An Introduction to Bilingual Development

Increasingly, children grow up hearing two languages from birth. This introductory textbook shows how children learn to understand and speak those languages against the backdrop of their language learning environments. A narrative around the bilingual development of four young children with different language profiles helps to explain the latest research findings in a lively and accessible manner.

Key Features

Offers teaching-orientated coverage of bilingual development

Introductory textbook with extensive glossary, chapter summaries, discussion points and suggestions for further reading

Increasingly, children grow up hearing two languages from birth. This introductory textbook shows how children learn to understand and speak those languages against the backdrop of their language learning environments. A narrative around the bilingual development of four young children with different language profiles helps to explain the latest research findings in a lively and accessible manner.

Annick De Houwer has recently been appointed as Chair of Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Erfurt in Germany. She is also the new Director of the Language Center there. In addition, Professor De Houwer holds the title of Collaborative Investigator to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.A.). Her PhD was based on a dissertation on bilingual acquisition, a topic she has since continued to work on steadily. Her first book, The Acquisition of Two Languages from Birth (CUP, 1990), is widely cited in the bilingual acquisition literature. Her second book is the comprehensive textbook Bilingual First Language Acquisition (Multilingual Matters, 2009). Dr. De Houwer has also published on Dutch child language, attitudes towards child language, teen language, and intralingual subtitling.