The impetus to begin Bilingual Buds came about six years ago when the author, pregnant with twins and commuting into New York City, was reading about the numerous cognitive benefits for children of acquiring a second language early in their lives. She was surprised to learn that even by the age of six months, children begin to lose the ability to…

The results of a study involving 18 students from a grade 8 early French immersion class support the argument that in producing a second language, learners will on occasion become aware of a linguistic problem and modify their output. (41 references) (MDM)

Surface structure morphology in child second language acquisition is investigated with emphasis on mastery of correct forms and consequent implications for teachers and researchers. Communication strategies used by the second language learner are discussed. (RM)

This study sought to examine to what extent language learners in an immersion classroom used their native language and the foreign language when performing the cognitive operations involved in math word problems. Thirty-two third- through sixth-graders in a Spanish immersion program participated in the study. Data were collected through: (1)…

This study examined bilingual children's performance in reading Persian and English at grades one, three and six. Two types of programs, one an immersion curriculum and the other a split curriculum where half the daily instruction is in one language and the remaining half is in the other, were compared with monolingual control groups. The results…

A study in an early French partial immersion program in a Melbourne (Australia) elementary school investigated participating children's performance in mathematics in English (their first language) and French. Mathematics testing in both languages has been undertaken regularly as part of a long-term evaluation of the program. In the first year of…

This book is a comprehensive treatment of the literature on second language acquisition in childhood, viewed in terms of contemporary process models. After a general introduction on bilingualism in society, six major topics are considered: first-language acquistion, language acquisition and learning in childhood and adulthood, simultaneous…

Articles in this book on early second language learning are presented in 13 categories, with each category containing 4 to 7 papers. The categories include the following: the advantages and disadvantages of FLES (elementary school foreign language programs), FLEX (foreign language exploratory programs), and immersion program models; at what age an…