Now You're Talking: Researcher Unravels How Children Learn to Speak

Korean-English bilinguals are the seventh largest bilingual group in the U.S. and these languages have contrasting sound properties.

Sue Ann S. Lee, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for her research titled, “Phonetic Category Formation in Korean-English Bilingual Children.”

Lee, a fluent Korean-English bilingual, is investigating how bilingual children who learn two languages simultaneously distinguish speech sounds appearing in both languages. In other words, she examines whether a 3-year-old Korean-English bilingual child can differentiate the English /p/ and the Korean /p/ when she or he produces ‘pie’ and ‘pal’ (foot in Korean).

These two /p/ sounds are produced differently by native speakers, but they sound similar to non-native listeners, Lee said. Some researchers suggest that bilingual children initially do not differentiate speech sounds in two languages while other group of researchers proposes that bilingual children differentiate detailed speech sounds at an early age.

Lee’s research provides important information to build theoretical framework for bilingual children’s speech acquisition. Her research will also provide important clinical and educational implications for bilingual children with speech sound disorders because the developmental speech patterns of normally developing children are commonly considered to be a diagnostic tool for speech disorders.

“If a bilingual child has a language or speech problem, it is likely that the child has problems in both languages,” Lee said. “In order to maximize treatment effectiveness, we have to treat both languages, not just the primary language. A common problem is that only a small number of bilingual children in the United States receive therapy in both languages.”

Lee said she would eventually like to determine whether the findings with Korean-English speaking children are similar in comparison to other bilingual children. In addition, Lee hopes her research will facilitate speech therapy for bilingual children at TTUHSC and across the nation.

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