Araceli García's Profile

CENOZ, J. (1997)

CENOZ, J. - JESSNER, U.

The chapters in this volume provide the first comprehensive overview of trends
in research on early phonological, lexical, syntactic and pragmatic development
in children acquiring two (or more) languages simultaneously. Ongoing as well as
emerging issues are examined and discussed by leading researchers in the field.
Collectively, these studies extend our knowledge of bilingual acquisition and
broaden our understanding of the child's ability to acquire and use language.
This volume is of interest to researchers working on language acquisition by
monolingual and bilingual children, graduate students of psychology, linguistics
and communication sciences, and researchers and professionals concerned with the
diagnosis and treatment of bilingual children with language impairment.

This paper focuses on bilingual and trilingual education in the Basque
Autonomous Community in Spain, where Basque and Spanish are official languages.
The use of Basque as the language of instruction is widespread and there is a
trend to introduce English as a third language from a very early age. The paper
also discusses the use of English as an additional language of instruction
within the bilingual system and the teaching conditions. It also summarizes the
results of research on multilingual schooling in the Basque Country, which has
focused on different areas such as the development of proficiency in Basque and
Spanish, the effect of bilingualism on third-language acquisition, the effect of
early instruction on the development of proficiency in English or other
languages and on the cognitive development. Finally, some of the challenges that
the Basque educational multilingual system will have to face in the course of
the next years are considered.

The study of the multilingual lexicon has been approached from different
perspectives including theoretical proposals and empirical studies of speech
production and speech perception. In the case of speech production, most
research studies have focused on cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition
of third or additional languages (see Cenoz, Hufeisen & Jessner, 2001a and
b). This chapter reports a research study on cross-linguistic influence and
examines the effect of language typology on the activation of languages in the
multilingual lexicon.

A brief narrative
description of the journal article, document, or resource.
A project introducing English as a third language in 30 elementary schools
in the Basque Country (Spain) is described. The program, emerging from a
national curriculum reform effort, begins English instruction when students are
eight years old, three years earlier than previously. Students are already
bilingual in Spanish and Basque, both official languages, and some feel that
because the two languages are not related, students experience some confusion in
learning both. Addition of a third, also unrelated language is seen as a special
challenge in this area. At the program's inception in 1992, the University of
the Basque Country was designated as the coordinating institution. Teachers were
trained in English language instruction in the United Kingdom and had regular
meetings for discussing instructional issues and exchanging ideas. An
activity-based and thematic syllabus evolved from this process. Program
coordinators observed classrooms several times a year. A formative evaluation
used observation, an attitude survey of teachers, parents, and administrators, a
teacher survey, and English language testing. Results suggest the program
fostered a favorable attitude toward English language teaching, highlight the
important role of the teacher, and provided a significant opportunity for
teacher development. Areas for improvement were also identified. A bibliography
is included. (MSE)