OPPapers.com

Bilingualism

Language Development in Internationally Adopted Children

by Boris Gindis PhD.
Despite numerous individual differences, all internationally adopted (IA) children have one common task: they must learn a new language.
From a school's perspective, IA children belong to a large and diverse category of students called "English Language Learners" (ELL). This group consists mostly of children who were born outside the U.S. and arrived in the country with their families or were born to language-minority families who live here. These are bilingual children who normally use both English and their first languages within a developmentally appropriate and socially expected range of language skills. Most importantly, these children continue to use their first language in their families.

Although part of the ELL group, IA children differ significantly from the rest of the ELL population. They are not bilingual. They are monolingual upon arrival and after several months are monolingual again, only this time in English. With few exceptions, there is a tendency in school settings to consider IA children bilingual and to apply to them the accumulated insights, knowledge, and practices regarding language acquisition in bilingual persons. This is an erroneous approach.

Additive and Subtractive Language Learning Models in IA Children

Internationally adopted children learn English in a different way from "typical" members of the ELL group. A new language is usually acquired based on one of two models: "additive" or "subtractive." When the second language is added to child's skills with no substantial detraction from the native language, it is called the additive model of language learning. When and if, in the process of second language acquisition, the first language diminishes in use and is replaced by the second language, we call this the subtractive model of language learning.

The subtractive model is characteristic for IA children, who are "circumstantial"...