I am currently working with an 11 year old boy who stutters. His first language is Spanish and he has been learning English since first grade. He stutters more severely in Spanish and now prefers to speak in English. I was wondering if other people have had this same experience, where a client stutters more in their first language rather than their second, and what possible explanations you have considered.
Bonnie
Comments
Hi Bonnie,
I have had similar clinical experiences with clients at different ages and stages of development. Anecdotally, I have found that proficiency plays a role, but it's role seems to change across time.
For example, I worked with a very bright 10 year-old Russian boy who had only 6 months earlier immigrated to the U.S. Russian was the only language spoken at home and it was clearly still D.'s strongest language. He also had a severe stuttering disorder, evident since he began to talk. So speaking Russian had been very painful/effortful for him always, despite his great ability in the language. Now, in L2, English he was learning very quickly. He was also at a very different stage of motor, social and cognitive development when he began L2. His current proficiency level in English although impressive after only 6 months was still much less than in L1/Russian. He also had much less "speech baggage" in L1. He stuttered in English, but not to the degree he did in Russian. Consequently he began to insist that he had forgotten all his Russian and now only spoke English. It could be that with increasing proficiency in English his dysfluencies would also increase; it could also be that his level of maturation and change in social spheres when L2 learning began would make his speech more resilient to whatever the underlying cause of the dysfluency is.
I worked with a 20 year old Spanish-English gentleman who, per his report, stuttered much more in L1 (Spanish) at first. He was now much stronger in English than Spanish (as is typical for almost all individuals who grow up in the US). He of course stutters in both languages, but feels much more negatively about his Spanish in part because his proficiency has dropped so significantly in that language-- he stopped speaking it as a youth because he thought by switching languages he could "cure the stuttering." Maybe a parallel to individuals who change their name etc ... just my experience but it seems to resonate with yours.
-k
Posted by: KK | April 17, 2007 6:08 PM