Children’s Strategies When Learning Additional Languages. A Comparative Study of Bilingual and Monolingual Children.

This is a qualitative study which attempts first, to investigate the various activities in which children have been and were engaging as they set about learning additional languages and, second, to examine the strategies the children suggested to improve their proficiency in those languages. I thereby compared the methods used by Bangladeshi and Anglo Londoners. The findings showed that children who had been in contact with various languages over a longer period of time used a higher number of strategies, combined them in a variety of ways and engaged in more productive activities such as engaging in conversation with native speakers. Further, they viewed language learning as essential and had precise ideas about language processing.
The last part of the study investigated to what extent cognitive development, experience, personal characteristics, attitudes, motivation, cultural and language background of the family, educational setting and wider socio-cultural context informed pupils’ strategies. Building on the findings, the paper ends with some suggestions for practitioners.