Turkish-French bilingualism

  • Büsra HAMURCU-SÜVERDEM (Université de Rouen)
    Study on language development of Turkish preschool children
    2016, Vol. XXI-2, pp. 81-93

    The aim of our study is to understand the role of home language practices in the language development of 6 Turkish-French early bilingual preschool children (3-5 years old) from immigrant background and having different home language practices such as essentially Turkish and a mix of Turkish and French. The data consists of verbal interactions between the adults and the children in which we have studied the diversity of discourse genres. The results show that home language practices have an impact on the interactional and language competences of children. As indicated by some of the results, children who mostly practice Turkish at home are dominant in Turkish whereas those who practice more French at home are dominant in French which is reinforced by school. However, at the end of the second year of preschool (5 years old), there are few differences in French among the groups, which shows that French, as the school language, is acquired more or less at the same degree by all children, independently of their home language practices.