"Webliography" LI 804 Bibliography Project


RAISING BILINGUAL CHILDREN: A BIBLIOGRAPHY.

HOW I PUT TOGETHER MY BIBLIOGRAPHY

A COMPANION ESSAY TO "RAISING BILINGUAL CHILDREN: A BIBLIOGRAPHY."

by

Tiina Brown


PROLOGUE

My assignment for this bibliography was Children's Knowledge.  Being a 
parent of a four-year-old, I thought it sounded interesting and easy.  Only 
after talking to a friend who is a professor of developmental psychology, 
did I begin to understand what a huge subject this was.  I realized I had to 
find a subtopic that would allow me to get my arms around it.  For weeks I 
struggled with lonely attempts to organize my thoughts and force some 
kind of a focus to emerge.  Nothing happened.  I tried going to Tattered 
Cover bookstore and Denver Public Library to browse in search of an 
inspiration.  Nothing happened.  Luckily, at the Denver Public Library I ran 
into Sharon Morris, who is one of my classmates and a children's librarian.  
We struck up a conversation.  Sharon asked me questions about my 
interests and thoughts, and brought up possibilities of different 
directions.  Within fifteen minutes I had decided on a topic, and was raring 
to go.  This is the second class in a row where Sharon, whom I know only 
very casually, has played this role for me.  To me this really drove home 
the importance of the human element and the value of networking.  Our 
peers are a formidable resource for us to turn to for the most amazing 
things!



INTRODUCTION


The area I chose to explore was Bilingual Children.  Once the thought had 
occurred to me, it made perfect sense.  This is a hotly current topic in our 
global society.  It is of personal interest to me, because I am Finnish-
English bilingual myself, and feeling helpless in my desire to pass the 
Finnish on to my daughter in this English-speaking community.  Children 
remained the focus of this topic, as in the original assignment, and the 
knowledge of two languages certainly falls under the "knowledge 
umbrella."


Early on in my research I felt the need for further definition of the topic.  
Bilingualism in children seemed to be divided into three main areas: 
parenting, classroom education, and theory on language development.  I 
immediately decided to eliminate classroom education from consideration 
for three reasons:  (1)  My own immediate interest was more in the larger 
developmental and parenting issues.  (2)  This literature seemed to be of 
less universal value, being mainly targeted toward educators.  (3)  It 
appeared to be the most prolific area of the three;  the volume of research  
would have been overwhelming considering my time limitations.


My immediate target audience being my classmates, I wanted to ensure 
the appropriateness and usefulness of this bibliography to them.  These 
were my considerations:
1.  First and foremost I thought of my classmates as librarians serving 
their patrons.  In
     todays global society bilingual families are everywhere.  This will give 
librarians
     some resources to help them cope with their special issues.
2.  Most of these resources discuss general language and cognitive 
development
     interwoven with bilingual issues, since bilingualism cannot exist 
independently of the
     other two.  In fact bilingual language acquisition research has 
contributed new
     insights to general language acquisition theory.  Language and cognition 
are, of
     course, integral components of human information processing, and 
therefore of
     definite interest to our class.
3.  The level of the writing in these materials is comfortable for this 
class.  All materials
     are written for either academia or an educated general audience.


The ultimate target audience is the bilingual parent.  Their needs are 
anticipated in various different ways.  First of all, the weight of the 
resources is on the parenting rather than theory.  The bulk of the 
materials offer practical assistance in helping children's bilingual 
development, and support in the form of case studies that prove to be both 
comforting and encouraging.  However, for the parent who wishes to 
explore more theoretical background, works by prominent scholars are 
included.  Even though this section is small, it can prove to be helpful for 
further research.  Each one of these volumes has extensive references 
and/or reading lists.



THE SEARCH PROCESS



Online searching


I initiated my research on CARL (Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries).  
CARL offers access to Books in Print online, which was my first stop.  I 
did several keyword searches using the following terms: bilingual child, 
bilingual children, second language acquisition and two languages.  As a 
result I found lengthy lists of titles dealing with bilingual education, 
foreign language instruction, bilingual families and language development 
in bilinguals.  After limiting my focus on materials published in the last 
fifteen years, and eliminating the works with an educational focus, I had a 
manageable list of titles closely related to my topic.  


