Multilingualism in Children: Communicative Competence as a Socialization Pattern.

Children show tremendous abilities in their language acquisition and language use. The current research reports the patterns in the language use of Arya, a four-year-old, female, neurologically healthy, multilingual child in India. A subjective report based on the observations of conversations in person and over phone calls obtained over a span of more than two and half years suggests that, in cross-cultural settings, multilingual children display communicative competence in their language use without any special instructions, provided they are exposed to the optimum amount of linguistic exposure. This research argues that children use their communicative competence as a socialization pattern to identify themselves with kith and kin. The research also hints at the future scope in pedagogy in general and in creating language teaching models, in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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