Impaired speech in bilingual children immigrating to English speaking countries is a complex interplay of linguistic, developmental, psychological, and environmental factors requiring rigorous differentiation to distinguish between normal features of second language acquisition and true speech pathology.
Identifying the reasons is important for healthcare professionals, teachers, and families to adopt appropriate support and intervention strategies.
#1 Linguistic Transfer and Interference
Normal linguistic transfer is one of the principal origins of apparently disordered speech in bilingual children, when the phonetic, syntactic, and semantic features of the first language transfer into the child’s English speech.
Child immigrants to Britain will consistently display apparently disordered speech when they utilise the first language’s phonological rules in their English pronunciation.
For example, children who speak languages that don’t have particular English phonemes will substitute known sounds, developing patterns which at a surface level will appear to be articulation disorders.
Spanish children will substitute /d/ for /θ/ in the word “think,” and Mandarin speakers will have trouble with consonant clusters that are outside of their own phonological system.
Cross-linguistic influence can last for a number of years, especially where children still have strong attachment to the home language.
Bilingualism is complex when the two languages are being acquired together, since the cognitive load of managing two language systems will inevitably impact fluency and clarity of speech temporarily.
Code-switching, the universal tendency to change languages within the process of speaking, can also result in perceived disfluencies that are typical bilingual behavior and not a speech disorder.
Also, with minimal exposure to English before their arrival, children can also exhibit behavior typical of early phases of language acquisition, including decreased syllable structure and phonemic inventories that are decreased and potentially confused with developmental delay.
#2 – Psychosocial and Emotional Factors
The psychological impact of migration and cultural adaptation can be one of the main causes of impaired speech among bilingual children.
The stress of adjustment to a new world, school, and social requirements may lead to selective mutism, where children are fluent in their mother tongue within the domestic environment but remain mute or almost mute in English-speaking environments.
This is more common during the initial months after arrival, as children will attempt to deal with fresh social encounters and peer pressure in school.
Separation anxiety and cultural trauma can also lead to speech disruption. Children exposed to negative migration conditions, family dissolution, or displacement are likely to develop secondary speech disorders like stuttering, voice disorders, or loss of language skills previously established.
The psychological tension of maintaining cultural identity during the process of acculturation to British life may result in intrapsychic conflict stated in the form of communication breakdown.
The children may intentionally refuse to speak English as a form of opposition to assimilation, or they may experience speech blocks as a result of fear whenever they attempt to utter their second language.
#3 – Educational and Environmental Factors
Learning context plays an important role in facilitating or hindering speech acquisition in bilingual children.
Lack of adequate support for English as an Additional Language (EAL) students can make normal second language learning challenges more difficult and lead to chronic speech impairment.
Without suitable resources, trained staff, or pedagogy sensitive to cultural differences in schools, children may not receive scaffolding to aid successful language learning.
Strict academic requirements with poor language support can create pressure for avoidance or speech disfluency.
Mismatched good English input exposure also leads to speech disorders.
Kids who are raised in environments with minimal English-speaking conversation may fossilize error patterns that are increasingly difficult to eliminate over time.
On the other hand, children whose first language is suddenly interrupted by school or social needs can become that which appears to be a speech disorder but is semilingualism, where neither language becomes complete.
#4 – Developmental and Neurological Considerations
Some speech disorders in bilingual children merely indicate genuine developmental delay or neurological impairments that would exist regardless of linguistic background.
These types of disorders, however, may be masked or inflated by bilingual language development processes. Children with inherited difficulty with phonological processing will have more difficulty with two phonological systems, and their dysfluencies of speech will be more severe than would be predicted from normal second language acquisition only.
Auditory processing dysfunction can be extremely difficult to identify in bilingual children, as difficulty hearing equivalent sounds can be a byproduct of language interference and not actual auditory impairment.
Similarly, mildly developmentally delayed children can be more difficult to test when being tested in English alone, their less capable language, compared to testing in both languages to measure their true level of communicative skills.
#5 – Socioeconomic and Access Factors
Socioeconomic factors have a significant bearing on the shaping of speech development results in bilingual children in a new country.
Poor economic conditions among bilingual families may limit their access to speech and language therapy services, school-based interventions, or enrichment activities aimed at fostering the development of languages.
Moving home, school changes, and reduced access to reading materials and learning resources could undermine consistent language development progress.
Obstacles to access to healthcare, including language barriers between service providers and families, cultural confusion about expectations for speech development, and the small number of bilingual speech-language pathologists, can result in delayed identification and intervention for true speech disorders.
When families cannot communicate concerns or understand recommendations from healthcare providers, children can fail to receive appropriate support at key developmental periods.
#6 – Assessment and Identification Challenges
Difficulty in distinguishing typical bilingual acquisition from true speech disorders is one reason that contributes to communication disorder over-identification and under-identification.
Normally referenced test instruments developed for monolingual English-speaking children will not measure the skills of bilingual children correctly, and misdiagnosis or no identification of the child’s need for intervention could be a byproduct.
Cultural bias in test-taking procedures as well as in test score interpretation also may hinder accurate identification of speech disorders.
The multicausal make up of speech disorders in bilingual children immigrating an English speaking country needs to be interpreted in terms of a holistic understanding that addresses linguistic, psychological, educational, and social factors.
Support structures will therefore need to address these various contributory factors in recognition of the impressive resilience and adaptability many bilingual children exhibit as they meet their demanding language experience in their host country.
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