This text-based course is a written transcript of the seminar, “Multilingual Matters for the Monolingual SLP: Best Practices 101,” presented by Teresa Signorelli, Ph.D., CCC-SLP.
>> Teresa Signorelli: We are going to review the knowledge and skills that we need as clinicians for assessment, diagnosis, and treatment. We will also review some of the characteristics of bilingualism and second language learning, and then we will review some resources.
Monolingual & Multilingual Speaker Differences
Let's first look at some monolingual and multilingual speaker differences. We are distinct monolinguals and multilinguals, and understanding these differences is especially important when language, cognition, education, rehabilitation, and related areas are concerned. Unfortunately ignorance of a lot of these differences and of bilingual language development and bilingual language functioning has led to a fair amount of malpractice. What we see significantly is the over-referral of minority language speakers for speech and language services. It is really best practice that we educate ourselves in working with multilingual patients and clients.
Dispelling the Myths: Did you know…?
Let's talk about some of the myths that are out there that I have been hearing and encountering in my career as a bilingual clinician. You might not know that monolingualism is the atypical situation and that most people around the globe are multilingual. Bilinguals and monolinguals develop their language in the same general way and at the same general rate. In no way does multilingualism cause a disorder or cause a delay, and in fact there is also no evidence that maintaining a bilingual language status can inhibit improvement in a person who has a communication disorder. In fact we see the opposite that being able to maintain that multilingual status can be very helpful (De Houwer, 1999).
You may not realize that children from a minority language home will learn English better and will learn English faster if their parents can keep using that home language and strengthening those L1 skills, those first language skills. People sometimes do not realize that being multilingual does not mean that you are equally proficient in all the languages that you speak. Different languages are often used in different settings and in different ways. Some people do not realize that code switching is a normal, very sophisticated and really pragmatically appropriate way to use languages (By code switching I mean switching from language A to language B.) We will talk about this a little later as well, but we should also remember that this is not always the case across all bilingual communities.
Some other things you might not know is that there is research suggesting that bilingual children relative to monolingual children have increased cognitive skills, especially in regard to cognitive strategies. They are shown to have better cognitive flexibility and even better perceptual skills (e.g. being able to find a difference in the pattern in a background of visual information.) Research suggests that they have better classification skills and earlier understanding of symbolism. Of course we know that words are symbols for objects, concepts or feelings and bilingual children, seeing that these tokens have multiple names, can help them with their understanding of this abstract concept of symbolism (Marian et al., 2009).
