Stuttering and the bilingual child
According to the recent United States Census, one in seven, or 31.8 million, people in the United States speak a language other than English in the home. It is unknown how many people who stutter are bilingual, but it is safe to estimate that at least a half million people in the United States who are bilingual also stutter.Research has shown that a child’s language skills can affect his or her fluency. Many young children who are in the beginning stages of stuttering will show an increase in stuttering when they use:
- New or longer vocabulary words.
- Complex grammar, such as longer sentences containing words like and, but, or because.
What is Bilingualism?
Currently, there is no one way to define bilingualism. Although many definitions have been suggested, the following definition may be most appropriate for young children: Bilingual refers to those children who speak/have been spoken to in two (or more) languages in the home since birth and who are spoken to in only one or both of those two languages at daycare/school.Also, some children are referred to as second-language learners. A child who speaks/has spoken only one language at home since birth and is then exposed to a second language after age 3 is a second-language learner.
How Does Bilingualism/Second-Language Learning Affect Fluency?
In young children who are bilingual or second-language learners, stuttering may be noticed when:- The child is mixing vocabulary (code mixing) from both languages in one sentence. This is a normal process that helps the child increase his skills in the weaker language, but may trigger a temporary increase in disfluency.
- The child is having difficulty finding the correct word to express his/her ideas resulting in an increase in normal speech disfluency.
- The child is having difficulty using grammatically complex sentences in read more
