Today’s guest writer is Marieke Romano-van den Hoek, a 33-year-old mother-of-two, who blogs at Speaking More Languages, where she shares her family’s experiences of bilingual upbringing. Marieke lives in Holland with her Italian husband and they raise their children...
Bilingualism
10 reasons why your bilingual child has an advantage at school
10 reasons why your bilingual child has an advantage at school “Should we drop a language to help our bilingual child do better at school?” is a question parents occasionally ask me when they are concerned about their kids’ educational progress. The answer is a...
Can monolingualism make you ill?
Can monolingualism make you ill? “Is monolingualism making us ill?” was the somewhat provocative title of an excellent talk by Dr Thomas Bak, neuroscientist and dementia researcher at the University of Edinburgh, which I was fortunate to listen to last week....
Q&A: If a child loses a language are all the benefits of bilingualism gone?
Question Hei! I am a German single mom to a soon 4-year-old boy. He was born in Finland and we've been living here all the time. At home I only speak German to him. He started to attend Finnish daycare at age 1.5 (part time), full time from age 2.5. Although...
Bilingual children – no language confusion!
We have answered more than two hundred questions on the topic of raising bilingual children, and the worry that gets mentioned most frequently is whether kids growing up to learn more than one language can get confused by the languages in their family and...
Translanguaging as a way of enhancing learning
This week’s topic is another manifestation of bilingual living: translanguaging. If you look up the term in Wikipedia, it is described as “the dynamic process whereby multilingual language users mediate complex social and cognitive activities through strategic...
Q&A: Can learning difficulties be due to bilingualism and how to assess this?
Question Hello I am a school psychologist who has been asked to evaluate a student for special services that is also considered to be English Language Learner (ELL). He is currently six years of age. The records indicate that the primary language of the home is...
Professor François Grosjean – on bilingualism, language mode and identity
https://youtu.be/Ky4nzxpeNAU Fantastic interview with Professor François Grosjean, my all-time favourite specialist on bilingualism, conducted by Fabrice Jaumont, Education Attaché at the Cultural Services in New York. The video is brimming with useful information,...
Receptive bilingualism – understanding but not speaking a language
When discussing the language skills of children in multilingual families, you occasionally come across the situation where a child has learnt to understand a language, but is unable (or unwilling) to speak it. Quite often you will find this described as passive...
Is it too late to introduce your language to your child?
“You must start speaking your language to your baby from day one!” “She is already three and you haven’t started yet? She won’t sound like a native!” “If you don’t introduce the language before he goes to school, you have missed your chance!” “Older than seven and he...