Living Languages: Multilingualism across the Lifespan

296 Pages·2007·0.86 MB·English

by  Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa

LIVING LANGUAGES
LIVING LANGUAGES
Multilingualism across the Lifespan
Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tokuhama-Espinosa, Tracey, 1963–
Living languages : multilingualism across the lifespan / Tracey Tokuhama-
Espinosa.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–275–99912–4 (alk. paper)
1. Multilingualism. 2. Bilingualism. 3. Language and education. 4. Language
and languages—Study and teaching. I. Title.
P115.T65 2008
404'.2—dc22 2007036497
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 2008 by Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007036497
ISBN: 978–0–275–99912–4
First published in 2008
Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West,Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.praeger.com
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my encouraging husband and inspirational children.
For my linguist mother and teacher father.
In loving memory of the amazing lives of my grandparents,
Hazel Hawk and Howard McBride, and
Gladys Kimie Zakahi and Edwin Mako Tokuhama,
lovers of languages all.
Whoever is not acquainted with foreign languages
knows nothing of his own.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832
Contents
Introduction ix
Chapter 1. Raising Multilingual Children: The Ingredients, the
Recipes, and Your Personal Banquet (Why This Book
Is for You) 1
Chapter 2. The Global Community and Multilingualism: Who,
Why,When,Where, and How Being Multilingual Has
Grown in the Past Decade, and What This Means for
Your Children 15
Chapter 3. Languages across the Lifespan 25
Chapter 4. How Long Does It Take a Non-Native Speaker to
Become Fluent in a Second, Third, or Subsequent
Language? 63
Chapter 5. A Special Word about Third Languages 81
Chapter 6. The Brain and Languages 115
Chapter 7. Putting It All Together: How This Information Shows
Us How to Reach the Potential of Every Multilingual
141
viii Contents
Chapter 8. Our Story 181
Notes 207
References 223
Index 273
Introduction
Living Languages is a play on words. Are the languages being lived
by the people, or are the languages themselves alive? I hope that by
the end of this book you agree that both are true.This book is about
multilingualism across the human lifespan: how languages are
learned at different developmental stages, why this is so, and how to
take advantage of this knowledge to more efficiently integrate lan-
guages into our lives.This book is also about the brain and languages
and how studies in cognitive neuroscience explain (or reject) theo-
ries from linguists, psychologists, and bilingual educators. Different
periods in human development lend themselves to different lan-
guage learning processes for social, neurological, and psychological
reasons.
There is no one-size-fits-all recommendation for parents and teach-
ers related to foreign language acquisition. This book argues that a
person’s learning potential can be nurtured and maximized through
the application of best practice strategies and methodologies. Finally,
this book is about you and all the key players in your multilingual life.
When an individual and his family choose a life with many languages,
each person in that unit has a role to fulfill.Are the home, school, and
community all sending the child a unified message about the benefits
of multilingualism? Or does one or more of these players devalue the
experience? Does the school curriculum lend itself to cultivating lan-
guages, or does it impede such growth? Do community leaders recog-
nize the value of multilingual and multicultural contributions, or are
x Introduction
they ethnocentric in their views? This book explores the many com-
binations of the realities that are possible in today’s world, placing
special emphasis on the roles of families and schools in enhancing the
foreign language learning experience.
Chapter 1 begins by reviewing the ten key factors in raising mul-
tilingual children (aptitude, timing, motivation, strategy, consistency,
opportunity, the linguistic relationship between the languages, sib-
lings, gender and hand-use as a reflection of cerebral dominance),
which are detailed in my first book, Raising Multilingual Children.
Each of these factors and its importance, even in its absence, is
explained. When an individual can determine his own “recipe,” or
combination of factors, then his unique mix points to how he can
best manage languages in his life.
Chapter 2 celebrates how lucky we are to be living at this partic-
ular point in history. Today languages are highly valued around the
world by a myriad of professions, something that marks a turning
point in human linguistic endeavors. Never before in the history of
the world have so many people been literate in multiple languages.
Never before has the demand for people who speak other languages
and have a window into other cultures been so high. Never before
has there been so great a need to improve communication between
different countries, businesses, and individuals as there is today.
Chapters 3 delves into languages across the human lifespan and
defines seven different life stages from birth to adulthood: (1) bilin-
gualism from birth; (2) early childhood; (3) the elementary school
years; (4) the middle school years; (5) the high school years; (6) the
university years; and (7) adulthood.This book acknowledges the dif-
ferences between child and adult foreign language education and
offers recommendations for how to maximize language learning at
each stage.
Chapter 4 focuses on the distinction of language for school ver-
sus language for play, or academic versus social language skills.This
is followed by the developmental steps of language acquisition,
from comprehension to speaking to reading and finally writing.The
chapter details the difference between learning to read and write in
first, second, and third languages as well as the importance of the
mother tongue, or native language, as it relates to learning subse-
quent languages.
Chapter 5 explains how third languages differ from second lan-
guages in terms of how they are learned.The discussion covers seven
key elements that influence the success of trilingualism: (1) first lan