Comments on: Secrets of bilingual parenting success

By: Designing and using a bilingual writer corpus - Language on the Move

Designing and using a bilingual writer corpus - Language on the Move — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 02:40:38 +0000

[…] Secrets of bilingual parenting success […]

By: Nazzia

Nazzia — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 12:18:15 +0000

Modern parents have several concerns about the language policies to follow. One parent one language is the most popular strategy that parents tend to use. It is essentially two monolingual strategies applied simultaneously. However, there is unequal distribution of the exposure to each language and its effect on the rates of language development and the lack of exposure to the heritage language in the majorly English-speaking community.

By: Sasha Sunshine

Sasha Sunshine — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 07:36:34 +0000

I completely agree with this post regarding bilingual education. We cannot only hold parents responsible for ensuring children acquire and maintain proficiency in the native language along with other languages taught in school. Both parents and schools have to work in collaboration with each other. A family I know from India, moved to Australia about 7 years ago. Their child was about 3 years then and they were determined to teach her Hindi (native language) along with English (medium of instruction in school). They maintain the understanding that once she comes home they must speak in Hindi. They haven’t been to India much since then. A couple of months ago, I remember having a conversation with her. She did not understand the importance of learning to speak, read or write in Hindi considering she only spoke to her parents and some time extended family in Hindi. I think it is also important for us to make children autonomous and show them the positives of learning these languages so that the are intrinsically motivated.

By: AK

AK — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 07:06:51 +0000

From my point of view, bilingual parents at home only, is not enough for success, they need school and community to help them. Some children with bilingual parents, can understand their parents’ language and maybe speak too, but this is not enough to learn a language. Other children as my cousins whose living in the US with bilingual parents; they just speak their community language, so the school will support their bilingual parents to success.

By: Rajendra Prasad Kandel

Rajendra Prasad Kandel — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 15:03:00 +0000

Thanks a lot for this interesting post
First-generation of any migrant Australian does have bilingualism with LOTE( language other than English) dominance; the second generation does have bilingualism with English dominance and the third generation is monolingual or entirely English speaking. This idea made me contemplative why people, despite their attempts to preserve their cultural and linguistic heritage, are unable to pass on their home language across generations, why the migrant families’ yearning of making their descendants proficient bilingual ends up in monolingualism. The answers provided by this post is really insightful that the charm of home language wears off across generations due to the lack of adequate platforms or opportunities of using the home language orally in the preschool stage and the further. Another cause of deficits in the use of home language is schooling devoid of literacy practices.
The solutions can be the biliteracy program in school and the individual dedication for the continuation of the language root of the family. The collective effort of the government, the family and the school can preserve the linguistic diversity of the countries like Australia.

By: yofa

yofa — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 11:39:07 +0000

This is a very interesting article as my parents and I have always had a great interest in bilingualism, however, in my case, it will be about Bahasa Indonesia and English. As a young girl, my father was planning to raise me as a bilingual speaker of English and Bahasa Indonesia. He introduced me to some English vocabulary and started speaking with some English while Bahasa Indonesia was mostly taught at school. Nevertheless, if adapting Dr. Van Tran’s notion of virtuous language learning, my father was probably in the opposite side. As he got busier with work, he barely had time to teach me English and this led to fewer opportunities and practice. That was one regret I probably had in my life however I am still grateful that my father was the one who introduces me to the English language that leads to my interest in the language as I grow up.

By: Irene Nguyen

Irene Nguyen — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 11:21:54 +0000

It is undoubtedly that in this today’s age, as the world is increasingly becoming globalized and diverse, the demand for bilingual or multilingual ability is such a hot trend, especially since this can convey social, economic and intellectual success. However, parents of bilingual or multilingual children are believed to largely have difficulties to surmount. Because raising the children who speak more than one language demands numerous requirements. It asks for such vast quantities of time and joint efforts from both homeschooling and academic schooling. Also, it calls for huge support from an advanced education policy as well as the dedicated and thorough serves from the educational workers.

By: Teufeld

Teufeld — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 09:33:25 +0000

Neither schools nor parents can success in bilingual language teaching. In general, parents provide a bilingual language environment for children at home and children learn deep language knowledge in school, so as most language, learners need to learn and practice much to acquire language. In terms of my own experience and observation, most bilingual children learn home language only from their parents, so what they parents say and the way their parents express in home language affect them much, this might be the reason why the title of this article uses “secrets”.

By: Ben Nguyen

Ben Nguyen — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 05:45:20 +0000

I always possess a great interest in parenting bilingual; however, I have never tried to dig deeper into this issue by reading articles or research papers. Thanks to this post, I feel more confident to train my next generation to be bilingual. I totally agree with the notion that school plays an important role to raise bilingual children. However, due to my experience, the second language studying in Australia is optional, which means that students have chance to choose their L2. I believe that parents should give advice to their language learning selection to drive them to the rights way.

