Bilingual Context Research Articles

A Comparative Analysis of Language Skills and Parent–Child Interactions in Monolingual and Bilingual Children Born Preterm

Children born preterm are at an elevated risk of language delays compared to children born full-term. However, there is a dearth of research investigating language outcomes in premature children exposed to more than one language. There is also limited empirical evidence linking the quantity and quality of parent input and language outcomes in premature children and the strength of these relationships in bilingual contexts remains unknown. Therefore, the current study examined language skills, parent input, conversational turns, and their associations at 16 months to 36 months in monolingual and bilingual children born preterm. Nine English-speaking monolingual parent–child dyads, and nine Spanish–English bilingual parent–child dyads participated in parent–child interactions that occurred over time in play-based contexts. Results revealed that preterm monolingual and bilingual children exhibited similar language abilities at all time points assessed. While both monolingual and bilingual dyads engaged in a comparable number of conversational turns at 16 m, monolingual mothers produced more words than bilingual mothers during play. Significant associations were observed between children’s vocabulary skills and their ability to combine words within and across most time points. Notably, relationships between parental input, conversational turns, and language skills were limited to a significant association between conversational turns at 16 m and vocabulary skills at 24 m. Together, findings indicate that bilingual children born preterm acquire language on the same timeline as monolingual children born preterm. While it is crucial that the current work be replicated in larger samples of children born preterm, the current work is the first to compare relationships between children’s language outcomes and the quantity and quality of parental input in monolingual and bilingual contexts.

Historical, Philosophical And Psychological Dimensions Of Bilingualism: Cognitive And Neurological Perspectives

Research on bilingualism has traditionally focused on its effects on language proficiency, yet a significant gap exists in understanding its broader cognitive impacts, particularly regarding executive functions and brain structure. This study aims to bridge that gap by examining the multifaceted influences of bilingualism on cognitive function, incorporating historical and philosophical perspectives to provide a comprehensive analysis. Using a systematic literature review approach, supported by neuroimaging studies, this research explores how bilingualism enhances brain plasticity and executive functions, such as attentional control and task-switching. Historical analysis reveals the shift from early 20th-century deficit views of bilingualism to the recognition of its cognitive advantages. Philosophical discussions further contextualize these findings, addressing the ethical considerations of cognitive enhancement and the mind-brain relationship in bilingual contexts. The results suggest that bilingualism confers distinct cognitive benefits, reshaping both brain structure and function. Based on these findings, this study offers key recommendations for improving future research methodologies, emphasizing the need for more diverse and standardized studies, and suggests practical counseling approaches that account for the psychological and philosophical complexities of bilingual identity. These insights challenge traditional views on cognitive development and have significant implications for educational policies, counseling strategies, and future neuroscience research.

The four strands: A simplified approach to SLA for CLIL

AbstractWhile it is widely accepted that language teachers require knowledge of second language acquisition (SLA) (Richards, 2010), what about content teachers, who are increasingly required to help develop their learners' academic language proficiency? How much do they need to know about SLA theories and how can they acquire such knowledge and expertise? This article proposes P. Nation's (2007) four strands framework as a straightforward and accessible model for content and language integrated learning (CLIL) teachers to address the challenge of balancing content and language instruction, a common concern within CLIL programs. The article begins by looking at two well‐known CLIL teacher competence frameworks. It then raises questions about the extent to which CLIL teachers need to master aspects of pedagogical content knowledge about SLA. The authors argue that while CLIL teachers do indeed need knowledge of how languages are learned and of SLA‐informed approaches to developing learners' second language (L2) proficiency, questions about just how much SLA knowledge CLIL teachers need and how they can be equipped with this knowledge remain unanswered. By delineating language learning opportunities into the four strands framework—meaning‐focused input, meaning‐focused output, language‐focused learning, and fluency development—the authors illustrate how this framework offers a practical guide for integrating language and content education effectively in CLIL and bilingual education contexts. The article ends with a presentation of three principles to help CLIL teachers achieve both the content and language teaching objectives of CLIL.

