| This study was designed to yield a comprehensive description of CS behavior among three Korean-English bilingual children and to compare their CS behavior in four settings---at home, the observer's apartment, the Korean Saturday school, and the American nursery school. The specific purposes of this study were: (1) to identify CS behavior in very young bilingual children, (2) to analyze and describe specific syntactic and sociolinguistic aspects of CS behavior, (3) to compare the nature of bilingual children's language behavior across contexts, and (4) to examine developmental tendencies in CS.;Speech samples from the three bilingual children were collected within the four contexts over the course of a year using both audio and video recording.;The CS patterns observed in this study were quite identifiable and consistent. CS was used by the children as a strategic communication and language learning device. Although CS was a relatively small part of the children's overall language behavior, their CS usage was both systematic and consistent across contexts. Their behavior support the claim that even very young bilingual children utilize CS effectively as part of their communicative competence.;The children in this study were influenced by environmental factors in their language code selection. The PPVT and MLU scores indicated that children acquired each vocabulary set and grammar system simultaneously and autonomously. Patterns of divergent language development, variable development or developmental delay were not observed.;Children develop CS patterns that follow the rules of the situational context. As a result, CS develops depending on the individual selection of interaction and communicative experiences. As a result, the children did not show a uniform developmental sequence in their functional use of CS. Also different learning strategies were evident in their development because children do not acquire bilingual proficiency in a uniform fashion. |
