Relationship between Bilingual Environment and Indonesian Language Development in Children

Language development is one of the most important developments in children, influenced by internal and external factors. One of the most influential external factors is verbal environment. Specific language disorder can occur in one language in children with bilingual environment in the first three years of life. A cross sectional study to assess relationship between bilingual environment and Indonesian language development in children was conducted in early childhood education programs in Medan, Indonesia from November 2017 to March 2018. All sample were recruited with consecutive sampling method Physical and hearing examination were performed Language development were examined with Cognitive Adaptive Test/ Clinical Linguistic Auditory Milestone Scale (CAT/CLAMS). Fisher's exact test was used to assess relationship between bilingual environment and Indonesian language development. There was 9.1% children with Indonesia language development disorder in bilingual group, whereas none in non bilingual group. There was significant relationship between bilingual environment and Indonesian language development in children.