Bilingual Myth-Busters: Language Confusion in Bilingual Children

This integrative literature review revealed no evidence to support the existence of language confusion in bilingual children. Several research findings assist in deconstructing the myth of language confusion, including the following: 

1️⃣ Infants have the ability to differentiate languages, and bilingual infants possess basic mechanisms for keeping languages separate. 

2️⃣ Bilingual toddlers adequately separate and appropriately use their languages with monolingual conversational partners. 

3️⃣ Code-mixing is a normal bilingual behavior and is not associated with deficiency. 

4️⃣ Bilingual children are capable of applying metalinguistic or cross-linguistic transfer skills that allow the transfer of linguistic skills from one language to another. 

5️⃣ Children with a wide range of communication disorders are capable of becoming bilingual. 

 A growing body of research also describes the bilingual abilities of children with a wide range of communication disorders. The following summarizing points were developed by Kohnert to help understand bilingual children with language disorders, but also can be applied to a broader range of children with communication disorders (Kohnert, 2008, pp. 105–106): 

1️⃣ Bilingualism does not cause communication disorder, and prescribing monolingualism will not cure it. 

2️⃣ Children with communication disorders are capable of learning two languages. 

3️⃣ L1 and L2 proficiency (or skill level) will depend upon the exposure to and support for each of these languages.  

4️⃣ Bilingual children with communication disorders need two languages to be successful communicators in their environments and communities. 

 Many readers may be familiar with the research reviewed in this article. It is hoped that this article provides readers with research-based findings that can be shared in future conversations with families and colleagues who may suspect that learning two languages is too much for children to handle.