Fred+Genesee

National Literacy Panel Fred Genesee By Mei Ling Han
 * [[image:http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/perpg/fac/genesee/fred.gif width="181" height="232" align="left"]] || **Fred Genesee**
 * Professor**
 * McGill University**
 * Department of Psychology**
 * 1205 Dr. Penfield Avenue**
 * Montreal, Quebec**
 * H3A 1B1**
 * Tel: (514) 398-6022**
 * Fax: (514-398-4896**
 * Email: genesee@ego.psych.mcgill.ca** ||

Dr. Fred Genesee is a professor of psychology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada since 1978. He is an expert in the field of second language acquisition, dual language immersion, and bilingualism. He has performed numerous research studies of young children acquiring a second language in immersion programs in Canada. His findings show that children are not limited in their learning capabilities in learning only one language. In his study //Bilingual Children's Repairs of Breakdowns in Communication//, two and three year-old French and English bilingual children were engaged in playtime. The experimenter, an unfamiliar person to the child, used the child's weaker language in addressing him/her. When the child spoke in the language not used by the experimenter, the experimenter would ask for clarification, up to five times. Findings show that all the children were able to change their language to meet the experimenter's request. This showed that the children, as young as two and a half year-old can differentiate French and English.

This entire study is available along with other studies by Dr. Genesee using the following links.

[|What do we Know about Bilingual Education for Majority-Language Students in the Handbook on Bilingualism]
 * Recent Publications: **

[|Bilingual First Language Acquisition in the Handbook on Language Development]

[|Bilingual Children's Repairs of Breakdowns in Communication. Journal of Child Language]

[|Domain-general versus domain-specific accounts of language impairment: Evidence from bilingual children's acquisition of object pronouns in Language Acquisition.]

=Webcasts featuring Dr. Genesee:=

[|**Podcast on Early Childhood Bilingualism from Nov. 22, 2007**]

[|Webcast of Teaching English Language Learners]
 * Panelists are Diane August, Margarita Calderon, and Fred Genesee**

=Why Dr. Genesee Caught My Attention=

I lived in Montreal for eight years, attending kindergarten to eighth grade. I remember learning French and English together in school. I don't recall getting the two languages mixed up or not knowing which was French and which was English. Not knowing any different, I thought everyone learned another language when they were in school. What strikes me is the basic fundamental words, phrases, and verb conjugation I learned when I was young, I still remember. I can speak and understand simple French. Maybe Dr. Genesee has done some work that shows language acquired in early childhood remains with you better than that acquired later.