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Notwithstanding the evident professional, personal, and social advantages of bilingualism in Canada and internationally, fear and pessimism are often expressed about raising or educating children bilingually. These fears are often founded on four myths: (1) the myth of the monolingual brain; (2) the myth of time-on-task; (3) the myth of bilingualism and language impairment; and (4) the myth of minority language children. These myths are important because they provide a basis for decision making about raising and educating children bilingually and, thus, it is important to validate them empirically. This article will explore each of these myths and review research findings relevant to each. Research on three populations of dual language learners will be considered: preschool children who acquire two languages simultaneously; majority language students attending second language immersion programs; and children who acquire a minority language at home but are schooled in a majority language.
Vol. 2, Special Issue, Article 2: Early childhood bilingualism: Perils and possibilities (PDF, 653 KB)
Fred Genesee is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at McGill University, Montreal, where he has worked since 1978. He has carried out research on some of the first immersion programs implemented in Canada and has helped educators around the world develop their own immersion programs. His work has sought to debunk persistent myths surrounding bilingualism and second-language acquisition in early childhood.
Dr. Genesee’s current research interests include language acquisition in preschool bilingual children, internationally adopted children, and the language and academic development of at-risk students attending bilingual programs.
Dr. Genesee is the author of numerous professional and scientific research reports and books, including Learning Through Two Languages: Studies of Immersion and Bilingual Education (1987), Educating Second Language Children (1994), Classroom Based Evaluation in Second Language Education (1996), Beyond Bilingualism: Multilingualism and Multilingual Education (1998), Dual Language Instruction: A Handbook for Enriched Education (2000), Trends in Bilingual Acquisition (2000), and Dual Language Development and Disorders (2004).
He has served as a consultant on second/foreign language and bilingual education in countries around the world, including Japan, Spain, Germany, Estonia, Hong Kong, Latvia, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, and Italy.
Genesee, F. H. (2009). Early childhood bilingualism: Perils and possibilities. Journal of Applied Research on Learning, 2 (special issue), Article 2, pp. 1-21.
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