Comparative Study Of Bilingual And Monolingual Children In Acquiring Grammar Strategies

Foreign languages have been taught worldwide starting from elementary schools. While some children learn English as a second language, there are many bilinguals who study English as the third language. This small scale study aims to illustrate the dissimilarities between bilingual and monolingual students in learning the English language, specifically, acquiring English Grammar strategies. Two 3rd grade primary school pupils attended in this study. The research compiled three stages and data analysis revealed accordingly.


INTRODUCTION
Language learners are progressive and more tolerant of cultural changes. Majority countries unite diverse nationalities and cultures where individuals utilize the same language identities. Hence, learning foreign languages has become a worldwide phenomenon. Nowadays, bilingualism is common in majority countries and significant numbers of people have become multilingual. Despite the complexity of learning, most parents in Uzbekistan prefer Russian-language schools where all the subjects are taught in Russian. In that case, the The American Journal of Applied sciences (ISSN -2689-0992) Published: January 31, 2021 | Pages: 128-147 Doi: https://doi.org/10.37547/tajas/Volume03Issue01-19 IMPACT FACTOR 2021: 5. 634 OCLC -1121105553 English language has become the third language. This case study entails a small-scale research on advantages bilinguals have over monolinguals in acquiring a third language. The study of third language attainment is comparatively a new area which has extended speedily in recent years, highlighting the differences between acquiring a second and third language. (Cenoz, J.2013) The gained experience of Bilinguals in learning languages helps them to develop learning strategies to a larger extent than monolinguals. Third language acquisition has similar characteristics with second language acquisition. However, there are also significant differences in that, third language learners already have at least two languages in their linguistic reserve. They can use their linguistic schema when learning a third language. For instance, they can transmit new structures, new vocabulary or new ways of expressing utterance functions to the two languages they already know. Bilinguals have more benefits than monolinguals in learning the third language as they have developed certain skills and strategies for achieving the language-learning task. Meeting with the new task of learning a third language, bilinguals might reactivate and modify to the new challenge.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Different views on the advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism or multilingualism have been expressed by researchers. Earlier studies suggested that bilingualism might bring negative consequences. These studies hold the thought that bilingual children suffer from academic frustration, have a lower IQ and were socially unstable than monolingual children. (Printer & Keller, 1922;Anastasi & Cordova, 1953;Darcy,1953;Saer, 1923).
Contrary to these claims, later research studies confirmed that bilingualism might influence positively the child's cognitive and social development. (Ben-Zeev, 1977;Cummins, 1976;Diaz,1985;Bialystock, 1986.) These studies assumed that bilinguals have a more superior consciousness of the subjective relationship between words and their referents and enhanced metalinguistic skills.
Multilingual people report the advantages of prior linguistic knowledge and share their experience with the public. One of the multilingual speaker Humphrey Tonkin despite being brought up in monolingual English home, experienced in Esperanto, Latin, English, French, German, Italian and Dutch. Tonkin H. (2009, p.201) stated: "The art of language learning may lie not in the acquisition of an individual language but in mastery of the learning process itself".
In the 1980s and early 1990s laboratory studies with synthetic linguistic systems also stated that multilingual learners produced better flexibility than monolinguals in terms of learning strategies (Nation & McLaughlin 1986). Another research conducted by Bild & Swain (1989) and Swain et al. (1990)  French bilinguals and French-speaking monolinguals. These results were alleged very positive and ignored the previous belief that immigrant students often meet lots of challenges and achieve lower scores at school than local children.
The benefits of bilinguals over monolinguals in third language acquisition have been elucidated in different ways, yet most researchers associate them with three factors. First, the third language learners can increase a higher level of metalinguistic awareness on the premise of their previous knowledge of the task of learning a language and their experience of two linguistic systems. Bilingual learners admit language as an abstract approach and regard it as an object (Moore, 2006). Secondly, bilinguals in acquiring the third language interrelate to their experience as language learners. This experience can develop a wider range of learning strategies in facilitating the third language. Kemp (2007) claimed that multilingual learners used a larger amount of grammar-learning strategies more regularly than monolinguals. Thirdly, bilinguals have more advantages as possessing a broader linguistic repertoire. The positive influence of the linguistic repertoire has been related to language distance, which might mean that closely connected languages would be more helpful for bilinguals learning a third language. (Cenoz, Hufeisen & Jessner 2001, 2003.
Overall, bilinguals have more advantages than monolinguals in acquiring other languages since they have linguistic experience of language learning. They can obtain a knowledge-based on their previous skills.

