Early Bilingual Acquisition: A Case Study in Iran

This study takes a look at the acquisition of early bilingualism of Persian and English languages by a five year old boy named Daniel in Iran. It aims to find out the progress he has made while acquiring these languages simultaneously, degree of his success or failure in communication in each language, his code switching and mother tongue dominancy during the five year period since his birth. The result of this study shows that early bilingualism has not caused delay either in Daniel’s speech or his language acquisition process. Also it reveals that few code switchings Daniel has made are quite part of his normal language learning process and not indicative of his insufficient knowledge or his difficulty in using and communicating in either language. Moreover, it demonstrates that Daniel’s mother tongue has mostly been dominant during the period although Daniel’s mother has been communicating with him only in English which is not her first language. For this study, a descriptive method has been used based on his parents’ observations, audio and video recordings and taking notes of his bilingual communication developments since his birth.