Learn what is the mixed language strategy bilingual parenting method, who uses this approach, and pros and cons about using this method.
In many ways, the stresses and challenges of a new life abroad can be eased and improved not just by bilingualism itself, but in the process of learning the language too.
Tips on raising bilingual multilingual children in a multilingual family
It's not the easiest road to follow
13 facts that parents who want to raise a bilingual child need to know. You can also find different bilingual parenting approaches.
Unconventional ways to raise bilingual kids. No judgement here please. We are all fighting our own battles.
What is the One Person, One Language bilingual parenting approach, the pros and cons of OPOL, and tips for implementing OPOL in your family.
13 facts that parents who want to raise a bilingual child need to know. You can also find different bilingual parenting approaches.
Raising a bilingual child using the Montessori approach is quite complimentary and it is becoming very popular due to the many Bilingual Montessori Schools.
13 facts that parents who want to raise a bilingual child need to know. You can also find different bilingual parenting approaches.
From speaking to many parents who are raising bilingual or multilingual children, I have compiled a list of the most common mistakes:
Christmas can be difficult for bilingual children who have family abroad. Here are some ways we deal with missing family at Christmas time.
Clarissa Gosling moved from the UK to The Netherlands in 2014 with her husband and two children. 1. Why did you move abroad? We moved abroad because my husband was offered a job in The Netherlands.
Bringing up bilingual children, what I wish I had known before, what is difficult about bilingual parenting and why it's worth doing.
One of the four main approaches of raising bilingual children: the minority language at home (MLAH) approach.
How one monolingual mom is raising a trilingual child!
Inspiring quotes and Memes about Bilingual Kids, Bilingualism, Languages, Language Learning, and Education.
What is the One Person, One Language bilingual parenting approach, the pros and cons of OPOL, and tips for implementing OPOL in your family.
In this post, I will dive into ten common myths about raising bilingual children and provide examples as to why they are misconceptions.
Raising bilingual kids is the hardest but most rewarding job you will have. Here is list of the do's and don'ts of bilingual parenting.
13 facts that parents who want to raise a bilingual child need to know. You can also find different bilingual parenting approaches.
13 facts that parents who want to raise a bilingual child need to know. You can also find different bilingual parenting approaches.
Kids are showing reading gains in dual-language classrooms. There may be underlying brain advantages at work.
Tips on raising bilingual multilingual children in a multilingual family
Unless your child goes to a bilingual school it will be up to you as a parent to teach your child to read in the minority language.
Karin, mother of 8 year old twins who speak German and English, took her kids abroad and enrolled them in school. This is what she learned.
In this post, I will go into how to read to bilingual children in the minority language when there is a lack of books in the target language.
In this post, I will dive into ten common myths about raising bilingual children and provide examples as to why they are misconceptions.
Join Dean & Ethan on this fabulous childhood bilingual adventure - a book series review of Travel, Learn and See by Dr Edna Ma.
I am saddened to see so many bloggers and sites quote facts they have not checked, mention studies they have not read and perpetuate myths and wrong ideas that way. In our world of instant results, we often overlook the credibility of what we read and the credibility of the people writing. Anyone can publish anything and claim to be something they are not. Unfortunately, parents read such articles and run to forums panicked about X and Y or further spread ill-conceived ideas. Let's take an example. An example, I know something about: raising multilingual children. Again and again, bilingualism research hits the headlines with articles picked up by newspapers with a clear political agenda. A few months back, an article claiming that bilingual children who are being raised in Scotland with English and another language have a smaller vocabulary (in English) than monolingual children (before the age of 5). Many in the bilingualism community expressed dismay at the headlines. Parents read and worried. Personally, I was shocked. How can people still write this kind of things? It is like we are back to 1980s when research on the topic was in its infancy, when bilingualism was not that common and we knew little about it. The article was published in the Telegraph. Enough said. Their political agenda was clear. But it was also reposted on an academic research online journal, this time written by the researcher herself! So, I went to the source directly and read the original research. I was even more shocked. Here are my reasons: - The research is written by someone who has no background in linguistics. You don't need one to write and carry out decent research but it usually helps. The author of the research is an economics academic and should therefore stick to economics and not linguistic analyses.It clearly states so on her profile, so you don't need to dig deep to find that out. - The research did not look at the children's second language. Everyone in the field knows this is a big no-no these days. This is acknowledged in the original article by the researcher “Firstly, these measures are not ideal for assessing performance of bilingual children.” (p11) but then is simply ignored. To me, as a former researcher in language acquisition myself, if you do not have data in two languages, you cannot draw any conclusions. Full stop. No data. No research. And more importantly, no claim about language delay or language of any kind. How can these children be tested only in English when they are 3 years old and may have only heard the minority language at home (as they might not attend any childcare facility yet)? - Naming tasks involve more than vocabulary. The claim that multilingual children are delayed before age 5 is based on a naming task. The child is asked to name “in English coloured pictures from a booklet he is shown one at a time”. Naming tasks are good measure of future literacy skills, but they are criticised because they also assess a wide range of cognitive skills. - There is very little linguistic background and relevant studies in the draft article (available online). - The research has not been published as far as I can tell (for good reasons) in any serious lingusitics journal. It usually means there are some serious flaws with it. - Finally, sentences found in the paper, like “programmes that help assimilation”, scared me! PIN me Other research has found that actually, from very early on, bilingual children have a comparable vocabulary to monolinguals (when taking into account all of their languages). This was certainly the case in the research I carried out myself. And if you would like to claim my own credentials, and you should, they are here.
