A crucial point in a bilingual child’s life is when they start attending nursery or school in the majority language. At this stage, there is a tendency for the school language to take over and become the child’s dominant language. The child may start to use less of the family language and may even stop responding to it. Because this is such an important phase, it is important that parents know how to prepare for it and how to tackle the potential challenges. However, the nursery or school choice can also be a supporting factor for a child’s multilingual language development.
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...
A bit of an obvious statement, you may think. Unfortunately, it is not. Instead, it is a problem many children in the developing world still face: not being able to attend school in their mother tongue. United Nation’s International Mother Language Day is celebrated...
How to prepare your little bilingual for school? What to do if you get a response in the wrong language? Should you follow the teacher's advice to drop your home language? These are some of the questions that Marianna Du Bosq from Bilingual Avenue and I answered...
… do you worry about what will happen with the minority language? Whether it will still be the means of communication between you and your child, or whether the majority language will take over? If you are a bit concerned, you are not alone, but there are steps you...
There was a time when teachers and even speech therapists were during their training told to recommend to parents in multilingual and migrant families to stick only to the majority language and stop using their native family language at home. Today we know that this...
What to do if a teacher tells you that your daughter’s progress at school is hampered by the use of the minority language at home? How to react if the school thinks that you are making her learning more difficult by insisting on her becoming bilingual? Hearing...