For some children, becoming bilingual is just a product of their environment, without much thought being given to the issue. For other children however, their parents decided from the begining that they would be bilingual, and planned accordingly. Some of these children can understand, speak, read, and write in both languages, while other are fluent in only some of these ways in both languages. This brings up two important questions. (1) What does it mean to be bilingual? (2) Does the planning (or lack of) make a difference?

What does it mean to be bilingual?

There are four general critera of language proficiency that need to be considered:

 - listening/understanding - speaking - reading - writing 

Usually the first two and the last two are coupled together. There are many cases of people who are able to understand and speak a language while they cannot read and write it (in fact, every child goes through that stage on the way to complete fluency of the language). To read and write in a language, clearly you must understand it. However, depending on when and how one learns the language it is possible that it is easier to read and write vs. listening and speaking. From this perspective it is possible to set up another category biliteracy. This seperates the ability to oraly communicate and function in a language from being able to read and write in that language. // What does it mean to be biliterate? To be biliterate has a stronger and more specified connotation than the claim of being bilingual. ...

Preparing to be bilingual

One manner this can come up is an adult taking language classes to learn a language. This is what many times can lead to a person being more proficient in reading and writing than listening and speaking. However, it depends on the focus and structure of the class.

Bilingualsim that leads to a more native proficiency of a language usually has its root at a young age. However, within that category there is a spectrum of the prepartation and thought that went into the bilingualism of the child. There are two main categories of bilingualism in children: simultaneous bilingualism and sequential bilingualism. Simultanious biligualism is when both languages are learned at the same time. Sequential bilingualism is where one language is learned first, and then the second is introduced. When a child becomes bilingual by learning two languages at one time. ... When a child becomes bilinugal by first learning one language and then being introduced to the other. ...

In either case, there are some ideas related to helping children not confuse the two languages as they learn them.

 - Each language is delegated to one parent. - At home one language is spoken by both parents while the other language is spoken at schoool. - One language is spoken at home and at school, while the other is the prefominant language of the community. - Each language is spoken depending on the situation or day, but they are each spoken by both parents. 

No matter which method is used, or some other method is decided upon, the idea is to help the child seperate the two languages instead of learning one hybrid of the two. However, there are still many children who learn both languages without their parents consciously choosing a method of teaching.

Effect of bilingualism on children

Being bilingual can be a great benefit to children, especially in today's world. There has even been research on the effect on children's metalinguistic skills and the cognitive advantages to bilingualism. Definition According to Merriam- Webster Online Dictionary, metalinguistics is a branch of linguistics that deals with the relation between language and other cultural factors in society (http://www. ... // Old Misconceptions It used to be thought that learning two languages was detrimental to a childs cognitive abilities. ...

Resources

[http://iteslj.org/Articles/Rosenberg-Bilingual.html "Raising Bilingual Children" Marsha Rosenberg]