I remained on CARL for the next step in my research.  This step involved 
going through individual library online catalogs.  First I tried to locate the 
titles I had retrieved from Books in Print.  Then I did additional keyword 
searching in the library catalogs using the same keywords as above with 
added authors' names from the earlier search.  I also browsed the catalogs 
by title and by call number.  The keyword searches retrieved quite a few 
additional titles.  Call number browsing was also somewhat helpful.  Title 
browsing produced very few materials I had not found already.


Still on CARL, I then looked for articles.  Uncover produced fairly good 
results.  Worldcat and Articles1st on FirstSearch produced next to 
nothing.  By this time I had limited my keywords to bilingual combined 
with child, children, family, families and parents.  A book review search 
in these databases was not very helpful to me.


My last online resource was the Internet.  This created some frustration, 
because all of my searches on my home computer resulted in error 
messages.  Having had very little experience on searching the Internet, I 
started to doubt my abilities.  Fortunately, I also have Internet access at 
work.  I tried searching the World Wide Web there, and this time got 
immediate results!  I have concluded that the problem at home is my 
internet provider.  I am on America Online, which seems to be overloaded 
with traffic.  At work we use Netcom.  What a difference the provider 
makes!


For my Web search I used the following search engines:  Infoseek, Lycos 
and Excite.  My keywords were the same as above.  These searches 
produced one excellent hit and quite a bit of garbage.  All engines found 
the good hit, but Infoseek was the most efficient.  On Excite I found an 
additional usable site by typing in the words two languages on a whim, 
even though I had for the most part abandoned these words as not very 
useful.


Libraries


The search on CARL had revealed that the libraries easily accessible to me 
had very few of the materials I was looking for.  Denver Public Library 
owned a couple of books. Auraria had a few more, plus some journals.  
University of Denver fared a little better, but my access to it is limited 
because it is a private school, and I have no affiliation.  The one library 
that seemed to have almost everything I needed was University of 
Northern Colorado in Greeley.  It is not a library I normally consider 
visiting, because it is out of town.  However, I have a friend who is a 
professor at UNC and commutes there daily from Denver.  So, I took a day 
off work, hitched a ride with my friend Marilyn, and spent a day in Greeley.


The library at UNC was great!  I walked in with my list from CARL, and 
came home with almost everything on the list.  As I retrieved the books 
from the stacks, I ran into a few more titles of interest, but for the most 
part I kept to my list.  The journals were a different matter.  UNC had 
multitudes of journal titles on bilingualism, linguistics and language 
acquisition.  As I looked for the articles on my list, I skimmed through 
other issues of relevant journals such as Bilingual Review, Journal of 
Child Language and Studies in Second Language Acquisition.  Direct hits to 
my topic were few, but there was so much related information, it was 
difficult to draw a line at how far this research should go.  Many of the 
articles on my original list turned out to be off the mark, but I stumbled 
onto some great book reviews (which I had not even considered yet at this 
point) practically by accident.  Also, they had a video I had found on CARL 
and wanted to consider for the bibliography.  I was not eligible to check 
out materials from this library, but Marilyn who is on the faculty, checked 
them out for me.  I came home with a stack of books, articles and a video.


I did go back to Denver Public Library  to find book reviews.  I started out 
with the Book Review Digest, because it provided abstracts of the 
reviews, but could not find reviews of any of the books I was looking for.  
Next I went to the Book Review Index.  It listed reviews on almost all of 
the significant works I had collected.  As I was looking up the reviews in 
magazines, microfiche and microfilm, I found additional reviews of my 
books not mentioned in the Book Review Index.  I also added two new titles 
to my list, because I  stumbled onto favorable reviews on them.



People


It has never come naturally to me to rely on other people for help.  I like 
to think things through in my own mind, and learn things from books and 
other inanimate resources that I feel I can control.  Throughout this 
project it was apparent, however, that people were an invaluable resource.  
In fact, I could not have done this without my friends.


From the onset of the project I depended on others.  As discussed earlier, I 
could only find a focus for my bibliography after Sharon spent time with 
me discussing the possibilities.  I also received help from my friend 
Marilyn, who has a PhD in Psychology, and who specializes in child 
development.


