Early Second Language Acquisition: An Analysis of English Productions of Italian Native-Speaking Children

Abstract

The purpose of this work is twofold: the first one is to raise awareness on the benefits of Early Second Language Acquisition and , by presenting a particular teaching methodology, to show the advantage of a bilingual approach. The second one is to investigate the ways in which a group of Italian preschoolers acquire English. The thesis focuses on the analysis of the English linguistic productions of eight Italian mother tongue children done through the collection of data from October 2013 to January 2014 for the first group and October to November 2014 for the second group, in a linguistic Laboratory in Venice, Italy. In the present work I investigated the number of English utterances in the children’s productions, and which were single words or formulaic phrases, imitated or spontaneous. Further more, I analyzed the code mixed and the new-production sentences. Concerning the comprehension, through the recording of the sessions with the children, I was able to see the perks of a multi-sensorial bilingual approach at an early age. After a close examination of the literature on Early Second Language Acquisition, and through the positive results reached with the analysis of the comprehension and production of these Italian children, my work will propose the spread of the teaching of a second language at the preschool level, with the strong believe that “languages are supposed to be learnt by normal physical process” (Penfield 1959).