Chatabout Children™

bilingual child

Episode 06 – The Bilingual Child Part 2

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In this Part 2 of The Bilingual Child, we talk about the ways on how your child can maintain a second language. 

In case you missed part 1, I highly encourage you to tune in to part 1: Episode 005 – The Bilingual Child Part 1

Now in this episode, we continue the discussion about the bilingual child, in particular:

  • Factors that influence learning another language for the bilingual child.
  • Ways to motivate your child to speak another language.
  • Common myths about bilingual language development.
  • Advantages of speaking another language.
  • How to assess language difficulties for children with another language at home.
  • Practical tips for educators.

Factors that influence learning another language for the bilingual child

Areas to consider:

  • Pattern of exposure – as a parent or educator, you should be mindful as to the exposure levels that your child has with each language because that’s going to determine how much practice your child gets.
  • Opportunity to practice with an experienced speaker – by listening to a speaker who speaks the second language quite well, it provides a good model of language and a good avenue for the child to be able to imitate from that and get corrections.
  • Importance placed on home language maintenance – it really depends what the family goals are when using the second language at home
  • Motivation – how motivated is the child to speak that second language
  • Culture
  • Child’s learning ability

Ways to motivate your child to speak another language

If your child is brought up with 2 languages in the beginning, it is important you provide lots of opportunities for the child to hear and use both languages. It is key for your child to have lots of practice, because if you don’t use it, you lose it.

It is also important to establish your goals as a family. In our case, I speak Italian and my husband speaks Greek, but we were purposeful in using English as our main language at home and have Greek and Italian reinforced by the grandparents.

7 ways to motivate your child to speak the minority language:

  1. Habit – make it a habit to speak another language at home.
  2. Create a need – look at ways that you can create a need like setting up a Skype call with family in the home country or travelling back to your home country.
  3. Positive feedback – make it a positive experience for your child to speak the minority language
  4. Incentives – as a parent, you need to understand what motivates your child like an object or anything that will encourage them to speak the second language
  5. Be a role model – speak the minority language yourself as much as possible. Switching languages will not confuse your child.
  6. Get books in your home language – this increases exposure to different vocabulary, grammar and experiences related to the other language.
  7. Think of fun activities – dance, music and cultural activities that will make your child feel a part of that minority language tradition.

The common myths about bilingual language development

  • Switching between languages is detrimental and shows confusion
  • Home language prevents learning of the community language
  • A second language can cause language delay
  • A second language can be learned purely from tv, music, and books
  • You should wait until the child is older before introducing a second language

Advantages of speaking another language

  • Delayed onset of dementia – this is according to a research by Thomas Bach
  • Enhances a child’s working memory – different parts of the brain are activated when speaking multiple languages
  • More open-minded and sensitive to others – mostly due to exposure to other cultures
  • Increased problem-solving ability and enhanced mental linguistic awareness – the child will develop more awareness about language as a system
  • Increased cognitive flexibility – improved reasoning skills, verbal abilities and being able to think outside the square
  • Career opportunities later in life

How to assess language difficulties for children with another language at home

A really important point to remember is that if there is an issue with language development, it’s going to affect all languages that the child is learning, not just the home or the community language.

When people see us speech pathologists for an assessment, one of the things we do is we collect a very detailed case history of what’s happening with the child’s communication in the home and school environment. 

Another thing that we do consider is looking at a language difference versus a language difficulty. An example of a language difference, for children speaking English and Chinese, we notice that vowels sounds are affected and also the last sound of a word is often not pronounced. In these cases, we consider this not as a language difficulty but a language difference.

Practical tips for educators

  • Consider the language differences
  • Observe a child’s foundation skills like play, social and interaction skills are developing appropriately
  • Check that a child is understanding what’s going on and is following routine
  • Educators should provide a good model of English
  • Use lots of demonstrations, modelling and role-playing
  • Use very simple sentence structures
  • Be aware of a child’s silent period – continue talking to them and get them to participate more
  • Encourage parents to support strong development of the home language and culture

Resources:

Watch out for Episode 7, where we will be talking about food and how it affects your child’s learning.

Episode 05 – The Bilingual Child Part 1

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This is part 1 of a 2-part series on our topic The Bilingual Child.

Today we will give you an introduction and the foundation knowledge to what bilingual language development looks like and give you the confidence to understand what are some characteristics we see when we have a child who has a different language spoken at home.

