4 yaşındaki Türkçe-ingilizce iki dilli bir çocuğun dil gelişimi üzerine betimsel bir vaka çalışması

In many cases of early bilingualism, one of the parents (or the caregiver) speaks to the child in the target language which is different from the other parent's native language. This target language is usually their native language. In other cases, the child is exposed to the target language as community language which is different from their home language. However; as a new case many non-native speakers of English in Turkey, especially English language teachers, have been raising their own children as Turkish-English bilinguals. On the one hand, some of them adopt One Person One Language (OPOL) method. This method was first introduced to the literature by Ronjat (1913; as cited in Döpke, 1988) referring to the bilingual raising of children in family environment in which one of the parents always addresses the child in one specific language whereas the other parent uses the other language to communicate with the child. On the other hand, a great number of parents/caregivers address their child in both English and Turkish interchangeably. The researcher is among those parents. Within this longitudinal study, she aims to present the case of her own daughter, Ipek. Ipek is a child, living in Turkey with her Turkish parents. The mother/researcher is an English language teacher, who has been speaking to Ipek both in Turkish and English since her birth. Rather than designing special activities to "teach" English to her daughter, she let Ipek get exposed to the language around already occurring routine home activities for a minimum of few hours a day, prioritizing incidental learning. This study aims to present a detailed illustration of the Turkish-English context in which Ipek grew and her language development during the first four years of her life. Within this qualitative study, video and audio recorded data as well as field notes and interviews were used to describe Ipek's linguistic development in English. The data were transcribed and analysed by the researcher and an interrater who is a specialist on language acquisition to improve trustworthiness. The categories such as Ipek's comprehension and production of English beside some sub-categories of Ipek's production emerged from the data; namely, Ipek's initiations and responses, Ipek's formulaic or self-generated phrases, translanguaging, communication strategies, language play, language transfer, and metalinguistic awareness. As a result, Ipek turned out to be able to use both Turkish and English in her daily life. Although Turkish has always been her dominant language, she is able to handle a conversation in English and she is pretty good at comfortably expressing herself in English. The findings of the study suggest that Ipek became a Turkish-English bilingual child thanks to the language atmosphere provided for her by her parents.