The mother tongue in monolingual and multilingual context

Abstract

The study presents a small research project on Russian monolingual children in Moscow, and Turkish bilingual children living in Berlin, Germany. The children were examined with using the Test of Early Language Development (3rd ed.), and despite the limitations of the study, the findings point up interesting tendencies. In the comprehension section of the test, the Russian monolinguals did much better than the Turkish bilinguals; however, in the section testing production, both groups of children had the same results. All children had difficulties in acquisition of abstract terms, certain prepositions, complex sentences and retelling or creating a story narrative from pictures. Bilingualism is not an obstacle for mother tongue development, but it seems there are universal factors which influence the process of language acquisition.