THE PROS AND CONS OF BILINGUALISM. THE EXPERIMENT WITH NON-NATIVE BILINGUALISM – REFLECTIONS

The paper discusses the issue of developing early childhood bilingualism. Its main thrust is to present the pros and cons of raising a bilingual child in a monolingual environment. In the paper the reader will find selected theoretical aspects related to bilingualism. Also the author presents a range of research findings concerning child's cognitive development and its relationship to language acquisition process. Eventually, the text contains certain remarks concerning an experiment that was carried out some years ago whose aim was to raise a Polish-English speaking child in a monolingual (Polish) environment.