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www.psych.mcgill.ca/faculty/genesee.html

Biographical information

Dr. Genesee is a Professor in the Psychology Department at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He is the author of nine books and numerous articles in scientific, professional, and popular journals and publications. He has consulted with policy groups in Canada, Estonia, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Russia, Spain, and the U.S.A. He is interested in basic issues related to language learning, representation, and use in bilinguals and in applied issues related to second-language teaching, learning, and testing. He has carried out extensive research on alternative approaches to bilingual edu cation, including second/foreign language immersion programs for language majority students and alternative forms of bilingual edu cation for language minority students. This work has systematically documented the longitudinal language development (oral and written) and academic achievement of students educated through the media of two languages -- their home language and another language. Along with Donna Christian and Liz Howard, he is currently involved in a longitudinal national study of a number of two-way immersion programs in the U.S. His current work also focuses on simultaneous acquisition of two languages during early infancy and childhood -- his specific interests include language representation (lexical and syntactic) in early stages of bilingual acquisition, transfer in bilingual development, structural and functional characteristics of child bilingual code-mixing, and communication skills in young bilingual children. Professor Genesee has been a president of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages and is currently a member of the National Literacy Panel (chaired by Diane August).

Abstract

Children who grow up learning two, or more, languages simultaneously provide a unique opportunity to explore the limits of the language faculty. Under some early views, the language faculty was thought to be limited so that children with simultaneous dual language exposure were thought to be at risk for delayed or, worse, higher incidence of impaired language development in comparison to monolingual language learners. Findings from recent research paint a radically different picture. In this plenary presentation, I will review and discuss the growing body of recent research on language acquisition in simultaneous bilingual infants. The capacity for language differentiation during simultaneous bilingual acquisition has been a focal point of interest in this work and will be reviewed. Discussion of the cognitive as well as linguistic implications of recent findings on bilingual infants will be highlighted. Research on pre-verbal infants that has been undertaken to better understand the earliest stages of simultaneous bilingual acquisition will also be considered. The picture that is emerging is one of bi- and possible even multilingual innate competence for language acquisition