Raising Multilingual Children 9781783097586

Citation preview

Raising Multilingual Children

PARENTS’ AND TEACHERS’ GUIDES Series Editor: Colin Baker, Bangor University, UK This series provides immediate advice and practical help on topics where parents and teachers frequently seek answers. Each book is written by one or more experts in a style that is highly readable, non-technical and comprehensive. No prior knowledge is assumed: a thorough understanding of a topic is promised after reading the appropriate book. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK.

PARENTS’ AND TEACHERS’ GUIDES: 23

Raising Multilingual Children Julia Festman, Gregory J. Poarch and Jean-Marc Dewaele

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Blue Ridge Summit

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Festman, Julia, author. | Poarch, Gregory J., author. | Dewaele, Jean-Marc, 1962- author. Title: Raising Multilingual Children/Julia Festman, Gregory J. Poarch and Jean-Marc Dewaele. Description: Bristol: Multilingual Matters, [2017] | Series: Parents and Teachers Guides: 23 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016046332| ISBN 9781783097579 (hbk : alk. paper) |ISBN 9781783097562 (pbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781783097586 (Pdf) |ISBN 9781783097593 (Epub) | ISBN 9781783097609 (Kindle) Subjects: LCSH: Bilingualism in children. | Child rearing. | Child development. | Language acquisition. Classification: LCC P115.2 .F37 2017 | DDC 404/.2083—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016046332 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-757-9 (hbk) ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-756-2 (pbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: NBN, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, USA. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2017 Julia Festman, Gregory J. Poarch and Jean-Marc Dewaele. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Nova Techset Private Limited, Bengaluru and Chennai, India. Printed and bound in the UK by Short Run Press Ltd. Printed and bound in the US by Edwards Brothers Malloy, Inc.

Contents

Preface 1

vii

Ten Good Reasons for Raising a Child with More than One Language BEFORE Entering School

1

2

The Stories of Our Multilingual Children Livia: A Multilingual Journey The Story of Aya & Noam The Story of Loïc

5 5 34 42

3

Some Background Information on Learning Methods, Language Policies, and Suggestions to Ensure an Early Successful Multilingual Acquisition

46

Developing a Good Language Policy for the Multilingual Family

61

How to Foster a Multilingual Home and How to Deal with Various Concerns About Multilingualism

67

Conclusion

82

Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C

84 96 99

4 5

v

Preface

Why Multilingualism Matters to Us, and How We Came to Write This Book We met at the so-called ‘trilingualism’ conferences, where we sat at a terrace overlooking a beautiful church in Bolzano. Enjoying a refreshing Aperol Spritz, we exchanged our views on the studies we had presented, we moved on to our multilingual family lives, and shared anecdotes about our kids’ linguistic acrobatics. Coffee breaks, pre-dinner drinks and conference dinners are good places to develop plans for research collaborations, but they are also good places to talk about things that matter in life. It is not always about language, however we tend to come back to it. What struck us was the fact that no books existed, at the time, on trilingual families.1 Colin Baker’s book on bilingual families is excellent, but trilingual families are different. Because we had published on this topic, the three of us came to play the role of informal advisers to readers who were about to become multilingual parents, or who had reached that stage, and wondered what kind of linguistic policy to follow to maintain or develop their child or children’s multilingualism. Wouldn’t it be a good idea, we wondered aloud, to share our knowledge on the topic and offer the good advice we dispensed, so we could refer (future) parents to the URL of the book? We would encourage (future) parents to think about the impending language situation (at home) of an unborn child, and inform them about the most relevant issues. We also would give advice when problems occur, and show ways for families to enjoy multilingualism at home. vii

viii

Raising Mult ilingual Children

We would like to stress the importance of this issue to caretakers in kindergarten, teachers, pediatricians and policymakers. Most books on this topic are focused on the typical issues in the US, and limited to bilingualism. Parents all over the world want to know more about the experiences of families where THREE or more languages are used, hence the need to focus on multilingualism. By doing so, the book would be relevant to parents from all over the world, (e.g. French mother with Japanese husband living in Japan, with English as their parental language of communication). We had read numerous blogs in French, German and English on the web, identified the issues involved, experiences were told, and questions were asked. We would adopt an issue-related approach to keep the book reader-related and not overly scientific. Academics are not the only people who raise multilingual children, therefore the book would be aimed at parents from a wide range of educational backgrounds. We agreed that the book would have to be rigorous, but not academic in tone. We also agreed that we would present examples from our daily lives to highlight things that worked, and strategies that backfired with our children. Given our family’s experience, we knew that the claim of introducing three languages from birth may cause harm to the child was nonsense. Yet, this is heard with surprising frequency even today, often uttered by people who should know better. As academics, and as parents with multilingual children, we want to combat narrow-mindedness and prejudice against multilingualism. Of course, we are not claiming that bringing children up as multilinguals is easy, but with some careful planning, a good dose of optimism, and a with little luck, it is perfectly possible. The result is this short book, containing concrete ideas to implement in everyday life situations, when advice must be given and/or a decision needs to be made. Moreover, practical ideas will be provided when the time for teaching children is sparse (e.g. working parents).

