After taking into consideration all the points raised in the first part of this series, you have decided that you want to give your child the gift of another language. My presumption is that you have discussed this with the rest of the family and everybody agrees that...
One of the most common questions we get to our panel of Family Language Coaches is from parents thinking about teaching their child a language of which the mother and/or father is not a native speaker, and whether this is a good idea. My short answer to this question...
When you are raising your child to speak more than one language, it is important to know how to go about it – this is the raison d'être of my blog! It is however equally important to be aware of the things you should avoid when bringing up a bilingual child....
For the last four weeks I have written articles on different family language strategies: one parent/person, one language (OPOL), minority language at home (mL@H), time and place (T&P) and two parents, two languages (2P2L) and today’s question is: Do you HAVE to...
In my series on different strategies for raising a bilingual child, I will today introduce an approach, which you may not have heard about: two parents, two languages (2P2L). Previously in this series, I have written about one parent/person, one language (OPOL),...
When raising a bilingual child, it is always good to plan ahead so that everyone is clear about who is going to speak what language in the family when the new baby arrives. This post is the third post in my series of different approaches parents can take if they...
The first post in the series about bilingual family language strategies was about one parent/person, one language or simply OPOL as it is generally known. Now it's the turn of the approach called minority language at home, with the slightly more complicated acronym of...
A minority language parent’s attitude to his or her own language can be the deciding factor for how fluently the child will learn to speak the language. This is an interesting find from an on-going small-scale study of bilingual children. According to the study, a...
Today, having helped my younger daughter pack for her trip to the other side of the world, I was again reminded of how travelling has been important, in so many ways, for her and her sister. Apart from the obvious of visiting new and revisiting familiar places,...
"We are expecting a baby and would want her/him to become bilingual. What are the things we should consider and what could we do in preparation for our new arrival?" This is something parents-to-be often ask me, so for this month’s Raising Multilingual Children...