Filipino-English bilingual children's language acquisition: Exploring the relationship among degree of parental bilingual input, children's bilingual production, comprehension, and metalinguistic ability

• Main Author: Lising, Jenifer Loy V.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2003
• Subjects: Bilingualism in children.; Language acquisition; Language awareness in children; Applied Linguistics
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/7; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etd_doctoral/article/1006/viewcontent/CDTG003569_P.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study examines the Filipino-English bilingual children's parental bilingual input, children's bilingual production, comprehension and metalinguistic ability and how these are related to each other. The respondents for the study were 60 parent-child dyads. The children were preschoolers who were 4 to 6 years old from the middle socioeconomic group. The parents were Filipino-English bilinguals. Parent-child dyads were required a 20-minute sample of their naturally occurring conversation for the analysis of the nature of bilingual parental input and children's bilingual production. All 60 child-respondents were individually tested for comprehension and metalinguistic ability. A total of three metalinguistic tasks were administered: one that required control of linguistic processing (arbitrariness test) and two that tested children's analysis of linguistic knowledge (vocabulary test and judgment and correction test). Parents' self-report showed that bilingual parents prefer the use of both English and Filipino in most domains of day-to-day activities but might actually favor English in tasks that are academic in nature. Moreover, a detailed analysis of parental bilingual input showed that Filipino-English bilingual parents speak to their children primarily in English, secondarily in Filipino and then least in a Filipino-English code-switched language. A similar pattern was shown in the children's bilingual production. The comprehension test seemed to indicate an equal performance by the child-respondents in the Filipino and English versions of the test. The children's metalinguistic ability scores also seemed to reflect an equal ability in controlling language processing (in the case of the arbitrariness test) and in analyzing linguistic knowledge (in the cases of the vocabulary test and judgment and correction test). Correlation data suggested that parental bilingual input in English predominantly positively showed relationship with several variables. Conversely, the parental bilingual input in English predominantly positively showed relationship with several variables. Conversely, the parental bilingual input in Filipino showed the most negative correlation with a number of variables.