While going through my materials, I attended a couple of informal 
gatherings with my classmates.  I always returned home with ideas about 
types of materials to look for, new search techniques I had not thought of, 
ideas about how to look at my topic from different angles, and most of all 
their support.  The sense of community in this group is wonderful, and the 
power of networking is tremendous!  Also, every time I visited the Denver 
Public Library I seemed to run into classmates there.  These chance 
meetings and conversations also brought out book titles that I had not 
been able to uncover anywhere else, but that turned out to be useful.


Last but not least, my family was also a tremendous help.  My husband 
David, who is much more technologically adept than I am, helped with my 
online search strategies -- as well as offering practical technical 
assistance.  My daughter Alexa, who is struggling to pick up bits and 
pieces of Finnish from her not-very-consistent-in-her-language-choice 
mother, is the inspiration for this bibliography.


Reference chasing


As I was reading through the material I had found, I constantly ran into 
references to other works.  All of the authors quoted each other's 
research, and most of these books and articles had extensive lists of 
references.  Every time I opened a new book it lead me to additional 
sources.  (Marilyn kept running to the UNC library to get more books for me 
as I found new titles -- thank goodness her office is in the building right 
next to the library!)  Eventually I reached a point where all of the 
significant recent works referenced in my sources were familiar.  This 
gave me the reassurance that my research had been sufficiently 
exhaustive.  It also gave me the grounds to eliminate works that seemed 
to not have been influential.


 Evaluation


As I studied my materials and read other people's reviews on them, the 
division between different mediums was startling.   Most of the books I 
had gathered were excellent.  They directly addressed the focus of the 
bibliography, and their value to the field of study was evidenced by 
everyone's mutual cross-citation of each other.  The Internet sites and 
video turned out to be interesting, but with their evaluation I was pretty 
much on my own.  My real problem were the articles.  I had found a ton of 
titles, and even brought home a handful.  At closer scrutiny, however, they 
just did not seem to fit the scope of my bibliography.  All of the articles I 
found were addressed to the scientist and specialist.  Their topics were 
very narrow in depth probes into specific issues in the authors' area of 
specialty.  They simply required too much familiarity with the field to be 
useful for lay  parents, who were looking for an introduction to 
bilingualism.  Therefore, after much agonizing, I chose to eliminate all 
articles from my final bibliography.  I feel that this kept it more faithful 
to its intended scope, and kept the list more cohesive.



EPILOGUE


I  found this project extremely interesting and rewarding.  Naturally the 
topic was very interesting to me, but I also learned a great deal about 
finding materials, resources to use and efficient search and evaluation 
techniques.  To me personally the greatest satisfaction came from 
comparing my performance to an earlier experience.  Four years ago, when 
my daughter was an infant, I made and attempt to find readings that would 
help me in raising her to speak Finnish as well as English.  My attempt -- 
half-hearted as it may have been -- resulted in finding one book at the 
Denver Public Library.  As it turned out, the same book was still the only 
one I could find at DPL.  This time, however, I had the tools to go further, 
and got some results!


