Multilingual Early Language Transmission (MELT) - Mercator ...

described nineteen years of his bilingual family, his children’s bilingual language (English-
French) and literacy development in a monolingual setting (Louisiana in the US). In de 1980s
the focus was on language choice and morphosyntactic development: the development (in
young children) of the ability to construct words and sentences in the two languages. The
starting point of research was the relationship between the two languages. More and more
research is done into early bilingual language learning. For example, phonological
development and early speech perception in bilingual infants (Bosch & Sebastián-Gallés,
1997).
More research is done concerning another line of research concerns the different domains
of language learning. Cummins (2000: 57-111) distinguishes two levels of language learning
skills: BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) and CALP (Cognitive Academic
Language Proficiency). BICS are language skills needed in social situations, and CALP refers to
formal academic learning. This includes listening, speaking, reading, and writing about
subject area content material. This level of language learning is essential for students to
succeed in school.
Since the 1990s about early bilingual development has been studied extensively. De Houwer
(2009) remarks that: “There is simply too much of it, it is impossible to give a comprehensive
review of most publicly available research on early bilingual acquisition” (De Houwer, 2009:
13).
Based on extensive research results, a large body of research suggests that bilingualism is
good for an individual child’s linguistic development as well as for a child’s flexibility in
intellectual and social
processes.
However, language is not an abstract vehicle but an instrument of human communication
that needs to be used and further developed in two areas of language use. First, in the area
of spontaneous communication between adults and children in the personal context of the
family, the social environment of the work place, associations, sport activities, and cultural
affairs. Second, by means of the training of the structures and expression of more abstract
thinking processes. The older a person gets, the more abstract thinking is developed.
Today the number of and also the geographic diversity of the researchers studying BFLA has
grown. Western Europe was the first continent that investigated BFLA; nowadays
researchers are active across the world: Northern America, Australia, China, and Russia. That
brings specific cultural issues into research design, in the sense that children across the
world have not got the same socio-psychological development. When children grow older,
different events in their lives can lead them to acquire an additional second or third
language. Grosjean (2010) suggests that there are probably more bilinguals on earth today
than monolinguals. Due to immigration and globalisation the number of bi- and multilingual
and bi- and multicultural individuals will only increase.
In a couple of decades, the perspective of BFLA has reversed: first monolingualism was the
norm and multilingualism the exception, nowadays multilingualism is the norm and
monolingualism the exception.
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