Empowering Future Bilingual Educators: Integrating Trauma-Informed Approaches in Bilingual Teacher Education

The impact of trauma on children's social, emotional, and academic growth is profound, yet teacher preparation programs, particularly in bilingual and multicultural contexts, often lack comprehensive training in trauma-informed practices. This qualitative study investigates the integration of trauma-informed approaches into a bilingual teacher education course at a university in West Texas. The study included 59 undergraduate pre-service teachers enrolled in a course on bilingual and multicultural education. Data were collected through preliminary and concluding written interviews, alongside ongoing instructional interventions, including discussions, case analyses, and trauma-informed strategies. Initially, participants demonstrated a limited understanding of trauma, associating it primarily with extreme events such as accidents or death. Post-course assessments, however, revealed a broadened understanding, recognizing everyday traumas like poverty, bullying, and family instability. Findings suggest that integrating trauma-informed approaches significantly enhances pre-service teachers' ability to identify and apply practical strategies to support trauma-affected students. The study introduces the Trauma-Informed Bilingual Teacher Preparation Model, focusing on key components such as foundational trauma knowledge, recognizing trauma symptoms, culturally responsive teaching, creating supportive environments, and fostering teacher resilience. By embedding trauma-informed practices in teacher education, this model prepares future educators to cultivate compassionate, inclusive classrooms, particularly in bilingual and multicultural settings. The study emphasizes the importance of curriculum reform to equip teachers with the necessary skills to support both students' emotional well-being and academic success.

Improved Speech Authenticity Detection in Chinese-English Bilingual Contexts.

The rapid evolution of voice technology has heightened the need for robust detection systems to distinguish between authentic and tampered speech. Recent competitions have significantly advanced the development of countermeasures against spoofing attacks. However, while advancements in detection technologies have been notable, existing methods often focus on a single type of tampering and language. Our contribution lies in developing an improved model that integrates an enhanced ResNet architecture with an LSTM to improve the detection of tampered audio, particularly in challenging multilingual scenarios. In the experiments, we built a hybrid dataset from self-recording Chinese speech and public VCTK2 English samples, enhanced the ResNet model generalization capabilities, and evaluated our approach using the bilingual dataset. Experiment results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves a superior performance with an equal error rate of 11.62%, even in the face of bilingual conditions, and, more importantly, outperforms the leading models from ASVSpoof 2021 and ADD 2022 competitions. We also employed advanced tampering techniques, including CycleGAN voice conversion and auto splicing, to simulate real-world tampering scenarios and verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Homophone priming in bilingual preference formation.

Homophone (HP) priming occurs when phonologically ambiguous words persistently coactivate their contextually irrelevant meanings. If suppressing those meanings fails, they subliminally bias preferences. Yet, it is unclear if prior findings generalize beyond individual words and to bilingual contexts. This has implications for consumer behavior and the debate on differences between first (L1) and second language (L2) lexical processing. We present four multi-item experiments with German-English bilinguals. An initial eye-tracked primed choice task established that homophones affect decision making. Three visual preference experiments with written and/or auditory primes and high- or low-proficiency L2 users found that homophones bias preferences more in L1 than L2. The L1-L2 gap widened if listening or low proficiency made suppression more difficult. We argue that the interplay between reduced suppression in L2 as predicted by activation-suppression models and lower subjective frequency of L2 homophones assumed by the frequency lag hypothesis explain the size of the L1-L2 priming gap. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Cross-linguistic dissociations in Kannada-English bilingual persons with aphasia and alexia

Individuals with alexia manifest reading impairments comparable to spoken language impairments. With escalating dependency on communication through texts, emails, and other social media sources, these individuals express their interest in improving written language skills as well. Alexia in bilinguals in the Indian scenario is of special interest, owing to diverse geographical, cultural, traditional, and linguistic demarcations in India. Although substantial research is reported on bilingual aphasia, evidence on bilingual alexia is scarce. The study aimed to explore the cross-linguistic dissociations in Kannada-English bilingual individuals with alexia in post-stroke survivors. Thirteen Kannada-English bilingual individuals (10 males and 3 females) with reading and language impairments post ictus, above 18 years of age were recruited. Participants were subjected to neurobehavioral linguistic and reading tasks in both Kannada and English. The performance of linguistic tasks and reading tasks were analysed for cross-linguistic distinctions, linguistics versus reading, and correlation between linguistics and reading abilities. Results revealed evident cross-linguistic dissociations, wherein participants outperformed in Kannada (L1) in both linguistics and reading domains. All performed superior in the linguistics domain compared to reading. In both languages, semantic abilities were best performed within the linguistic domains. Oral reading abilities fared poor scores relative to reading comprehension. The correlation analysis revealed strong correlation between oral reading and semantics > phonology > syntax. Reading comprehension strongly correlated to syntax > phonology > semantics. The study proved convincing linguistic influences on reading abilities in Kannada- English bilingual context. Most investigations have predominantly centred on case observations, and have often lacked thorough pre- and post-rehabilitation assessments of linguistic and reading impairments using equivalent tests in a bilingual context. This study proves to be a preliminary attempt in this context. A much larger bilingual alexia cohort would aid in substantiating the reading impairments in a variant of subgrouping of aphasia.

