I studied eleven Finnish- Swedish bilingual children, six girls and five boys, in this study. The children were interviewed and asked questions on learning English and studying other languages; also the matter of bilingualism was discussed. The children considered knowing Swedish helpful when learning another Germanic language, English. Some of the children came from bilingual homes and some of them had an immersion background. They also gave definitions of bilingualism that were similar to the definitions different researchers have given. Eight out of eleven children considered themselves bilingual. Three children with immersion background were not so sure about their bilingual identity.
The children stated that knowing languages would help them when they travel abroad and when they learn new languages. Furthermore they thought that they are able to help different people and that they would have benefit in future working life and studies when they are bilingual and/or know different languages. They also used Swedish as a learning strategy when learning English. When the children did not know a certain word in English they tried to find a similar sounding word in Swedish. In many cases this helped them to understand the word in English. The children concentrated on vocabulary and did not compare the languages in other matters except for one informant. He compared the articles and prepositions in Swedish and English. These grammatical issues are not used in Finnish so they were presumably easy to recognize as something different. The present study suggests that bilingual children have benefit from being bilingual when studying new languages.
The bilingual and multilingual children have more language competence in average compared to monolingual children. Anyhow, it was somewhat surprising that some of the studied children demanded so much from themselves. They had only started learning English at school and they already used the language abroad or thought they should understand everything when they are spoken to at hotels abroad. English is a very natural part in their lives. It has already been that for a long time since the children knew some English before they started with it at school. This is very natural since English has become a very important language in Finland. It has been called the third language of Finland (see ch. 3) The children had learned English from their parents and
other relatives and from TV and computer games. One informant had been living in England and Australia where she had acquired the language.
Aro (2009) studied 7-12-year-old English learners on their beliefs about language learning. These monolingual children had partly the same thoughts concerning the use of English as the children in the present study. The aspects of talking English with strangers, talking English abroad and helping people are similar to the categories in the present study. The willingness to study English seemed also similar in some answers in both studies. Some of the children wanted to study English because it is so widely used, as a lingua franca or because they might need it in future working life. The bilingual children seem, however, to be even more motivated in learning new languages and give more motivations for their eagerness. The children in the present study seem very confident with their language skills and are open to new experiences with even more languages. It is highly presumable that this results in the fact that the children are bilingual and already know two languages and two different cultures. Also the positive attitudes they have towards other languages, and the consciousness of the fact that there are different languages in the world, are possibly due to the fact that they are bilingual.
The families play a big role in the upbringing of the bilingual children. Peal and Lambert (1962: 18) discussed that the attitudes the child’s parents hold influences the child’s behavior and thinking to a great extent in bilingual families. The attitudes to different languages may not be so frequently discussed in monolingual families. This is something that also Pystynen (2013) points out in her study. The conscious efforts of providing a bilingual and bicultural environment for the children have clearly affected also the children’s views and their perceptions on themselves.
Pystynen (2013) aimed to study how bilingual parents valued bilingualism and biculturalism on an ideological and practical level. The Finnish and British parents explained their perceptions of bilingualism’s effects on the family members, with a special focus on the child’s bilingual and bicultural identity. The parents considered bilingualism to have several positive effects. Bilingualism and biculturalism were both seen to raise awareness and increase tolerance in the children towards different kinds of people, languages and cultures. The children were able to accept others’ beliefs since
they were themselves aware of their own biculturalism and different customs in two cultures. (Pystynen 2013: 42)
The families of the children in the present study have also consciously chosen to give the children a bilingual or multilingual upbringing by using two languages at home and/
or provided the children with bilingual education in the kindergarten and at school.
These efforts have made these bilingual children interested in learning new languages and accept different cultures.