphological Development Morphology is the branch of
grammar devoted to the study
of the structure or forms of
words, primarily through the
use of the morpheme construct.
It is traditionally distinguished
from syntax (rules governing
the combinations of words to
form sentences)
Morpheme: A smallest unit of meaning in a language One morpheme: Any word that
cannot be divided into smaller parts with meaning Example: dog, big, run
Free morpheme: some mor-phemes that can stand alone Example: sunglasses= sun +
glass + es
Bound morpheme: some mor-phemes that cannot stand alone Example: -er, -ist, dis- etc.
How does Bilingualism influ-ence morphological devel-opment?
Observations (one-on-one interaction) for 1 semester
Wug test
Introducing my fo-cus student Rachel (made up name)
Background
Information
About Rachel
• 8 year old girl
• Came from Cameroon in 2013
• Has a big family (3 older sisters and 1
younger brother)
• Very active in classroom
Methodolgy #1
Observations
Observations “gave”“gived”
“took” “taked”
“Cat eats” “cat eat”
“quickly” “quick”
Methodolgy
#2Wug Test
Wug test
Past tense Singular and Plural possessive
"This is a niz who owns a hat. Whose hat is it? It is the ______ hat. Now there are two nizzes. They both own hats. Whose hats are they? They are the ______ hats.“
"This is a bik /bIk/ who owns a hat. Whose hat is it? It is the xxx hat. Now there are two bik-s.They both own hats. Whose hats are they? They are the xxx hats."
"This is a man who knows how to spow /spow/. He is spowing. He did the same thing yester-day. What did he do yesterday? Yesterday he xxx. "
"This is a man who knows how to rick /rIk/. He is ricking. He did the same thing yesterday. What did he do yesterday? Yes-terday he xxx."
Wug testDiminutive and compounded or derived word Plural
"This is a wug /wΛg/. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two xxx.“
"This is a gutch /gΛč/. Now there is another one.There are two of them.There are two xxx.”
"This is a kazh /kæž/. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two xxx ".
"This is a wug. This is a very tiny wug. What would you call a very tiny wug? This wug lives in a house. What would you call a house that a wug lives in?“
This is a dog with quirks /kw~ks/ on him. He is all cov-ered with quirks. What kind of dog is he? He is a xxx dog."
Results Lack of vocabularies Out of 20 wug test questions, Rachel got 7 correctly, and those were mostly plural and past tense questions
Compared to 2 other on level students(first language as English) in the classroom, Rachel scored 2-3 points lower
Discussions
Limitations Was not able to get more data from more stu-
dents
Possible sources of errors Rachel might not have been in the best condi-
tion for a test
Questions How long would Rachel take in order to fully
develop morphological knowledge?
References
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Wug test. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 07, 2014, from http://en.wikipedi-a.org/wiki/wugtest