RAISING BILINGUAL CHILDREN: A BIBLIOGRAPHY

Our society today is diverse, mobile and global. We cannot pretend to be living in a monolingual and monocultural vacuum. As modern communication technology connects people and communities all over the world to each other, it emphasizes the need for us to better understand each other. More and more people find themselves in need of more than one language in order to communicate effectively. In fact an often quoted statistic states that more than half of the world's population is already bilingual. The demand is compelling and the statistics are impressive, but everyday bilingualism can be problematic and frustrating. This bibliography addresses the special needs of a bilingual family in a monolingual society. Its purpose is to equip the bilingual parent with an arsenal of resources to turn to. It strives to draw materials from a wide range of knowledge. Included are philosophical questions on the advantages and disadvantages of childhood bilingualism, practical advice in helping a child's language development, research findings on different aspects of bilingual development, examinations of connections between bilingualism and cognitive development, and issues on culture and language. The items in this bibliography vary from very practical and non-technical to highly academic and specialized. The bibliography is divided into two sections: I. Bilingual Families -- practical advice to parents in how to raise bilingual children, supported by basic research and case studies, and II. Theory -- books and papers from leading scholars to offer the inquisitive parent a more in depth theoretical background to bilingualism. Part I is an exhaustive collection of books written specifically about bilingual families in the last fifteen years. Part II is a more selective representation of additional theoretical works, and is primarily intended to serve as a springboard for further study. Within each part the materials are first arranged by medium, then alphabetized. I. BILINGUAL FAMILIES BOOKS: Arnberg, Lenore, Raising Children Bilingually: The Pre-School Years, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, England, 1987. Linguist Lenore Arnberg, who is a native speaker of English, lives and works in Sweden. Arnberg begins the book with a letter from a Polish immigrant mother in Sweden, who very much wants to teach Polish to her daughter, but feels that all of her efforts are doomed to fail. In the letter she asks the questions: Should I raise my child bilingually? and How can I raise my child bilingually? This book was written to answer those questions. While the other authors in this bibliography focus on "elitist" bilingualism (educated parents raising their children bilingually by choice), Arnberg's approach is different. She writes primarily about and for immigrant parents, who speak a minority language at home, but whose families are forced to acquire the majority language in order to function in the community. The first section of the book defines the immigrant parent as the intended end-user. The second section provides some answers to parents who wonder if they should insist on bilingualism. The third and fourth sections offer advice on how to accomplish bilingual child-rearing by introducing some theory and suggesting practical strategies for enhancing the bilingual environment. The fifth section consists of several case studies of bilingual families. The book also offers a Family bilingualism rating scale for self-evaluation and a handy checklist of main points covered in the book. Arnberg writes with a clear, down to earth style, that is both informative and enjoyable. This book was reviewed in the Modern Language Journal by Ofelia Garcia of City College of New York. She praises Arnberg's thoroughness and organization as well as her ability to write from the parent's perspective. (MLJ, Summer 1989, p. 209) This author obviously has exhaustive knowledge of her field, and translates it beautifully into a practical handbook that could benefit every bilingual parent. D^pke, Susanne, One Parent--One Language: an Interactional Approach, John Benjamins Publishing, Philadelphia, PA, 1992. Susanne D^pke is a linguist at the Department of Linguistics and Language Studies at the University of Melbourne and the parent of a bilingual child. This book starts out with a thorough summary of previous research on bilingual families. D^pke describes major concepts and conclusions, and presents case studies from other people's work. Her own study consists of six first born 2-year old children of English-German families in Australia. She sets out to examine productive vs. passive language use in children who have been raised bilingually since infancy, and the impact of their language environment. The report is packed with quantitative information in about 100 tables. The central finding is that active language use appears to be strongly linked to the child's need to use it. The parents' consistency in using their chosen language and their "insisting strategies" are found to be the strongest factors in environmental differences between productive and non-productive language use. An interesting feature from a parent-reader's point of view is a progress report on the same children four years later. Annick De Houwer gave this book a somewhat mixed review in the Journal of Child Language. She recognizes D^pke as a pioneer researcher in the area of language environment in bilingual development. De Houwer obviously considers this important research, but finds some aspects of the study unclear and incomplete (J. Child Lang., October 1994, p. 745). For a non-specialist this is interesting reading, and a fascinating comparative look at different families styles in bilingual child-rearing. Harding, Edith and Philip Riley, The Bilingual Family: A Handbook for Parents, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1986. Edith Harding is the Assistant Director of Research , Department of Linguistics, University