Translanguaging for the construction of instructional immediacy in a Mandarin–Japanese crosslinguistic class

Abstract Accumulating studies on teachers’ instructional immediacy consistently show a strong positive correlation with teaching effectiveness. To expand the research in a bilingual and cross-cultural context, the current study investigates the construction of instructional immediacy in a natural classroom setting by theoretically anchoring on translanguaging, which refers to the idea of promoting the integration of all linguistic and nonlinguistic resources to achieve effective pedagogy with multilingual speakers. We quantified the nonverbal facial expressions to compare the teacher’s endeavours in different language modes when constructing instructional immediacy, and we used Multimodal Conversation Analysis (MCA) to examine his endeavours. The results revealed language-specific facial expressions which are attributed to varied teaching purposes. We conclude that translanguaging can serve as an effective tool for fostering instructional immediacy in multilingual classrooms.

Effects of Homophone Priming on the Decision-Making in Perceptual Color Recognition of Mandarin Speakers

This study delves into the nuanced interactions between language, cognition, and perception by examining the impact of homophones on decision-making and perceptual color recognition among native Mandarin speakers. Drawing on theories of linguistic relativity and cognitive processing, this research hypothesized that homophonic primes would subtly influence both decision-making processes and color recognition tasks. Participants were assigned at random to surveys where they were unknowingly exposed to stimuli with and without homophonic primes before engaging in color recognition tasks involving subtle shade differentiations. Contrary to initial expectations, statistical analysis revealed no significant differences in decision-making accuracy between conditions, suggesting that homophones may not overtly affect conscious decision-making processes in our bilingual cohort. However, intriguing variations emerged in the perceptual color recognition task, where participants exposed to homophonic primes showed tendencies to perceive color shades more similarly compared to those in the control condition. This finding implies a potential cognitive load effect or subtle priming influence on perceptual categorization tied to linguistic structures. The implications of these findings challenge traditional views on language's role in shaping cognitive processes, highlighting the complexity of how linguistic structures such as homophones may operate at subconscious levels. The study contributes to ongoing debates in cognitive science and linguistics by underscoring the need for nuanced approaches to understanding cross-linguistic cognitive mechanisms. Future research should further explore the Whorfian hypothesis within bilingual contexts, considering additional variables such as language proficiency and cultural influences to elucidate the intricate relationship between language and cognition.

The effects of instruction on students’ argumentative scientific writing in a Basque medium of instruction setting

Abstract The present quasi-experimental study explores the effects of instruction on secondary students’ scientific argumentative writing in a Basque medium of instruction program. Secondary students (N = 105) completed written tasks before and after a unit on energy in their science class as part of this investigation. The experimental group (n = 61) additionally took part in three, one-hour sessions focused on scientific argumentation via instruction in cognitive discourse functions (Dalton-Puffer, 2013), while the control group (n = 44) completed the unit on energy without the additional instruction on argumentation. The final corpus of 210 texts was analysed using Toulmin’s Argumentation Pattern (1958). ANOVAs showed that the experimental group’s use of argumentation strategies increased significantly, while the control group’s use of such strategies did not increase. Thus, the results show that instruction on argumentation helps students to write better argumentative compositions. These findings suggest that instruction in the use of Cognitive Discourse Functions allows for academic language learning in bilingual education contexts. The pedagogical implications and future research directions of this study’s findings are discussed.

Assessment of emotion knowledge in a bilingual context and its relationship with adaptive behavior in early childhood education

Multiple education organizations and experts, including the recent education law in Spain, emphasize the significance of nurturing emotional skills from childhood to prevent the development of emotional and behavioral disorders. One of these skills is emotion knowledge (EK), which is closely linked to personal and social adjustment from early years, and later psychosocial adaptation. The present study aims to provide an assessment tool for EK in the bilingual context of the Basque Country and to provide evidence about the relationship between EK and various behavioral outcomes in early childhood education. The research involved 455 children between 3 and 6 years of old. The Emotion Matching Task, which measures the EK, was adapted to the bilingual context of the Basque Country has shown good psychometric properties and appropriate factor fit. The study also revealed the factor invariance of the Spanish and Basque versions, as well as invariance by sex. The results demonstrated that girls have higher EK than boys. Additionally, EK was associated with fewer externalizing, internalizing, and attention problems, as well as with lower atypicality and withdrawal, while higher EK was linked to greater adaptive skills. These findings support the need for interventions focused on the development of emotional skills and the suitable tools to assess their effectiveness.