Over the years, multilingual families has increased quite progressively. Collectively Australians speak over 300 languages. In Sydney South, we have 30.5% born overseas and a large portion is born in China. Other common languages spoken aside from English are: Mandarin, Italian, Arabic, Cantonese, and Greek.

It is important for parents and carers of children coming from homes speaking a different language to have an understanding of what bilingualism development looks like.

Why I discuss bilingual development as a speech pathologist

For myself, personally, Italian was my first language and I was only immersed in English once I started school. I used Italian when I talked to my parents and relatives, while I used English with my siblings.

Having another language is such an amazing gift for me now as an adult and it’s something I encourage parents to continue to develop if they speak a different language at home.

Why do I speak about bilingualism as a speech pathologist? The reason is I’ve seen so many children with speech delay that have not been diagnosed earlier because parents attribute it to having a second language at home. 

So I wanted to raise awareness about what the typical stages are for language development so that if there are concerns, you can refer the child sooner rather than later.

2 Key Components of Language

  1. Receptive language – an ability to understand language, to follow directions, to understand different questions and sentences.
  2. Expressive language – an ability to use language, speaking, making sentences, answering questions, using grammar and being able to retell stories.

So when we are looking at milestones, we are looking at both receptive and expressive language milestones.

For a bilingual child, you are gonna use these milestones based on what language the child is predominantly using.

Receptive language milestones

  • At birth – as soon as babies are aware of their environmental sounds
  • 6-9 months of age – they start to understand their own name, understand greeting actions like hello and goodbye, understand questions like “where’s mum?”
  • 10-12 months of age – understand familiar objects and begins to respond to simple requests
  • 1-2 years of age – able to understand more simple directions, enjoy stories and nursery rhymes
  • 2-3 years of age – understand functions of objects and 2-step directions
  • 3-4 years of age – understand WH questions (who, what, when) and you can have a conversation with them too
  • 4-5 years of age – understand more complex WH questions like “why?” or “what will happen next” and nearly everything that’s said to them is understood.

Expressive language milestones

  • At birth – sounds are made by a newborn to express pleasure or pain
  • 4-6 months – increasing sounds they are making like babbling
  • 7-12 – the babbling gets longer and starting to put longer sounds together like “mama” and intonation is used too
  • 12 months – first words are spoken. For example, if Spanish is spoken at home, the child’s first words are in Spanish.
  • 12-18 months – more and more words are being expressed including gestures, facial expression and using single words like mommy, drink, more. Starting to imitate new words and sounds.
  • 18-24 months – words start to get a little bit clearer, ask questions like “where’s mommy?”, the typically speak 25-50 words and start to put 2 words together.
  • 2-3 years – vocabulary starts to expand up to 200 words and sentences are getting longer up to 3 word sentences.
  • 3-4 years – lots of new experiences, they have a lot to talk about, starting to combine words into 4 words or more, grammar is more correct, people are able to understand your child, their speech is more clear and fluent.
  • 4-5 years – sentences are longer, they tell stories, right topic focus, retell what they’ve done for the day in the right order of events. 

No matter what the language is at home, these milestones should serve as your guide. If the language is not progressing, you might want to consider to getting professional advice.

Patterns of bilingual development

  1. Simultaneous – 2 languages are acquired at the same time before the age of 3. When you have high exposure to both languages and high opportunity to use both languages, then you have simultaneous bilingualism, where both languages are developing at the same time.
  2. Sequential – The 2nd language is learned after the first language from the age of 3. If your child has a high opportunity to use both languages, then they have rapid sequential bilingualism occurring. 
  3. Receptive – A child is exposed to a 2nd language but has little opportunity to practice it. They understand it, but because they are not practicing it, they don’t speak it. If you got high exposure to both languages but low opportunity to use the 2nd language, this results in receptive bilingualism.

Typical characteristics of bilingual language development

  1. Language interference – the first language might influence the 2nd language development in terms of grammar or word syntax.
  2. Code-switching – changing or switching languages within the same sentence or conversation.
  3. Silent period – a child become silent during initial exposure to the 2nd language ( should not be more than 12 months).
  4. Language loss – happens when fluency in the first language might decrease if not practiced or maintained.

In the next episode, which is part 2 of The Bilingual Child series, we will talk about how you can help your child maintain more than one language. Please do watch out for that.

Links and Resources:

6 Steps To Launch Your Child's First Words And Beyond!

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