One of the biggest challenges parents of bilingual children encounter is finding ways to motivate their children to speak the family’s minority language. Children are pragmatic, so they use the language they feel most comfortable with. When they realize that they can choose their language and still be understood, they often pick their strongest language if they know that the other person understands it. This is when parents should find ways to motivate children to use the family language, to make sure that the child maintains and develops his or her multilingual skills. For a child to choose to speak a language, the child must WANT and NEED to use it. The motivators differ depending on the age, personality, and fluency of the child. These motivators can and do occur naturally, but parents have the possibility to create or enhance these motivators for their children to encourage them to speak a family language
Question Dear Family Language Coaches. We live in South Africa, I grew up in Germany and my husband grew up Afrikaans. Our daughter is three years old and I speak German with her, while my husband (and the rest of the family) speak Afrikaans. At kindergarten she is...
Question Hello, My name is May. I'm Indonesian and my husband is German. We live in Germany. I have a daughter, she is 22 months old now and we will have the second one soon. I speak Indonesian with my daughter and my husband speaks German with her. My husband...
Question Dear Coaches, I'm a Chinese mum and our family lives in China. I majored in TESOL and was obsessed in bilingualism. So my hubby and I always talk to my daughter in English and the others talk to her in Chinese. Now she's 3 and she cannot talk, at all....
Question Hello! My husband and I are monolingual but our 5-year-old is fluent in German thanks to a German immersion school. If she no longer attends the school, so her German exposure decreases from 40 hours/week to 3-5 hours a week, is she in danger of "losing" her...
Question Hi, I am Brazilian and my husband is German. We live in Germany and raise our almost two years old son bilingual. We do OPOL with our son and our common language is mostly German. My husband speaks Portuguese but not so well. At the moment my son attends a...
Question Hi! What do you recommend doing when your bilingual child is refusing to choose the minority language as a subject in High School? My daughter says she can speak it and doesn’t want to start with the basics and would hate the other pupils asking her for...
Question I have a unique situation as many bilingual families tend to have and could use some advice. Here is my background: I grew up in Latin America with a Spanish/English bilingual mother and a Spanish-speaking father. Spanish was my first language but all my...
Question Hi coaches, I read a lot of your Q&A's and hope you have some comments for my family's current situation: I am a native Danish speaker (speak English fluently after living in the UK for 10 years, but currently living in Denmark). My partner is a native...
Question Hi, I was wondering if you could give me some feedback on how to encourage my passive bilingual kids to "produce" or speak the minority language in our home. I have 4 children ages 10, 9, 6 and 4. Both my husband and I are bilingual English/Arabic speakers. I...
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...