factors that affect bilingualism/multilingualism in the Malaysian ECE context
individual abilities
family factor
society's perceptions
-siblings learn a great deal from one another as they have a greater number of verbal exchanges and conversations in a day.
in the negative case, one child may dominate the language exchange and stunt the other’s development
A child's strong natural attraction to language. The language used by parents will influence the language that their parents will use. If the father often uses English to speak to his son while the mother often uses Malay then their child will be able to speak in the language
Choice. bilingual/ multilingual is purely motivated by an interest in languages. Individual became fascinated by words and language at a young age and started studying other languages in school. Individual continue to learn as much as they can about language and acquire as many language skills.
Socioeconomic status. An increasingly advanced socioeconomic requires a person to be fluent in bilingual and multilingual speaking. This is because they have to deal with outsiders who have different languages and are easy to communicate especially while working.
By learning a new language, people are bound to meet new people and make new friends and it opens the doors to new friendships, new cultures and new life oppotunities that people might not otherwise get as a monolingual
it is estimated that aptitude for foreign language is on par with other talents, with roughly 10% of the population enjoying its benefits
individual who has high aptitude for foreign languages learn languages easily.
aptitude(natural ability to do something)
A person with parents from different culture are more likely to be bilingual or multilingual because it is easier for them to learn as they are exposed to different languages ever since their childhood.
bilingual education is impossible without a deep understanding of biculturalism, which should pervade the entire linguistic programme. For very young ESL learners the English language should always represent the expression of a socio-cultural reality, as the German pedagogue Kurt Egger (1994) confirms: “In a conscious and unconscious way, a child comprehends not only the importance of a linguistic message, but also the way it is expressed.
This means that even if teachers tried to teach language without culture - with a voluntary withdrawal of culture in the classroom4 -, this would be an educational non-sense because the child would understand their personal cultural dimension and automatically comprehend the cultural value of their linguistic acts in any case, on a conscious and/or unconscious level.
attitudes of parents,
siblings, and peers can add value to the language and accelerate its use and thus
add to the effectiveness of the cycle. However, if parents, siblings, or peers share
negative attitudes toward a language, they will subtract value, which will lead to
less enthusiasm for using the language, attract less input, decrease proficiency,
and so on.