If you add onto that the Acadian dialect that is spoken at my paternal family reunions (along with occasional Cajun), and the fact that our careers are taking us both to Okinawa (where Japanese and the Ryukyu language are both spoken!) I feel like we are expecting too much of our children. At the same time, I marvel at European children, who apparently successfully communicate in upward of three languages at a young age. I will definitely be taking a look at “Bilingual Childcare”!

Thank you for sharing your comment and I find it very interesting! China is pretty much the same case, most parents now are pushing their children to learn a second language (English is the dominant second language) at a early stage. Parents start to compare with each others that how long they send their kids to study English. The even worst case is that those centers which have native English speakers as teachers seem to attract more parents, however based on my own observation, some of these native speakers are not even teachers or have none teaching experience before. This makes me wonder the quality of their teaching skills, are they really better than the Chinese teachers (as a lot of Chinese possess a very high level of proficiency of English now)?

Hi Jo,
When migrant children learn a second language, there would be some possibilities. First, when they learn a new one, they lose their native language or they are influent in both languages. These cases are subtractive bilingualism which entails cost more than gain. Second, they could fluently speak two languages. This additive bilingualism would benefit children in different ways. However, many migrant parents have no choice for their children’s school and how language will be taught because these issues might be beyond their affordances. In fact, there could be linguistic gaps among old generations and young generations within a family when the young generations are born in the host country and speak its language while their parents have low competence in English. It is really difficult to have a thorough answer that satisfies all the questions above. I think it is necessary to have a teacher-parent relationship so that they can find appropriate measures for their children’s literacy development.

Hi Khalid,

I agree with your viewpoint that learning two languages at early age could be beneficial. As you mention earlier, children could develop not only the knowledge about other culture while they learn foreign language, it could also prepare them for their further education and career in which foreign-language competence was highly encouraged, and at some extent could boost their confidence. Nevertheless, putting too much emphasis toward the necessity to learn foreign language at early age could be counterproductive. As having foreign language skill has been increasingly required at schools, college, or workplace, most of parents have enormously enroll their children to bilingual schools, private language institute, or foreign language center even at the very early age and to the point which might against children’s will. Hence, the expected outcome might not be achieved as it against intrinsic interest of children and it possibly disrupts children’s awareness and competence towards their mother-tongue language. The latter consequence could be hugely crucial, particularly in the case where children are not only expected to be proficient in national language(mainly used in school), but also local language (widely used in social environment) as it is just like in my hometown in Indonesia.

I do wonder, and perhaps this is covered in the book, but how does a bilingual child centre cater for multiple languages? Obviously if it is located in an area with a large, single-nationality migrant group, then it is clear how a centre could offer an environment that caters for their native language. But in a more ethnically diverse suburb, where the is no one dominant group, how would a child centre provide for these multiple languages? I’d be interested to see examples of how this is approached.

But I was wondering whether interpersonal recognition of the language(s) that children are learning to use could have influence on the outcomes of bilingual education. I once encountered a case with my boss’s child, Tony. Since his parents are Chinese immigrants and possess strong affection and nostalgia to Chinese language, he was told to take Chinese lessons and made great progress in learning it. However, in my conversations with him, I discovered that he had the tendency of avoiding using Chinese. When I raised my confusion about it, he told me that almost all of his classmates or friends did not understand Chinese and might isolate him for his special ability of speaking the language. Therefore, he needed to resist his urge to use Chinese.

Personally speaking, this is a serious problem. The environment for children to learn and use a language includes family, school and society, as well as the interpersonal contexts. Furthermore, the interpersonal contexts require psychological and behavioral theories to analyze, examine and investigate. If possible, it is recommended to take wider contexts of language acquisition into consideration when it comes to further development of bilingual education.