The speaking proficiency of a seven-year old Indonesian-English bilingual child in a trilingual school

Additive bilingualism is a process of learning a second language without replacing the first language (Lambert, 1975). However, the emergence of bilingual schools which use English as the medium of instruction has created fewer opportunities to speak Indonesian as the first language. This study aimed to investigate a seven-year-old Indonesian child who studied in a trilingual school in Surabaya, Indonesia. Limited exposure to Indonesian through his parents and school has caused him to have low proficiency in the first language. Apart from that, the mother’s decision to use more English than Indonesian was mainly driven by the high expectation to prepare her child for competition to possess material resources. English was seen to offer more economic values than Indonesian. Both the school and parents have worked hand-in-hand to create young Indonesians who speak fluent English with the risk of having low proficiency in the first language. Apart from that, the child’s limited interactions with interlocutors who spoke Indonesian prevented him from optimally developing his first language