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Article:
Small Children, Languages and Myths by: Emma Rath Our children are growing up bilingual in the French part of Canada ' Québec. 'That's fine', says everyone. 'Even though they'll probably start speaking later because they're learning two languages at once, they'll catch up.' Well actually, this well-entrenched idea that bilingual children are slower to acquire language, is actually a myth! We were surprised and delighted to learn that research is finding that bilingual children do NOT acquire language later than monolingual children. Our first child participated in a language study on babies carried out at McGill University of Montréal, Québec, Canada. There it was explained to us that research is finding that the difference in language acquisition of one child compared to another is very large. Some children speak sooner, some speak later. And the range of language acquisition of bilingual children is just as large as the range for monolingual children, statistically speaking. Although these research results are relatively recent, I was able to find an article on the internet about it, written by Professor Fred Genesee of McGill University at http://www.earlychildhood.com/Articles/index.cfm?FuseAction=Article&A='38
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