Stuttering and Bilingualism in Children and Adults

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Stuttering and Bilingualism

From: Elizabeth Tavares (CW Post)
Date: 20 Oct 2008
Time: 20:05:57 -0500
Remote Name: 64.241.37.140

Comments

My name is Elizabeth Tavares. I am a speech-language pathology graduate student attending C.W. Post, Long Island Univeristy. I am a sequential bilingual and have been intrigued with treatment of bilinguals since entering the field. At the beginning of this semester I learned about Starkweather's capacities and demands model. After being introduced to this information I concluded that children who stutter should eliminate their second language in order to decrease stuttering in their first language. Subsequently, we were given an assignment that required us to research five articles with an overarching topic. Of course, my topic was bilingualism. I was dumbfounded at the fact that I could not find enough articles that had one centered theme. I quickly realized that bilingualism contains so many variables. Although none of the articles suggested that bilingual children should eliminate one language, the compiled data still made me feel that this would still be the best way. Your research is the first I have read that supports the notion that both languages can be maintained. I wish I could have found this information sooner so that I could have used it for my assignment. The information you provided is vital to our field and to my interests.


Last changed: 10/20/08