of Cambridge. She is French. Her two children are French-English bilingual. Her whole family speaks French to each other, including her English husband, while the community language is English. Philip Riley has taught in universities in Finland & Malta, and now works at Centre de Recherches et d'Applications PÈdagogiques en Langues at the University of Nancy. He has published extensively on linguistics & language teaching. His three children speak English to their father, Swedish to their mother and French in the community. Harding and Riley have organized their book in three sections. The first section begins with a general discussion on language and its uses, continues with explanations of bilingualism in general and the development of the bilingual child, and concludes with a series of questions for parents to consider in deciding if bilingualism is right for their children. The second section presents 16 case studies of bilingual families. These are anecdotal accounts of the families' overall success in bilingualism. They contain little detail or real data for research. The third section is an alphabetical reference guide to the concepts discussed in the book. In her Modern Language Journal review, Ofelia Garcia of City College of New York calls The Bilingual Family relevant, thorough and intelligent. She commends Harding and Riley on writing "in a style that makes reading fun for both the professional in the field of bilingualism and parents." She did criticize the book for incoherence between the three parts and a lack of depth in the case studies (MLJ, Summer 1989, p. 209). This apparently stems from the authors' wish to write a "handbook for all parents who might be considering bringing up their children as bilinguals" rather than a scholarly work. In my opinion this is accomplished beautifully, and with the authoritative voice of two respected scholars in the field. Merrill, Jane, Bringing Up Baby Bilingual, Facts on File, New York, NY, 1984. Jane Merrill is a freelance writer living in Bronxville, NY. After being exposed to French in her childhood as a Navy brat living overseas, she pursued studies in French as a second language in college. She never achieved total mastery of the language, but always dreamed of giving her children the gift of two languages. When her twins were 18 months old, one day she greeted them with a "bon jour les bÈbÈs", and has been speaking French to them ever since. Merrill presents no research. The first chapter starts with a short, but enthusiastic, discussion on why she has chosen bilingualism for her family. The second chapter describes several other bilingual families that she interviewed for this book. The remaining nine chapters are devoted to advice on how to accomplish making your home and children bilingual in a monolingual society. This book is brimming with practical tips on materials, games, travel, people resources, and living abroad. Anyone aspiring to support a non-majority language in their home will appreciate the tips ranging from names of books, and addresses of vendors, to finding an au-pair, and living with one, to travel tips and help on affordable approaches to living abroad. Most specific tips are geared toward speakers of French, Spanish, Italian or German, but many of the general tips apply to any language. The book concludes with an afterword by Wallace E. Lambert of McGill University. This is a great introduction to bilingualism by a renown expert. Merrill is unique among the authors of this bibliography in that she has no academic background or scientific aspirations. This book is purely practical and entertaining, and a must-read for any bilingual parent who is trying to cope with the everyday reality of scarce resources. Saunders, George, Bilingual Children: Guidance for the Family, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, England, 1982. George Saunders grew up in his native Australia speaking English. In high school he developed a love for languages. His passion lead him to acquire a native-like fluency in German, and obtain a doctorate in German linguistics. He also decided to raise his children bilingually to give them the benefit of two languages and two cultures from early on. This book is a case study on his children's bilingual development and his family's approach. The book begins with a glossary of terms and a brief introduction to bilingualism. The body of the book describes communication patterns and day-to-day situations in the family. Saunders speaks exclusively German to his three children. His wife, who also understands German but speaks it less fluently, addresses the children in English, which is also the language of the surrounding society. The book follows the two boys' development until ages 8 and 6 (their baby sister is too young to produce language). Numerous examples of the children's use of language are quoted. Saunders has tape-recorded incredible amounts of conversation, analyzed the material, and presents the results as compelling evidence to the success of his experiment. The boys are growing up speaking German perfectly naturally and proficiently. The book also discusses outside influences such as relatives and playmates, biliteracy, the children's attitudes toward the two languages, and materials and techniques to aid with bilingual development. Saunders possesses the solid linguistics background of a German scholar. He demonstrates a thorough knowledge of earlier research in childhood bilingualism. This book is a pioneering work on the subject of raising bilingual children. It is consistently referenced in later work in this field. It was well received by researchers and educators, but is also enjoyable reading for a general audience with an interest in bilingual parenting. Saunders, George, Bilingual Children: From Birth to Teens, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, England, 1988. This book is an expansion and sequel to Saunders' earlier book. It explores the children's development up to their teens. Many new examples and data from later years have been added. Another addition is a chapter on Family language vs. national language, which explores the family's 6-month stay in Hamburg. In the words of Michael J. Smith, who reviewed it in the Times Educational Supplement, this book "brings the record up to date but is not, one hopes, the end of the story."