The linguistic landscape in China: a case study of Shangri-La ethnic primary school

ABSTRACT In this article, drawing on Gorter & Cenoz’s framework for analysing the functions and quantitative distribution of languages in signage, we explore the linguistic landscape of an ethnic primary school in China. The finding reveals a diverse distribution of languages, encompassing monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual contexts. The creators of the linguistic landscape adhere to various laws, regulations, and policy documents, which in turn reflect institutional ideologies in the linguistic landscape’s purposes and functions. However, the linguistic landscape of the school does not accurately reflect students’ language practices. The study finds that teachers predominantly value Chinese for its perceived importance and utility for students, while students themselves regard Chinese as beautiful, useful, and important, and express a strong desire to learn English. There is widespread support among both teachers and students for the standardised use of Chinese, Tibetan, and English in public signage within the school’s domain. These linguistic landscapes are indicative of a multifaceted interplay between language ideology, language choices, language education and implicit curriculum, making it a representative case study in the educational field. It also mirrors a tenuous link between the translanguaging and linguistic landscape.

Code-Mixing in Disney’s Encanto

Code-mixing in movies is used to reflect human life and modernity in today’s bilingual or multilingual context. By studying the code-mixing in the movie, EFL learners can have better understanding on how language is used in different contexts and how it reflects societal norms and values. This qualitative research used content analysis to find out Hoffman’s code mixing within the dialogue of Disney’s Encanto. The result shows that code-mixing involving a change of pronunciation between Spanish and English occurs more than intra-lexical and intra-sentential code mixing. It happens because there are three characters who used Spanish accent in their dialogues. This study shows how language is used and represented in media. It also shows the media’s inclusion strategy to portray a more authentic and relatable cultures and communities.

Fostering language awareness for integration through teacher-researcher collaboration in a Spanish bilingual education context

Research on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programmes has shown that teachers find it difficult to integrate content and language in their teaching, and that this may be due to a lack of a specific type of teacher language awareness (TLA) for this type of teaching. This study explores how TLA for CLIL is manifested in metatalk in the context of a collaborative professional development activity, which took place in a bilingual secondary school in Madrid (Spain). Content and language teachers in pairs designed content and language integrated instructional sequences, implemented them, and assessed the students’ output. Four sessions in which teachers reflected on the activity, in collaboration with researchers, were audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. The data were analyzed using a social realist framework for investigating knowledge-building practices, Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). The analysis showed how content and language teachers refer to three types of knowledge (content, language, and language and content integration) in terms of ‘what’ is known (conceptual frameworks) and ‘how’ it is approached (following specific methods). The results confirm the importance of developing CLIL teachers’ language awareness through on-site collaboration which is closely linked to their normal teaching activities.

Attitudes towards Sardinian and Italian finally compared via the Matched-Guise Technique

Abstract Adopting a mentalist approach to the study of language attitudes, social prestige and stigma, as well as the values and stereotypes bestowed on Sardinian and Italian and their speakers were studied for the first time in Sardinia using the Matched-Guise Technique. The experiment was administered to Sardinian students of different ages, from different parts of the island, with different degrees of Italian/Sardinian bilingualism. Results show that Sardinian speakers are more favourably perceived in terms of friendliness and social pleasantness. Both Italian and Sardinian speakers, with no statistical difference between them, received moderately positive evaluations in traits related to socio-economic and cultural status, suggesting a decline in the traditional negative stereotypes associated with minority language speakers. Moreover, participants’ self-reported use and competence of languages, as well as their amount of school activities involving Sardinian, turned out to interact with the attitudes towards the minority language, as higher values of those variables were associated with higher ratings for Sardinian speakers. Findings could be useful to policy-makers in efforts to maintain Sardinia’s multilingual repertoire, and, more generally, to the scientific community in understanding the patterns and most relevant factors that affect language attitudes in bilingual contexts involving an endangered minority language.

