Input Quality Mattered: Parental Language Input and Bilingual Children's Language Acquisition

The goal of this paper is to examine the extent to which the language proficiency of parental input can be related with what kind of bilingual children’s language acquisition. The research objects were bilingual children (1.5 - 9 years old) who have been exposed to two languages either from birth (simultaneous) or within the preschool years (successive). The literature was re-examined from a perspective of the input quality. The purpose was to use the already existing data to assess different qualities of input, where they were classified in terms of the uniform standardized language proficiency levels of the CEFR. The main findings are: (1) A2 level of CEFR could be seen as the threshold point of input quality; input proficiency at A2 or below A2 level of CEFR is so- called “low proficiency” and has little or no impact on bilingual acquisition; input proficiency above A2 can have an increasingly significant impact on language acquisition of bilingual children, except “mixing” (one...Show moreThe goal of this paper is to examine the extent to which the language proficiency of parental input can be related with what kind of bilingual children’s language acquisition. The research objects were bilingual children (1.5 - 9 years old) who have been exposed to two languages either from birth (simultaneous) or within the preschool years (successive). The literature was re-examined from a perspective of the input quality. The purpose was to use the already existing data to assess different qualities of input, where they were classified in terms of the uniform standardized language proficiency levels of the CEFR. The main findings are: (1) A2 level of CEFR could be seen as the threshold point of input quality; input proficiency at A2 or below A2 level of CEFR is so- called “low proficiency” and has little or no impact on bilingual acquisition; input proficiency above A2 can have an increasingly significant impact on language acquisition of bilingual children, except “mixing” (one sentence with words from two languages). (2) The language input quality with “mixing” or “low proficiency”, could not effectively stimulate language acquisition of bilingual children for them to be able to keep pace with their monolingual peers. Moreover, (3) native input might not always be the best, but it will always be positive for bilingual acquisition.Show less

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Input Quality Mattered: Parental Language Input and Bilingual Children's Language Acquisition