(TES, February 1983, p. 38) Taeschner, Traute, The Sun Is Feminine: A Study on Language Acquisition in Bilingual Children, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany, 1983. Traute Taeschner, a researcher in the Department of Psychology of the Processes of Development and Socialization at the University of Rome, is a Brazilian of German origin. She grew up German-Portuguese bilingual, and is passing on the bilingual legacy to her two daughters. Her husband is Italian, the family lives in Rome, and she speaks German to her children. The Sun Is Feminine is primarily a record of Taeschner's daughters' language acquisition, but also includes data collected from a dozen other children. The background for her present study is laid by a definition of bilingualism and a thorough presentation of earlier research in the field. Her actual research looks at word acquisition, development of basic sentence structure, acquisition of morphology and syntax and interference from one language to another. Throughout, she stresses the similarity of bilingual children's development to that of monolingual children. She also includes a chapter discussing practical issues in bilingual upbringing. Taeschner's purpose, as stated in the preface, is to address the specialist as well as a novice, and to provide answers to bilingual parents' questions. Stylistically the book is readable, but has a more scholarly tone than most other books in this category. Despite its wish to serve both the researcher and the parent, it seems more easily digestible for the researcher. It did receive some criticism for its lack of depth in analysis from linguistic circles, but is often referenced as an important piece of research and clearly presented data. NEWSLETTER: The Bilingual Family Newsletter, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, England. This is a quarterly newsletter devoted to bilingual families' issues. It was originally edited by George Saunders from its conception in 1984. Annual subscriptions cost $18.00. VIDEO: Victim of Two Cultures: Richard Rodriquez, The Moyers Collection: a World of Ideas, Films for the Humanities, Inc., 1994. In this one-hour-long video Richard Rodriquez, a Fulbright scholar with degrees from Stanford and Columbia, talks about his experience growing up bilingual and bicultural in America. A son of Mexican immigrants, he spoke only Spanish until he started school. His frustrations in learning the language and being pulled between cultures resulted in strong negative views on bilingual education and affirmative action. He has been criticized for having forsaken his roots and praised for his intimate understanding of the impact of language on life. This video is a thought- provoking and revealing look at one child's experience with bilingualism and biculturalism. WORLD WIDE WEB: Bilingual Families Home Page http://www.nvg.unit.no/~/cindy/biling-fam.html This Web page is maintained by Cindy Kandolf, who is a bilingual parent herself. In her words it is "intended primarily as a place for bilingual parents to find information and resources to help them raise their children bilingually." Contents include definitions of terminology, discussion on myths about bilingualism and politics of bilingualism, practical parenting help, special problems of bilingual families, and a short bibliography. The site conveys much enthusiasm, and offers some basic information. This can be fun for families, but offers no academic authority. Cindy Kandolf also administers a related mailing list biling-fam. To receive more information (including how to subscribe) send a message containing only the text info biling-fam to majordomo@nvg.unit.no KidSource Online: Children and Bilingualism http://www.kidsource.com/ASHA/bilingual.html (From: Let's Talk #47, Courtesy of American Speech-Language-Hearing Association) This page contains a rather superficial overview of bilingualism from the point of view of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Factually it is shallow, sometimes even questionable in light of other more substantial works in this bibliography. The speech/language therapy point of view it provides is interesting, however. THEORY BOOKS: Bialystok, Ellen, (Ed), Language Processing in Bilingual Children, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, Australia, 1991. A collection of papers mostly presented in the invited symposium "Language Acquisition and Implications for Processing in Bilingual Children" at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in 1987. All contributors are prominent scholars in bilingualism and language acquisition research. The themes of the papers include phonological processing, language learning in social context, interdependence of first and second language proficiency in bilinguals and metalinguistic dimension. The binding thread here is bilingualism's connection to cognitive development. The editor writes "The focus throughout is on the child's cognitive resources and their role in the child's development of specific types of intentional language-processing." This discussion stays away from positive/negative value judgments, and focuses on research models on the process instead. It does emphasize the immense diversity of cognitive development among bilinguals as well as monolinguals, and calls for continued research. In the opinion of Johanna Watzinger-Tharp published in the Bilingual Review "The richness and sophistication of the articles will not only encourage but serve as a model for future research in this direction. The book should be required reading for not only scholars in the field, but also for bilingual