Following on from my post in April for the carnival, I was slightly puzzled by the fact that the articles I referred to managed to compile different lists of words 2-year-olds should know even though the seemed to quote the same source. So I thought I'd share my own list(s). A word of caution: there are no list of words for multilingual children (partly because of the endless language combinations possible). And while bilinguals are not two monolinguals in one on many accounts, it can be a good starting point to find out what monolingual children should say at a given age. Don't forget that if your child only hears English for half of the day, then it is possible s/he may only produce half of those words. The resource I used to make up this list is based on an assessment tool that parents fill in called the MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventories. This is mainly aimed at researchers but is easily understandable. The MacArthur Bates inventories produce tables (you can check them online) of the most frequent words understood and produced by children between 16 and 30 months old. While the articles reported that children should say at least 25 words at 2 years old, there is huge variability in children. 25 is most likely a minimum number and children can produce a lot more by this age (up to 8 times more on average). So I have compiled a list of 50 words: the 50 most frequent words produced by (American) English-speaking children at 2 years old. The table below can be read as thus: 'mommy' is the most frequent word produced by 2 year olds (24 months). It is produced by 99% of children this age. 'uh oh' is the fourth most common word (or sound effect) produced by 94% of children. Caution: this is a list for English. Do not try and translate this to any other language as there are cultural and linguistic differences which I will explore in a later post. Source: Dale, P. S., and Fenson, L. (1996). Lexical development norms for young children. Behavioral Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 28, 125-127.
Have you ever considered raising a bilingual child? Even if you're a monolingual family? In this episode we have Spanish teacher and family travel veteran, Karim Morato of Spanish Educational Solutions, give us inside tips on how best to raise bilingual kids, even if you're not bilingual yourself! Learn why learning another language
40 easy to implement tips for parents raising bilingual children from a linguist and mother of children exposed to 4 languages
A bilingual homeschooling plan from a family who homeschool in Spanish and English with resources to help you with your own bilingual homeschool
There is this common misconception that bilingual kids lag behind and are disadvantaged. However, research tells a different story...
In this post, I will go into how to read to bilingual children in the minority language when there is a lack of books in the target language.
Meet other parents raising bilingual kids. Ask questions, seek advice, and help others in need. There is no need to be alone on this journey :)
13 facts that parents who want to raise a bilingual child need to know. You can also find different bilingual parenting approaches.
Top tips to boost your bilingual child's language skills and get them using the minority language with confidence every day!
In this post, I will dive into ten common myths about raising bilingual children and provide examples as to why they are misconceptions.
There is a critical period for langauge development, a "window of opportunity" they call it when children can best learn languages.
One of the four main approaches of raising bilingual children: the minority language at home (MLAH) approach.