Note (1) Since then Wang (2008, 2015) has produced excellent work about her biracial and trilingual boys.

1

Ten Good Reasons for Raising a Child with More than One Language BEFORE Entering School

We very much like Colin Baker’s (2007) metaphor of parents as gardeners: Parents are like gardeners that prepare the soil, plant, water and care. Growth in languages is greatly promoted by skillful gardeners, but is also affected by the nature of the plant, other flowers in the garden, the changing environment, and shifting language climates. If parents are gardeners, and their children gardens, one could start arguing about the aspects of a garden that require urgent attention. While this book focuses on just one aspect of bringing up children, we assume that gardeners love their garden and are willing to spend time and effort to tend it lovingly. The title of this chapter may sound a little gimmicky, but is a good way to get started on the topic of early multilingualism. Why should parents strive to bring up their children as multilinguals? (1) The first reason for raising a child with more than one language is a pretty simple one: if you can, why would you not? If the 1

2

Raising Mult ilingual Children

parents speak different languages, it makes perfect sense to contribute to the future linguistic capital of their child. Of course, this should not be taken to extremes: if the parents share 10 languages, it would make little sense for them to try and use all 10 languages in everyday interactions with their child. (2) Your child will benefit from early multilingualism. For one, because it will not cost them any conscious effort and the results will be really good. Growing up with several languages allows a child to acquire them implicitly without any laborious effort, and they are typically mastered at a very high level. In fact, the child’s skillfulness will depend on the amount of input they receive. Regular input is crucial to keep the language system developing. Just imagine how much money parents will save on language tutors. There are solid social, psychological and cognitive advantages to being multilingual, which have been documented in past research (for an overview in German, see Festman & Kersten, 2010). Multilinguals are better and more confident communicators and they are able to overcome obstacles in communication. They can also deal better with ambiguity, they tend to have more cultural empathy and are more open-minded (Dewaele & Li Wei, 2013; Dewaele & Stavans, 2014). Multilinguals have also been found to be better at ignoring irrelevant information, which has been linked to the need to inhibit the languages not in use – something monolinguals do not have to do (Bialystok & Poarch, 2014). Multilinguals have been found to be more creative, possibly because they can view reality through different lenses, and are less bound by the values and constraints of a single language and culture. Finally, multilingual children have also been found to have fewer essentialist beliefs. In other words, they are more likely to assume that a duck that was brought up by dogs will bark (Byers-Heinlein & Garcia, 2015). (3) Linguistic capital is also cultural capital. Knowing extra languages could be considered an asset in the child’s piggy bank. The child will quickly understand that linguistic rules differ between languages and the cultural values linked to them. If a language has a more elaborate system of honorifics

Ten Good Reasons

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

3

compared to language that the child is currently acquiring, they will realise that the subtleties in how you address people in one language are richer, and possibly considered more important than in another. Understanding that languages differ, and that they reflect different cultures is a powerful trigger for reflection on how languages and cultures function. Having two or more systems allows a child to spontaneously compare how things are expressed in different languages, and what kind of things can be expressed. Indeed, some things may be expressed more easily in some languages, while other expressions may be considered inappropriate in another language. The ability to compare from an early age transforms the child into a young linguist and anthropologist. Picking up languages at home does not just increase linguistic and cultural capital, it boosts social capital, and future economic capital as well. The ability to communicate with more people in their native language is a huge advantage, highly valued in the business world, in academia, in diplomacy and in the spy business. Ultimately, it may be the difference between a lower paid job and a much better paid one, and many more opportunities when searching for a (new) job. More languages are more fun. Only multilingual families can enjoy making puns using their different languages. It is doubly funny when outsiders who don’t share the same language combination do not get it. Multilingual jokes become a signal of exclusive group membership. Learning multiple languages early at home takes the pressure off foreign language learning later. From birth, multilingual children find their multilingualism the most normal thing in the world. In other words, they will not be frightened by the prospect of having to learn an extra language in school. In fact, as born ‘linguists’ they will almost certainly be better at learning new languages compared to their monolingual peers, and they are likely to outperform monolingual children. Multilinguals are better communicators and more confident. Multilinguals suffer less from communicative anxiety,

4

Raising Mult ilingual Children

probably because they know that if they cannot say something in one language, they can always switch to another, or explain it with gestures if necessary. They are less likely to feel frustrated about a communication obstacle, and will see it more as an interesting challenge. (9) Multilingual children will have no difficulty in communicating with their grandparents, family members or friends who speak different languages. This means that they will be able to maintain their linguistic and cultural roots, and will be able to expand their social network. (10) Multilingual children can go and study in multiple schools and universities when the time comes, and people will be impressed by their multilingualism.

