Survey on multilingual brains in children and teenagers - Primary Research

 Overview

I've set up two surveys for children and teenagers to understand how they perceive different languages and switching between one another. 

This primary research was conducted on a small voluntary group. I made sure to explain at the start of this survey its purposes and its role in my project by also giving a small overview on the topic of my project. I stated at the start of the survey that all responses will remain anonymous as well and to answer these questions as honestly as possible

Although I tried to avoid bias when organising this primary research and I made sure to discard any biased answers I am aware that this survey was answered by a voluntary group who are more likely to disclose exclusively the positive sides of being bi/multilingual. 

In total I made 4 surveys as one was for children, the other one was for teenagers and both were in English and Italian. This increased the number of participants and it also gave me the opportunity to investigate the effects of bi/multilingualism when English is not one of the main languages of the child/teenager.

Findings and explanations

We can see that children do tend to speak more than one language at the same time, some more than others.

However in teenagers it seems that this switching action is more frequent. ( the survey was originally in Italian ) 

All the responses in my survey for bilingual brains in children showed how children are really good at identifying which language they need to speak in a specific situation with different people. One good example is :

Yes. He knows when he is with his mother to speak Spanish and when he is with his father to speak English. Sometimes (if he is being persistent) he will use both.

This also shows how children are able to mix the languages they know in order to communicate with their friends/family.

Another example is :

Definitely, with children and adults that he knows/suspects speak Spanish he will try that first, and then if they're Spanish is limited he will revert to English

This also shows the children's understanding of other people's levels of the language and how they adapt their communication in order to have a coherent conversation.

The responses in both my survey for bilingual brains in teenagers and children suggested that their main language used depended on the language they use in school and with friends. Although their first language may be their parents' language, almost never it's stated that it's their main language. One good example that summarises all the responses is :

Italian because I studied it at school and therefore I learned it perfectly also from a grammatical point of view. I also communicate more with Italian than with Tamil

Limitations

Although I tried to include more participants by making this survey in two languages, the voluntary group was still a small sized one for a scientific research.

Also the age of these participants were not a control variable, for example for teenagers the age ranged from 14 to 18 which is a big range. 

Also the gender, education, parents' education, number of languages, fluency were not control variables and these are some of the variables that are really important in a research of this type. However realistically, I wouldn't have been able to factor in all these variables in my research as the number of participants was not big enough.

In conclusion, we can see how, from a young age, children and teenagers are able to code switch depending on their circumstances, and this ability only improves as they become older. They seem to be able to both comprehend and communicate both of their languages efficiently however they do seem to have a "favoured" language in which they are more comfortable socialising with.