The Formula for Bilingualism

What does it take for a child with hearing loss (or any child) to learn more than one language? I break it down into three simple components:

Language Learning = Perceptual Access, Quantity, and Quality.

What does this mean?

Perceptual Access. The language needs to be “catchable” by the child, which means we need to give them sensory access to the language. For a child with hearing loss learning a spoken language, this means they need the best possible access with hearing technology. We need to be insistent about “Gold Standard Audiology,” which means aided thresholds between 15-20dB through 6000Hz and speech perception in quiet and in noise 90% or above. For more information on recommended audiological protocols, see HERE.

Quantity. You can’t learn a language with only a few minutes of exposure a day. Children, and particularly children with hearing loss, need extensive exposure to a language to learn it.

Quality. No amount of exposure or crystal-clear access will be enough to learn a language if the language model is poor. This is why the old guidance that parents should speak only one language, or only the dominant language of the country where they lived (even if it wasn’t their native language) to their child with hearing loss was so wrong. The quality of the input directly influences the quality of the output, so parents should communicate with their children in the language(s) of their heart and their home.

When we are language planning for a child with hearing loss — monolingual or multilingual — we need to consider how we can optimize each of these components.

• How can we maximize their sensory access?
• How much time does this child spend exposed to the language each day?
• How good are the models this child receives?

Children with hearing loss can learn multiple spoken languages, but it doesn’t happen by accident. If this is your goal, make sure your child hears well with their technology, speak to your child in the language(s) of your heart and home, and give lots of rich language exposure each day.