Read more about living with more than one language
| Site: | Isotis |
| Course: | Promoting multilingualism in the family |
| Book: | Read more about living with more than one language |
| Printed by: | Guest user |
| Date: | Sunday, 10 November 2024, 10:09 PM |
1. Multilingualism in the family: living with more than one language
Living with more than one language can be very rewarding. This is especially true for families who have moved countries. It helps them to balance maintaining old ways of life with the new. However in everyday life, living with several languages can be quite complicated. Languages are connected to feelings, people and places, and they can have many different meanings.
For families, moving between different languages can be tricky. It can make the dynamic in families quite challenging. Parents will have ideas about the languages they want to use at home and children will not always follow these ideas. They will bring in their own ideas. This can led to tensions and conflicts.
As a parent you need to know that you are not alone. Many families face these situations at home. Sometimes you might feel that it would be easier to give up on your heritage language.
What helps children’s language development in general is if young children hear the languages parents are comfortable and competent with at home. Talking in your strongest language with you child has a number of advantages:
- It means that the child will have good quality language experiences at home;
- Being able to communicate with you child in the language you feel comfortable with will make interactions and relationships easier – especially as your child gets older;
- In addition, if you don’t pass on to your child something that is as important to you as your language, this can feel as a loss.
If you only speak your heritage language at home as a family, you might be worried that your child will struggle when starting school. Research shows that strong first language skills help children to learn the second language. At the same time, to become bilingual, children need to hear and use both languages.
2. Finding a balance between different languages
Fitting in both languages will help our child in school, but can be a juggle and will not always go smoothly. Often the balance in how you use your languages at home will change over time and need readjusting. What is important is to notice tensions and difficulties when they come up, so that you can think and talk about them and find the best way as a family!
Changes are likely to happen as children grow up. Readjustments will be needed at times, for example when children start preschool or school. This can be a challenging time. Children will now hear and use the school language for some hours every day. New language experiences can be intense, and you might find that children will not always switch back to their home language when coming home in the afternoon.
As a parent you might observe your child ‘experimenting’ with their new language skills in playful ways. For example they might build words or sentences in the new language into their role play. As children increasingly start to master the new language, it can feel easier for them to carry on using it at home. It is quite likely that they will try to use it when speaking at home to their siblings and parents. In fact, children might be quite persistent to use one language more than the other and you as a parent might find this difficult to change.
The struggle to find a balance that feels right to you and your child can bring tensions into interactions and relationships at home. Sometimes it might feel more comfortable to adapt to your child’s language choices. In addition, daily life can be demanding especially when dealing with children. For instance, think of a day that you are rushing to a school meeting or elsewhere and you need to get ready with your child as soon as possible. Your child is being playful and you have no time to deal with that…
As a parent you need to be aware that not using, or only sometimes using the heritage language at home will mean that your child will over time develop better language skills in the other language. If children do not hear and actively use their heritage language, they will start losing their skills in that language and probably become fluent only in the majority language.
3. Finding a balance between different languages
Moving between different languages and finding the right balance is challenging for families. However, studies of bilingual and multi-lingual families show that it is not an impossible task to provide children with the opportunity to practice and learn more than one language. As a parent you will find that you will need to persist with the heritage language, and that you will need to find positive ways of reinforcing it. For instance, when your child says or asks for something, you can translate it back to her or switch language when asking a question rather than of simply responding to your child‘s needs.
Settling into preschool or school can be more challenging for children who are less familiar with the school language. Children might be more irritated and emotional for a while, and at preschool or school children might first go through a silent period. These experiences are common in bilingual and multilingual families.
Try not to work only on your own: bilingual and multilingual language development can also be hugely supported by other people in the environment. Contact with grandparents and the wider family, time spent in the country of origin, and friends in the community who use the heritage language can all support parents in the task of using and maintaining the heritage language. As a parent, it will help you if you make most of these helpful opportunities. What also matters is how the preschool or school responds to issues bilingual and multilingual children bring with them, and if and how they encourage the presence of families’ heritage language in school. As a parent it will be important for you to make sure school understands your language background and knows about how you balance your languages at home.
4. Guiding principles
The activities in this section are guided by the following criteria:
- maintaining child’s attention to the activity and preventing distractors (e.g. TV, telephone…)
- not limiting the child to a particular language
- showing patience for child’s efforts, however supporting when the child struggles and asks for help
- providing a comfortable environment where the child feels confident, preventing a sense of shame, embarrassment, and insecurity;
- appreciating child’s attempts in the activity.
5. Dive deeper
Selected online resources and literature on topics such as 'bilingual development' and 'living as a multilingual family'.
National literacy trust: Understanding bilingualism in the early years
https://literacytrust.org.uk/resources/understanding-bilingualism-early-years/
Naldic – National Association for Language Development iIn the Curriculum/The national subject association for EAL: Supporting multi-lingual children in the early years
https://naldic.org.uk/teaching-learning/eyfs/
Family lives: Talking to your child about culture
Future learn: Language policy in the family
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/multilingual-practices/0/steps/22646
Antheme: a 5-year collaborative research project (2014 – 2019) studying multilingualism in Europe
http://www.atheme.eu/research-themes/being-multilingual/
Mutlilingual families: a European Union funded education project that supports and informs immigrant or multilingual parents how and why to raise their children multilingually
http://www.multilingual-families.eu/home
Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism: The benefits of multilingualism in the family
https://www.reading.ac.uk/celm/media/1148/b18587-celm-multilingualism-parents-final-130717.pdf
Multilingual children’s association
http://www.multilingualchildren.org/
Bilingualism matters: a centre studying bilingualism and language learning
http://www.bilingualism-matters.ppls.ed.ac.uk/
Tales at home: a project that aims to support multilingual families, helping them to create a favourable environment for language learning and wellbeing
British Council: Video tips for parents to help their child with English
https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/video-tips
Mother tongues: An association that aims to raise awareness of the benefits and challenges associated with bilingualism
6. References
References:
Cummins, J. (1986). Empowering minority students: A framework for intervention.
Harvard Educational Review, 56, 18-35.
Drury, R. (2007). Young bilingual learners at home and school. Researching multilingual voices.Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books.
Drury, R. (2008). Stages of early bilingual learning. downloaded from: http://www.naldic.org.uk/ITTSEAL2/teaching/Stagesofearlybilinguallearning.cfm. August 2017.
Drury, R. (2010). Young bilingual learners: socio-cultural perspective. In: Hall, K.; Goswami, U.; Harrison, C.; Ellis, S. and Soler, J. eds. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Learning to Read: Culture, Cognition and Pedagogy.Abingdon: Routledge, p. 2010.
Kheirkhah M. (2016). Family language practices to family language policies: Children as socializing agents. Thesis, Department of Thematic Studies – Child Studies, Linköping University, Sweden.
Kheirkhah M. & Cekaite, A. (2015). Language Maintenance in Multilingual Family: Informal Heritage Language Lessons in Parent-Child Interactions. Multilingua, 34 (3).
Leseman, P. P. M. (2000). Bilingual vocabulary development of Turkish preschoolers in
the Netherlands. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 21, 93–112.
Houwer, A. D. (2015). Harmonious bilingual development: Young families’ well-being in language contact situations. International Journal of Bilingualism, 19(2) 169–184.
Talking to your child about culture. Family lives website: https://www.familylives.org.uk/advice/secondary/health-and-development/talking-to-your-child-about-culture/