Question Hello, My wife and I were ethnically Chinese, but she was mostly raised in Japan and considers her native language Japanese. Before we had our first child, we spoke a mix of Mandarin and English at home. While I have familiarity with Japanese (just...
Challenges
Q&A: How to support a bilingual child with dyslexia?
Question Hello, Can you please advise us on the following with regards to a 7-year-old? The boy’s mother is Australian, the father who he visits is Australian. His step father is from Pakistan and speaks Urdu, English and Arabic. The boy has been to Arabic...
Q&A: How can a monolingual professional offer Speech and Language Therapy for a bilingual child?
Question Hello, I am a Speech Language Pathologist in a school setting. I evaluated a 2 year 10 month old child who is a dual language learner. Dad speaks native language and English. Mom speaks native language and is just now learning English. Dad is concerned...
Q&A: How to convince the next generation to maintain the family language?
Question Hello, I have a question: I have successfully raised my children to be bilingual (English and Spanish) in the United States and couldn't be more proud of their fluency in speaking, reading and writing. We spoke it at home and they only use English at school....
Q&A: Worried mother: my bilingual 2-year-old is not talking – what to do?
Question Hello I'm hoping you might be able to help me. I'm a first-time mummy and very worried about my 22-month-old. Her understanding is phenomenal, but she refuses to speak. She will say mama, dada, yaya (grandmummy), daddina (grandfather) and about three...
Q&A: How to correct a trilingual child’s pronunciation?
Question Hello! My husband and I live in Belgium and before the birth of our son we were speaking English to each other. However due to our complex family and cultural situation we decided to step away from English and limit the languages to three only. Our son...
Q&A: About choosing the language for day care, stuttering and mixing languages
Question Hello, I am Macedonian living in Finland and my spouse is Finnish. I speak quite good English but at home we speak Finnish almost all the time. We have 2,5 months old baby for whose future I'd like her to speak Macedonian and Finnish and to...
Q&A: Literacy: how to teach reading and writing when exposure time is limited?
Question Good day, I am a German native living in South Africa. My husband is South African and speaks to my 3-year-old son English and the local language isiSetswana. I solely speak German to him. Since he goes to an English creche, English is his main...
Q&A: Which sign language to teach a child with Down syndrome in a bilingual family?
Question Hi, We are a family of three, and expecting our second child. Our daughter will be nearly four when her baby brother is due in November. I'm Finnish, my husband Irish, and we live in the US at the moment. Even if we use English together, I've used only...
Q&A: How far behind can parents expect a bilingual child’s second language to be?
Question Hello, I have a three-year-old daughter who is bilingual. I speak exclusively English and my husband speaks exclusively Czech to her (since birth). In a typical day, she is exposed to about 70% English and 30% Czech. She listens to music and looks at...