If you are looking for an answer to that title, let me tell you straight away, this article is not going to tell you. Recently, however, there has been an (alarming) number of articles and posts on the internet, aimed at parents raising mutlilingual children, claiming that a child needed to be exposed to, on average, a minimum of 30% of their awake time to the minority language in order for him/her to be able to use that language. Now, I am not disputing the fact that there may be a cut-off point below which acquiring the language may be difficult beyond the use of a few basic words by the child. But there are so many things wrong with this statement that I feel it is a very dangerous one to present to parents. But, let me come back to the statement and its origins first. The myth The various versions of this myth claim that "a child needs to be exposed to a language for a minimum of 30% of the time spent awake in order to start (and continue) using the language actively" or that "20% input is the minimum for successful language acquisition" or that "less than 20 hours may make it difficult for the minority language to keep pace". The origins of the myth As a researcher, I cannot help but think that quoting this number because someone else quoted it is not proof enough that it holds any truth. I need scientific evidence. It seems that this statement could have originated from a misquote from Fred Genesee, a Canadian leading academic in terms of bilingual language acquisition. What Genesee actually stated is that when his team of researcher choose participants for their studies on bilingual acquisition, they choose children who are exposed to at least 30% of their minority language. It is a decision they have to make to ensure the children are growing up bilinguals. A lot of other research teams use a similar selection point. Pearson's research team, for example, uses 20% as a cut-off point and she mentions it in her Raising a bilingual child book (p. 116). What they did NOT say, however, is that you needed to be exposed to at least 30% of your minority language to be bilingual or to acquire it or that it should be a target for families. Big difference, in my opinion. What is wrong with this myth As I mentioned before, there are many things wrong with this claim. - How can you accurately measure exposure time? How about thinking time, quiet time, play time when we are not around to overhear? How can you make sure when you read to your child in English, he or she is not thinking in their other language and translating in their head? LJ spends 2 hours in the morning before going to kindergarten with me and her father. I speak to her in French, her dad speaks in Portuguese (with some English) and as a couple we speak English. How on earth do I quantify that? Would you have to count words we produce? - How about trilinguals or quadrilinguals? My daughter stands no chance with this myth. She is exposed to 4 languages and mathematically, if she had a perfectly balanced exposure, she would get 25% in each language, leaving her little chance according to this myth. Now, even if I can quantify her input approximately, I could come up to the conclusion that she is exposed to French about 30% of the time and less of the other languages. Her German clearly stands little chance then (and let's not even mention her Portuguese or English). Yet, I cannot help but feel that her German is growing faster than any of her other languages at the moment. planting seeds for the future - What ages are we talking about in this myth? It is unclear. Genesee and Pearson tend to work with very young bilinguals (somewhere between 6 months and 5 years old). I am not sure they would apply the same criteria to older kids. - How long for? Until what age, should we have this balance of languages? How do we measure it over time? Life is rather unpredictable and language balance often shifts over time and at different times of our lives as we move country, start school, get a job, etc. - What are the languages used for? Different languages of a multilingual are used for different purposes. We may not need the same amount of exposure or type of exposure to each language. After all, does it matter that my daughter is only exposed to 11% (I am making this up) of her awake time to Portuguese? All she needs it for is to talk to her Grandma over Skype once a week and for a holiday once a year. She may understand enough for that. What scientific evidence tells us The truth is there is very little scientific evidence about minimum exposure time in bilingual children (and even less, if any at all, for multilingual kids). Almost all of the evidence on the topic is anecdotal. First of all, the research evidence indicates quite clearly that the reduced input that results from exposure to two languages during the preschool years does not impact certain aspects of language development in simultaneous bilingual (grammar, for example). One of the only studies, to my knowledge, on the topic is that of Thordardottir (2011). She suggests that bilingual children need at least 40% of waking hour exposure to a language if their competence in that language (as measured by words production and comprehension) is to be comparable to that of monolingual children, WHEN assessed using standardized tests. But this not even true for all aspects of words acquisition they studied. However, even under optimal conditions (50:50), a bilingual's languages may differ from that of a monolingual because their communicative needs are different. A bilingual almost certainly uses their languages for different purposes. PIN me to save I will end the topic with this quote from F. Grosjean (found here): there is no good measure of “enough exposure” We really need to stop comparing multilinguals to monolinguals as if these are the reference and multilingualism is a disorder!! So, stop obsessing about numbers and remember that the seed planted may take time to grow, but it is there and can be reactivated with a little water, nutrients and care whenever needed. I would like to thank Madalena Cruz-Ferreira for sharing her views on the issue with me. I am solely responsible for everything written here though. Thordardottir, E. (2011). The relationship between bilingual exposure and vocabulary development, International Journal of Bilingualism, 15,4, 426-44.
Knowing how to speak a second language has many advantages, and many studies suggests that bilingual kids are smarter than others.
OPOL - One Person One Language. If you are Raising a Bilingual Child, the OPOL method is popular with many families for lots of reasons.
Gift ideas for young multilingual or bilingual children. Bilingual wall art, games, magazines and more.
13 facts that parents who want to raise a bilingual child need to know. You can also find different bilingual parenting approaches.
Want to raise bilingual kids but you are worried because you don't speak your partner's langauge? Read on to hear advice from those who have been there.