PARTICIPANT PROFILE
In order not to make my case study slopesided, I tried to keep the balance and have chosen two 9-year-old-boys in my class who are from Uzbekistan and have an Uzbek nationality. Both of the learners study in public schools in the 3rd form with the difference the first learner is bilingual and study at Russian school while the second learner is monolingual and studies in Uzbek school. In both cases English, which is either the L2 or L3, is not used in their daily communication. They have excellent grades from all other subjects at school. The reason for learning English is that they are both interested in the English language and are willing to be able to watch films. Moreover, they are both encouraged to learn English by their parents. Both of the learners are fond of playing chess and football and play it as soon as possible. They are the eldest child in their family so they help their parents in household chores. The first learner is extrovert and sociable whereas the second learner is shyer and introvert. They have been learning English as a school subject for three years and also have privet English classes three times a week. Nowadays they apply several ways of learning a language. For instance, they use Grammar textbooks with pictures, listen to English songs and try to make up dialogs with their peers in that language. Both learners A and B enjoy learning through different kinds of activities such as playing with flashcards, online English learning games and making role-play. While teaching them I found out that they are more likely to be visual learners since they understand better when they read and see their notes. When they began studying English initially they learned some vocabulary under a certain topic and sang a lot of songs. Now they learn some grammar rules and structures to make-up sentences. During my classes, I realized that student A better comprehend Firstly, I would like to interview Student A and Student B to gain some background information and their preferences in learning English. Pre-test (interview) was held at the beginning of the research and in this part roughly eight questions surveying the language(s) spoken at home, how many English classes they have in a week, how much time they spend learning English every day, the way they learn the language, preferences in learning. The interview was recorded for almost four minutes and analyzed before the second stage (see Appendix I).
Secondly, The grammatical development of the bilingual and monolingual learners was examined in the Grammar Translation Method (GTM). Before this examination, I chose a Grammar topic "There is\are, some, any" which is relevant to their grade and level. The input was given in GTM by explanation of structures and rules and translating them into their L1.
After the input, they did some tests on this grammar topic. They filled the sentences with "some and any", made up questions and answers with "There is \there" using a picture and wrote a mini text about the products in the kitchen of their home. (see Appendix 2).
In the third observation, students learned the grammar topic about "Possessives and 's" in Communication Language Teaching (CLT) method. The input was focused on teaching Grammar patterns through the conversations, encouraging students to communicate with each other talking about their family members' names and occupations. Students listened and completed charts and dialogs with Possessive pronouns and 's (see Appendix 3).

DATA COLLECTION
The data collection started from the interview for the subject as the first part of the research. Both students are field dependent learners as they have a preference for studying in class, teamwork and collaboration. They enjoy learning the language through songs and online computer games. Both of them wish to travel to foreign countries where they use their language. Furthermore, Student A wants to communicate with his peers via online games and interested to understand game instructions in English. The script is given in Appendix I to prove the learners' profile.
The second observation involved analyzing their grammar competence through the GTM. The topic of the lesson was "There is\there are, some\any". The students' native language was used in the explanation of the topic. The rules were introduced in the traditional method: interested in the topic and performed reading and writing with pleasure. They did not spend extra effort to remember grammatical patterns. Furthermore, bilingual student was good at guessing the meaning of the whole sentence and correcting his own mistakes. Monolingual learner didn't pay much attention to his errors and let other pupils to correct him.
The third observation revealed Student A and Student B's Grammatical competence through instructing them CLT method. The session was focused on the importance of all four language skills and aimed to achieve communicative competence. There were some speaking tasks (see Appendix 3) in which learners asked and answered questions. They were encouraged to promote their fluency. Comparing Student A with Student B in speaking with possessives, Student B made longer pauses during his speech and was a bit shy. Student A was more active and talkative making up questions and answers easily. Furthermore, Student A responded more quickly to spontaneous questions while Student B needed some time before answering. In the listening tasks, learners listened and completed sentences and both of them couldn't manage with the speed of listening material, therefore, the tape was stopped from time to time. Student B had spelling mistakes as he wrote the words the way he listened: father-fazer, mother -mazer (see Appendix 3). In pair work activity in which students were elicited to ask and answer questions about people in their family, learners demonstrated a very lively and interesting conversation. Student B spoke freely with his peers rather than he answered the teacher.
Besides, participants took part in the activity "Lost in the post" (see Appendix 4)in which they acted like postman and had to find the right address according to their letter. In order to find a house postman walked around the classroom inquiring the names and addresses of other participants. Both Student A and Student B took turns to be postman and practiced questions such as, "What's your name?, What's your address?, What is the number of your apartment?". It was a good opportunity to practice English names and numbers. Learners had good fluency along with having fun.
The next activity was "Family photos" (see Appendix 5) which was similar to what they learned from their textbook. Students were elicited to ask "Who is that?" from each other and find all the people's names in the picture.
Both students participated actively and demonstrated better comprehension of Possessive pronouns and 's. During the activities, both learners became more fluent and felt free. They both showed their better performance in the English language through communicative activities. Comparing with the first observation, the latter lesson was interactive and more interesting to the learners.

CONCLUSION
Summarizing all findings, this small scale revealed the fact that bilingual learner has significantly better performance in acquiring English grammar. The result is consistent with previous studies that illustrated the advantages of bilingual learners over monolinguals in acquiring an additional language. Cenzos (2099) stated that people who know two and more languages are superior to monolinguals in language learning depending on three ways: This small scale current study concludes that there is a high possibility of bilingual children learning additional language better than monolingual children. Bilinguals might use grammar learning strategies at different frequencies since they already have one more language in their linguistic storage. I believe that knowing two and more languages always helpful in attaining a new language. Better cognitive ability and second language experience could enhance the process of learning a third language.
To improve both bilingual and monolingual students' ability to learn additional language, teachers should consider some points. Learners shouldn't be taught through writing structures all the time as children are unwilling to write down and memorize each grammar structure. More contextual learning should be involved in the lessons. Teachers should encourage their students to self and peer correction of grammar mistakes. Using grammar patterns in conversations and roleplays improve their interest in the target language. Parents should maintain bilingualism at home and encourage their children to use both languages.
To evaluate and compare methods objectively, more subjects of different ages and gender are needed to be involved in the research.