Factors Influencing Bilingual Parents’ Language Preference for Language Development of Children with Special Needs: A Case Study

Abstract

Language is a major medium for children to express their needs in daily interaction with their parents. In order to foster language development of children with special needs, it is essential for bilingual Malay parents to make appropriate decisions about their language preferences as it will indirectly influence their language input for their children during language activities. The purpose of this manuscript is to highlight part of a case study, namely the motivating factors that influence bilingual parents’ language preference to facilitate their children’s language development. Two bilingual fathers and three bilingual mothers from three different families were involved in the study. In addition, two children with autism and one child with global developmental delay were also involved in this study. Semi-structured interview and observations were used as data collection methods. Language usage of parents during parent-child interaction was observed at meal time, play time and prayer time. The observation data was used to support findings from the interview session. From the case study, it was found that four main motivational factors influenced parents’ language preference: home language culture, language proficiency of parents, language of the majority of those in the community and the child’s language preference. The findings are discussed and suggestions are made, which includes benefits for bilingual parents, speech-language pathologists, special educators and mainstream educators.