Question Hello and thank you for the blog! I am a second generation Swedish speaker (Swedish mother) that has only been to Sweden for holidays and I live in Canada. Now I am trying to teach my 3.5-year-old son and 3-month-old daughter Swedish. I've been speaking...
One parent, one language – OPOL is dead, long live OPOL!
Which strategy should you use to raise your bilingual child? Ask the question and you can be forgiven for getting all confused with the different viewpoints you are offered both by experts and other parents. Today I will take a closer look at the best-known of the...
Q&A: How to reintroduce English for our bilingual children?
Question I love your blog and helpful tips! I wanted to consult you on an issue if I may. I hope you have some time to help me out with professional advice. I have two kids, ages 4 and 7. We are both originally from Israel and speak Hebrew as mother tongue as well as...
4 reasons why your bilingual child answers in the “wrong” language
Getting an answer in the "wrong" language is something which especially minority language parents dread, and which gives rise to question such as: – Is it the start of a slippery slope which may end in the majority language taking over as the language of communication...
Q&A: Helping bilingual children with homework – in which language?
Question Hi, firstly I wanted to thank-you for your blog, it brings me so much reassurance about bringing up my daughter and teaching her French. She soon turns 3 and is doing better and better in French. She's a little chatter box so because she likes talking so much...
Q&A: How to support all the languages of a trilingual 4-year-old.
Question I am Korean and my wife is Japanese. We have a 4-year-old boy and currently live in the US. My wife and I speak English to each other, although we use broken English (not perfect English). My wife speaks Japanese to my son while I speak Korean to him....
Q&A: Motivating a child to use minority language & using different languages with siblings
Question My daughter is 2.5 yrs. I have only spoken to her in Spanish her whole life (we live in the US) her mother, a stay-at-home mom, only speaks English. If I press her, she will speak in Spanish, but she always responds in English unless I refuse to listen unless...
Bilingual children – language exposure is not enough, attitude counts!
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...
Bilingual children travel well, and do well to travel
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,...
Q&A: Passing on a non-native language to a child
Question I stumbled across this website and found it extremely helpful and interesting. I tried to surf through some of the questions and recent posts but my situation does not seem to be covered. My wife and I are talking about trying to have children in the next few...