program administrators and teachers." Grosjean, FranÁois, Life with two Languages: An Introduction to Bilingualism, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1982. FranÁois Grosjean, who is a bilingual, wrote this book as an associate professor of Psychology at Northeastern University. This book presents an overview of bilingualism as a social phenomenon. Grosjean discusses national and cultural aspects of bilingualism, noting that "bilingualism in a minority group is often synonymous to assimilation." This provides a great historical, political and social context to bilingualism that is only touched upon in the other books on this list. Grosjean also presents the individual's perspective by including personal accounts from bilingual persons. Throughout, he stresses the "naturalness" of bilingualism to the point that lead Loraine K. Obler to point out in her Contemporary Psychology review that Grosjean comes off as sounding defensive. The defensiveness aside, reviewers agreed with Obler's comment that Grosjean writes "thought-provoking, wonderful and lucid prose."(CP, August 1983, p.600) This book is an excellent introduction to bilingualism to anyone who is looking for the cultural and philosophical perspective beyond parenting. Hyltenstam, Kenneth and Loraine K. Obler, (eds.), Bilingualism Across the Lifespan: Aspects of Acquisition, Maturity, and Loss, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1989. A Collection of papers from or inspired by a Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute 1986 conference entitled Bilingualism Across the Lifespan. Contributors are linguists and neurolinguists. The papers in this volume explore different aspects of bilingualism and multiculturalism from childhood to old age. It is arranged roughly according to the ages of focus for each paper, starting with early childhood language development, and ending with Alzheimer's and language loss. Thus the papers at the beginning of the book directly address children's issues, whereas later papers are merely of more general interest in bilingualism. The first two papers deal directly with children. Early Differentiation of Languages in Bilingual Children by J,rgen M. Meisel is a longitudinal study of French-German simultaneous bilinguals, and the interaction/independence of their cognitive & linguistic systems. Meisel concludes, unlike earlier research, that children develop separate syntactic systems for each language from the start. In her paper, Variation in Children's Ability to Learn Second languages, Margaret Humes-Bartlo uses a neuropsychological approach in comparison of successful and unsuccessful second language learners. She finds that poor second language learners also have deficits in their first language. MalavÈ, Lilliam and Georges Duquette, (eds.), Language, Culture and Cognition: a Collection of Studies in First and Second Language Acquisition, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, England, 1991. A collection of studies that present recent research in bilingualism and multiculturalism and explores the relationship between native culture, language acquisition, and cognitive development. This collection consists of three parts. Part I is on cognitive processing of language systems, part II deals with nature, role and effects of culture in language acquisition, and part III considers the teaching/learning process. The findings support an interdependency between first- and second-language proficiency, thus endorsing additive bilingualism. The implications of this research are strongest on bilingual education. However, the majority of the material here covers issues that are also of more universal concern. This is good theoretical support for raising as well as educating bilingual children. Meisel, J,rgen M., (ed.), Bilingual First Language Acquisition: French and German Grammatical Development, John Benjamins Publishing, Philadelphia, PA, 1994. A collection of papers that reflect results obtained in a three year research project by DUFDE (Deutsch und Franz^sisch -- Doppelter Erstspacherwerb) studying grammatical development of simultaneously bilingual children at the University of Hamburg. Topics include an introduction to the DUFDE project, gender and number morphology, finiteness, agreement and tense, and case assignment. Reynolds, Allan G., (ed.), Bilingualism, Multiculturalism, and Second Language Learning, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, 1991. A collection of papers from a conference to honor Wallace E. Lambert on the occasion of his retirement from McGill University. All contributors were his students or otherwise influenced by him academically, as well as notable scholars in their own right. One of the themes addressed throughout this volume is the traditional question on whether bilinguals differ cognitively from monolinguals. These authors do not endorse the traditional idea of bilingualism hindering cognitive development, nor do they believe the more recent claim that bilinguals develop cognitive skills superior to monolinguals. They remain unconvinced of any causal link between the two, and thus echo the sentiments of Taeschner and Harding on the parallels between monolingual and multilingual children. Some of the titles include: Attitudes and Motivation in Second Language Learning by Robert C. Gardner, Neuropsychological Perspectives on Bilingualism: Right, Left, and Center by Jyotsna Vaid and D. Geoffrey Hall, Mental Representation in Bilinguals by Allan Paivio, The Cognitive Consequences of Bilingualism by Allan G. Reynolds, and L'ontogÈnÈse de la bilingualitÈ: Dimensions sociales et trans-culturelles by Josiane Hamers. The discourse is sewn together by an afterword ("Two Cents Worth") by Wallace E. Lambert, where he comments on each paper individually. This highly acclaimed book is definitely written for an academic audience. Parents who are interested in studying in depth theoretical thought on bilingualism will find this interesting and thought provoking.