Reframing developmental dyslexia and bilingualism: An overview to enhance strengths and advantages

This paper explores the evolving perceptions of bilingualism and developmental dyslexia, shifting from viewing them as deficits to acknowledging their inherent strengths. This overview contributes to the evolving narrative surrounding dyslexia and bilingualism, urging a revaluation of these conditions from deficit-centered perspectives to recognize the diverse cognitive abilities and adaptive advantages they offer. It delves into the positive aspects associated with developmental dyslexia, highlighting cognitive strengths like visuospatial skills, narrative reasoning, and dynamic reasoning.Additionally, it examines the multifaceted nature of bilingualism, outlining distinctions between types of bilingualism and emphasizing cognitive benefits such as enhanced cognitive flexibility, attentional skills, and executive functions among bilingual individuals. The complexities of language acquisition, socioeconomic factors, and societal support are discussed in understanding the interplay between language acquisition and cognitive development in bilingual contexts. Furthermore, the paper navigates the intricate connection between dyslexia and bilingualism, emphasizing factors like language exposure, linguistic characteristics, and individual cognitive processes that influence their interaction. Dyslexia significantly impacts language acquisition and proficiency in both native and second languages, requiring tailored assessments and interventions for dyslexic bilingual individuals.

First Generation’s Language Attitudes in a Bilingual Context: A Study on the Bihari Community in Dhaka City

This study investigated language attitudes of the first generation of the Urdu-speaking Bihari Community in Dhaka city. In this paper, the term ‘first generation’ refers to persons who immigrated to erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during the partition in 1947 and were born before the liberation warof 1971.Language attitudeis defined in this research as an individual or communal expression toward Urdu and Bangla, as well as language choices and use by the first generation. The purpose of this research was to investigate language attitudes of the first generation towards their mother tongue, Urdu, and the language of the dominant community, Bangla, in a bilingual situation in the Bihari community of Dhaka, and the present condition of Urdu in Bangladesh. The primary goal was to determine if they were positive, negative, or neutral to their own language, Urdu and to the dominant Bengali language. This study adopted a mixed-methods approach, and the data were obtained through a questionnaire and interviews with some respondents of the Bihari community of Geneva camp, Dhaka. The findings highlight the impact of their language attitudes on their language use and choice in bilingual situations and reveal that the first generation has a more positive attitude toward Urdu than Bangla. This study may serve as a specimen for future academics to assess how the language of a community shifts and how language attitudes of that particular community change over time. IUBAT Review—A Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 7(1): 01-25

Language acquisition and maintenance in bilingual contexts – Case studies from Europe

Language acquisition and maintenance in bilingual contexts – Case studies from Europe

Writing in a second language based on cross-linguistic sources: The language use among undergraduates in Hong Kong

Mastering the skill of writing from multiple sources is essential for university students. Against today's multilingual backdrop, students not only need to engage with various sources but may also encounter materials in different languages. However, most existing research on source-based writing has focused on monolingual contexts, leaving us with a limited understanding of how students integrate cross-linguistic sources in their writing. To address this gap, we conducted a preliminary exploration of language use in the context of writing an English text based on a series of Chinese (L1) and English (L2) sources among 33 university students in Hong Kong. By utilising multiple methods (i.e., writing logs, questionnaires, and interviews), we examined students' language use as reflected in their access to sources in different languages and their self-reported writing processes. The results did not show a significant difference in the use of L1 and L2 in integrating sources, despite the final written text being in L2. Additionally, we found that the two languages dynamically interacted with each other, supporting different stages of the writing process. The study also provides pedagogical implications for source-based writing in a bilingual context.

Early audiovisual language discrimination: Monolingual and bilingual infants’ differences in language switch detection

Successful language learning in bilinguals requires the differentiation of two language systems. The capacity to discriminate rhythmically close languages has been reported in 4-month-olds using auditory-only stimuli. This research offers a novel perspective on early language discrimination using audiovisual material. Monolingual and bilingual infants were first habituated to a face talking in the participants’ native language (or the more frequent language in bilingual contexts) and then tested on two successive language switches by the same speaker, with a close and a distant language. Code-switching exposure was indexed from parental questionnaires. Results revealed that while monolinguals could detect both the close- and distant-language switch, bilinguals only reacted to the distant language, regardless of home code-switching experience. In the temporal dimension, the analyses showed that language switch detection required at least 10 s, suggesting that the audiovisual presentation (here the same speaker switching languages) slowed down or even hindered the language switch detection. These results suggest that the detection of a multimodal close-language switch is a challenging task, especially for bilingual infants exposed to phonologically and rhythmically close languages. The current research sets the ground for further studies exploring the role of indexical cues and selective attention processes on language switch detection.