Why Opinion and Personal Observation isn’t as good as Systematic Research

Families of bilingual children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are often told to use only one language. School district personnel may insist that these children receive instruction in only one language even if there are bilingual programs available. Even bilingual personnel who work with children (teachers and SLPs for example) may say that children with DLD can become more confused if in a bilingual environment. This is simply not true. I have participated in many studies that demonstrate that bilingual children are not more likely to show higher risk for DLD than monolinguals; we know that bilingual children with DLD show comparable performance to monolingual children with DLD; we know that bilingual children with DLD show cognate advantages similar to typical bilinguals; we know that intervention in one language can carry over to the other language. This work is all supported by the data-based research (linked) and is consistent with work that other researchers are doing.

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Bilingualism does NOT increase risk for language impairment

I’ve been saying this for years. My colleague Mary Anne Nericcio says she’s been saying this for 30 years– I guess I’ve been saying it for about that long too! As part of our Diagnostic Markers of Language Impairment in Bilingual Children project, funded by the NIH (NIDCD) we screened some 1200 children who spanned the range from monolingual Spanish speakers to monolingual English speakers and looked to see whether children in the middle (bilinguals) were more likely to fall in the risk range more often than monolinguals. They don’t.