By: Yongqi

Yongqi — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 04:25:15 +0000

Hi Ingrid,

Thank you for your sharing of the article. I totally agree that success in achieving bilingual education requires not only parental effort but also support from schools. It appears to be a sad thing to me that later generations of the first migrant generations are losing their mother tongues, no matter how hard some parents are trying to educate their children in learning English together with their home languages. Apart from the reasons shared in the article, I believe sense of belonging is also one of the main factors that affect the students’ motivation in learning bilingually. Both schools and parents should deliver a message to the students that maintaining another language or even more other languages other than English should be considered as an advantage to be proud of instead of a sign of differentiation in the society that would create distance between them and other mainstream students.

By: Katy D

Katy D — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 00:06:01 +0000

In reply to fidjicz. This article is really fascinating and useful for parents who desire their children can get biliteracy. I agree with two points made by the author. Firstly, the virtuous language learning circle contributes to the success of bilinguality. Secondly, parents' attitudes are utmost important. Children go to school just five days a week but spend most of their time at home, surrounded by their parents; therefore, creating an environment for children to learn and practice the target languages at home is necessary. I am living with my sister (Vietnamese) whose children were born in Australia. They speak English at school and with my brother-in-law (their father) at home but communicate with my sister in Vietnamese. This makes them familiar with two languages at the same time. My sister always encourage them to speak Vietnamese whenever possible and willing to correct their mistakes, therefore my nieces never fear of speaking this language

By: Saichon

Saichon — Sun, 03 Nov 2019 06:23:23 +0000

This article is very interesting for parents though. I agree that parents play an important role in child development. As I think children spend more time at home than at school. The control of parents is the key factor for bilingualism. However, I agree that literacy is developed at school. I have experienced some bilingual friends who are fluent in both languages and literate in both languages. Most of them said their parents spent extra money and sent them to extra class to learn reading and writing of their language during their childhood, and they have to speak the language at home since that is compulsory in their house. This way helps them to improve and maintain their bilingual skill.

By: Xin Zhang

Xin Zhang — Sat, 02 Nov 2019 12:09:01 +0000

Thank you for sharing. Australia is a country of immigrants, it means that there are a large number of children who come from diverse linguistic background. In fact, i live with a family whose children are bilingual. It is true that literacy has a close relationship with schools. Many children who come from different countries and they have diverse cultural background. The family i lived with has two children and they can speak mandarin at home. However, literacy skills for them are very difficult. The older child has learned mandarin in China for several years, but with the time she stayed in Australia, it is impossible for her to write in her native language . As far as i am concerned, their schools have optional courses for students, including mandarin, Japanese and other languages. I think it is useful for these children to develop bilingual competence. Supports from communities, schools and parents are crucial for children’s literacy learning in different languages.

By: Mia

Mia — Sat, 02 Nov 2019 01:47:04 +0000

Hi Ingrid,
This article is very interesting to read. I quite agree with what you said that the successful education of bilingual families requires the joint efforts of both schools and families. Thus, I think of the language learning environment and out-of-school language exposure. Using your explanation of the key to bilingualism as a reference can help me think about other questions as well. As a teacher, how can we help bilingual students with their writing proficiency? As a monolingual family, how can parents raise a bilingual excellent child?

By: luwen huang

luwen huang — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 07:20:55 +0000

In my opinion, the language learning needs of bilingual children should be considered including their first language and second language. Early children develop their language skills through play and environment around them but school settings are more important for older children to develop their academic language skills. Considering the methods for early children developing their languages that are provided by these early children’s parents, more opportunities should be provided for their communication and interaction with other using both first language and second language in their daily life. By doing this way, they can learn luggage skills from their parents and peers through play and interaction.

By: Summer Dang

Summer Dang — Sat, 26 Oct 2019 18:07:45 +0000

Bilingual competence development has been a concerning issue of numerous immigrant families in Australia and other countries where children coming from a different linguistic background make up a large proportion of the national population. It is often believed that a child’s home language proficiency relies mostly on the amount of exposure to the LOTE that he/she receives. As a result, parents attempts to surround the kid with the parental language by using it as language for household communication and sending kids to community language schools. However, by the time of mid-primary school, these linguistic practices gradually diminish due to the tension to succeed in school’s academic performance, which leads to a large number of students’ weaker literacy in their home language in later years. Thus, it is ultimately communities’ and schools’ work to continuously value and support children’ bi-literacy development to adulthood.