Pedagogy and Linguistics: An Analysis on the Influence of Bilingual Education on Childrens Language Ability Development

Course 2: Pedagogy and Linguistics: An Analysis on the Influence of Bilingual Education on Childrens Language Ability Development

I. Course Description

Bilingual education is not a novel concept. Children in most European countries have to learn a second language starting at the age of 9. (Belgian children start to learn a second language at the age of 3.). In the vast majority of European countries, their second language is English, and similar conditions occur in China. More and more countries and families pay attention to bilingual education.

Child language acquisition research usually focuses on monolingual background, while two-language acquisition research is mainly based on adult learners, however, most children around the world grow up speaking more than one language. The field of child language development, particularly bilingual language development, brings together issues of first and second language acquisition in a way related to the understanding of the majority of language development among children in the world. This course covers a range of questions about first language development, child bilingualism and second / foreign language learning, aiming to introduce students to the complexity of language development and the importance of learning multiple language systems from an early age. The first half of the course explores the key issues of the first language development, while the second half explores the key issues of bilingual development and second / foreign language learning through the educational context.

II. Professor Introduction

Victoria Murphy – Tentenured Professor at Oxford University

Victoria Murphy Professor is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Dean of the Oxford School of Education, and is also responsible for the recruitment of Kellogg College, Oxford. Victoria Murphy Professors research focuses on understanding the interrelationship between child language / foreign language learning, vocabulary and literacy development.

Her work examines cross-linguistic relationships among emerging bilingual children and how primary school foreign language learning influences the development of primary language literacy. Her work was funded by the ESRC, Leverhulme Trust, Nuffield Foundation and Education Donation Foundation, and she published two books on young language learners (English Early Childhood Education for Foreign languages, Early School Second Language Learning: Trends and Background), as well as many reviewed journal articles and book chapters.

III. Syllabus

1. Development of speech perception and expression ability
2. Vocabulary ability development
3. Grammatical ability development
4. The development of communicative competence
5. Development of language ability of special groups
6. Native language acquisition of bilingual scholars
7. Code mixing and language selection
8. Early second language acquisition
9. Foreign language teaching for young children
10. Bilingual education programs