ABSTRACT
Putting children in bilingual environments serves two important aims: One is to understand mental processes involved in bilingual development; the other is to understand what skills bilinguals need to aid in learning in later years. This chapter provides a review of literature on language development studies involving Filipino children. It features a case study describing child language acquisition of a one-year-old’s communicative intents in a multilingual household and expressive vocabulary development as he progresses in his early years as a toddler. Reyes-Wandless argues that language activities that allowed children to express conceptual associations in L1 could simultaneously develop competence in L2. The chapter concludes by theorizing on how English is acquired, particularly in the Philippine multilingual context.
