An Introduction to Bilingual Development

De Houwer’s book introduces readers to the research findings about bilingual first language acquisition through the charming stories of four imaginary bilingual children growing up in different contexts. Parents, students, and practitioners alike will discover what to expect from typical bilingual acquisition, including how individual “typical” can be!

-- Elena Nicoladis, Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Canada

The kind of bilingual development which starts very early, namely bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA), seems to attract much attention and spark much curiosity. How do children manage to acquire two languages simultaneously? In what ways does early bilingual exposure affect the course of their overall language development? Behind such questions lurks the yardstick of monolingualism, by which BFLA is often inappropriately evaluated. Now prominent BFLA expert Annick de Houwer has given us an introductory book with a most balanced and fair view of BFLA as a standard in its own right, tracing the bilingual development of four fictitious prototypical children. As always, her clarity of thought and writing makes the book accessible to anyone.

-- Masayo Yamamoto, Professor of Bilingualism Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan

Overall this book is written in an understandable and easy-to-follow manner, particularly due to the use of stories of the four children throughout…this book would be an excellent addition to a course on bilingual child language acquisition, as it contains clearly explained information on bilingual language acquisition in an easily accessible format.

-- Alyssa Martoccio, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA * Studies in Second Language Acquisition / Volume 33 / Issue 04 / December 2011, pp 629-6