This activity is designed to gauge how competent parents feel they and their family members are at both the heritage and the school (host) language.

First, consider showing parents this example from a similar activity carried out by TALES at Home:

Then, using the ladder template below, participants can draw stick men onto two ladders - one for the home (parent present's language) and one for the school (host country) language. The ladder has six rungs, each with a description and a number, as seen below.

They can draw as many family members as they like, but encourage them to focus on where they believe their language skills are in relation to their children's.

For example, a mother might put her children's competency above her own in the school language, in which case you can encourage her to express how she feels about this. For the home language, a mother may feel her children are not as good at their heritage language as she would like them to be, and perhaps they are reluctant to learn - encourage discussion of this too.

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