PhD research proposal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

PhD research proposal - Essay Example common in most communications resulting to children whose parents use English as a second language communicating to them while young in both English and their primary language. This case is common among most Arabic children in Britain who are able to communicate in both Arabic and English languages effectively. After a thorough search at the literature, especially the one discussing issues related to interaction between first and second languages, it has been observed that most of these studies point to the effect of the first language on a second language, in terms of; phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax and many other aspects of linguistics, but there have been much fewer studies done on the effect of a second language on the first one with respect to phonology in bilingual children. This provides a perfect opportunity to analyse the impact of a second language on the phonological skills of the first language in bilingual children. On an anecdotal level, I have seen that some Arabic-English bilingual children’s mother tongue, which is Arabic, is affected phonologically by English which they learn at school. Children gradually lose the right pronunciation of unshared sounds in their first language, as a result, of the interaction between the two languages they master. This study proposes two hypotheses: 1- The phonological characteristics of children’s second language will affect their pronunciation of unshared sounds in their first language, in the same way; the first language influences a second language. Numerous studies have examined the issue of phonological interaction in children, especially in cases where children are taught to communicate in more than one language (Goldstein, 2004). Some of these studies are listed in the reference section of this proposal. This study will examine previous studies on this topic and hence develop a gap analysis that will culminate to the development of a problem statement. Currently, this study is fully aware