Assessment of Phonological Interaction in Arabic-English Bilingual Children Living in Australia (Essay Sample)

Proposal: Assessment of Phonological Interaction in Arabic-English Bilingual Children Living in Australia
Name
Institution
Introduction
The study of phonological interaction between children from different sets of language background has become central to understanding how it affects the language development skills of the children. This topic has drawn a lot of interests in the recent past as the world becomes global and more languages interact resulting to children communicating in more than one language (Bhatia & Ritchie, 1999). This paper proposes to analyze the impact of phonological interaction in Arabic-English bilingual children living in Australia
Background
The fact that most children in the modern day world are normally able to communicate in more than one language at a very early age makes it interesting to analyze how this impacts the development of language skills that relate to a language that is used for educational purposes (Leopold, 1970). In Australia, English is the language that is used for educational purposes. English language is also very common in most communications resulting to children whose parents use English as a second language communicating to them while young in both English and their primary language (Australian Social Trends, 2006). This case is common among most Arabic children in Australia who are able to communicate in both Arabic language and English language effectively (Australian Social Trends, 2006). This provides a perfect opportunity to analyze the impact of phonological interaction of the two languages among children and how it generally affects their language development skills.
Literature review
Numerous studies have examined the topic of phonological interaction in children especially in cases where children are taught to communicate in more than one language (Goldstein, 2004). Some of these studies are listed in the reference section of this proposal. This study will examine previous studies on this topic and hence develop a gap analysis that will culminate to the development of a problem statement. Currently, this study is fully aware that there is no previous empirical investigation that has analyzed the phonological interaction in Arabic-English bilingual children living in Australia (Genesee, 1989). Therefore, this study will be vital in developing an understanding of the research issue. However, as much as available studies have not focused on the specifics of this study’s research topic, it is important to analyze the areas that were covered by previous investigators and hence develop research questions based on the previous findings.
Objectives
This research paper will be guided by the following objectives:
To analyze if simultaneous acquisition of Arabic language and English language as first languages delays a child’s development of language skills
To examine the interactions between the dominant language and the weak language in terms of transfer, delay, acceleration, and reverse order of acquisition
Research questions
This study aims to provide answers to the following questions:
Does simultaneous acquisition of Arabic and English languages as first languages delay a child’s development of language skills?
Is there a dominant language between English and Arabic among the Arabic-English bilingual children living in Australia?
To what extent does the dominant language between the two languages affect the weak language in terms of transfer, delay, acceleration, and reverse order of acquisition?
Methodology
To be able to meet the objective of this investigation effectively and provide answers to the research questions above, this study will conduct a primary investigation. Qualitative methodology will be used in the collection and analysis of data in this investigation. Qualitative research is a range of strategies that depend on non-mathematical judgment (Higgs & Cherry, 2009). Therefore, qualitative investigation is perceived to be concerned with meaningful characteristics, visual renders, stories, observations, and words with great opposition to focus on numbers in an investigation (Miles & Huberman, 1994). On the other hand, Zikmund (2010) views qualitative investigation as being subjective in nature and devoid of statistical analysis of data. The application of qualitative investigation provides an effective avenue for searching for quality, as well as changes in perspectives, relationships, meanings, viewpoints, perceptions, and feelings (Swanson, Watkins & Marsk, 1997). Furthermore, the use of qualitative investigation is effective in providing explanations to most social phenomenon (Morse, 1999). The findings and conclusions drawn from qualitative investigations provide grounds for developing as well as testing theories.
It will be comprised of the following approaches:
Performing a detailed case history (asking parents about their children’s input/output)
Obtaining speech samples
Independent analysis (phonetic inventory approach)
Relational analysis (examining consonants/vowels, shared/unshared elements in both languages)
Errors analysis (examining targets and substitutes/ cross-linguistic effect/ dialect features)
Significance
This study’s significance will cover two main areas. The first area will be on expanding current knowledge on the impact of phonological interaction in Arabic-English bilingual children with specific reference to Arabic-English bilingual children in Australia. The second significance will be on providing practical findings and recommendations that will be applied at school level so as to enhance language development skills among such populations.
Conclusion
This study will provide new evidences by carrying out a primary study to investigate phonological interaction in Arabic-English bilingual children living in Australia. The fact that most modern-day children whose parents are not English speak...