References Baker, C. (2007) A Parents’ and Teachers’ Guide to Bilingualism (3rd edn). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Bialystok, E. and Poarch, G.J. (2014) Language experience changes language and cognitive ability. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft 17, 433–446. Byers-Heinlein, K. and Garcia, B. (2015) Bilingualism changes children’s beliefs about what is innate. Developmental Science 18 (2), 344–350. Dewaele, J.-M. and Li Wei (2013) Is multilingualism linked to a higher tolerance of ambiguity? Bilingualism: Language & Cognition 16 (1), 231–240. Dewaele, J.-M. and Stavans, A. (2014) The effect of immigration, acculturation and multicompetence on personality profiles of Israeli multilinguals. International Journal of Bilingualism 18 (3), 203–221. Festman, J. and Kersten, K. (2010) Kognitive Auswirkungen von Zweisprachigkeit. In P. Burmeister and U. Massler (Hg.) CLIL und Immersion: Erfolgsbedingungen für fremdsprachlichen Sachfachunterricht in der Grundschule (pp. 38–52). Braunschweig: Westermann.

2 The Stories of Our Multilingual Children Livia: A Multilingual Journey Jean-Marc Dewaele

The Early Years When my daughter Livia was born in London, in 1996, I joked that she would be a perfect participant in my research project on trilingual first language acquisition. My wife’s native tongue is Dutch, mine is French, but we speak mostly Dutch together, and we live in a multicultural English-speaking environment. I video recorded our daughter at regular intervals using different languages with different interlocutors. I stopped when she was five years old, when I realised that I lacked the willingness to transcribe everything and to subject it to a rigorous analysis. This turned out to be an unexpected ethical issue between my role as father and my job as researcher. Being a researcher implies some distance from the participant(s); the job of the researcher is to be an impartial observer. Somehow, the father in me did not want the researcher to do his job, because it seemed like an intrusion of my family’s privacy, and I did not want to convert Livia’s lovely little first words into morpheme counts and mean length of utterance. So, I kept a diary and made recordings, but over the years I have only published a couple of non-academic papers on Livia’s multilingualism (Dewaele, 2000, 2006, 2007), and she has written a blog about her views on her multilingualism (Dewaele, 2013). My wife and I have followed the rule of one person – one language (OPOL). I still speak only French with Livia, my wife speaks Dutch, 5

6

Raising Mult ilingual Children

and she is immersed in an English environment. Dutch is the dominant language within the family. Working at Birkbeck, the Evening College of the University of London, allowed me to spend my mornings with Livia until she started nursery school. This allowed me to strengthen her French, and to counter-balance the frequent use of Dutch at home. From the age of five months to the age of two and a half, she went to Amy every afternoon, a Pakistani child-minder who spoke English and Urdu with the English-speaking children. We were a bit concerned that the introduction of a fourth first language (Urdu) might be too much for Livia, but this fear turned out to be unfounded. There was no delay in the acquisition of her languages, though Urdu never developed beyond the first stages. At the age of two and half, she started attending a local English private nursery school, called Rainbow Corner in Muswell Hill, a school attracting children from higher-middle-class educated families in the neighbourhood. She learned to draw, sing, dance, and she picked up a ‘posh’ English accent, which she never abandoned. She even received two hours a week of formal instruction in French. After coming home, she would use French, Dutch and English with her dolls and repeat the rhymes, songs, and phrases heard at the nursery. On one such occasion she was singing, ‘Frère Jacques’, a song she had learnt with me at home, sometime before, with a pronounced English accent. A bit worried, I joined in the singing, accentuating the French accent. She looked at me angrily and said, ‘Non papa, je chante en anglais !’ (‘no daddy, I’m singing in English’), (age four). It turned out that she had sung it the previous day at school during ‘French class’, and had interpreted the familiar French song, in the English version. Before continuing, it is important to point out the language milestone development of monolingual children. Specialists agree that despite the predictable sequence in the development of lexical and syntactic knowledge, there is some variation in age at which children reach various milestones. From six to eight months, children start babbling. From the age of nine months to age of one and a half, they typically start producing one-morpheme or one-word units (a meaningful morphological unit of a language that cannot be further divided (e.g. in + come + -ing, forming ‘incoming’, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ morpheme)), after which they start constructing two words in

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

7

mini-sentences until they reach the age of two. For the next six months, they combine multiple words and morphemes. This stage is called ‘telegraphic’, because their sentence structures include lexical morphemes rather than functional or grammatical morphemes (words that have meaning by themselves—boy, food, door—are called lexical morphemes. Those words that function to specify the relationship between one lexical morpheme and another—words like at, in, on, -ed, -s—are called grammatical morphemes (www.mathcs. duq.edu/~packer/Courses/Psy598/Ling-Morphology.pd)). The latter typically emerge by the time they are two and half years old. The development of children with multiple first languages is typically very similar. Livia started producing her first words at the age of one and two months (1;2). By then, she had had a good passive knowledge of approximately 150 words in French, Dutch, Urdu and English (i.e. she reacted appropriately when asked to fetch or do something). Her first words in English (1;2) were, not surprisingly, produced at the childminder’s house. She pointed to a banana and said, ‘bana’, followed by ‘give!’; later (1;3) she told another child to ‘sit down’. She also produced Urdu words like, ‘bareesh’ (‘rain’), ‘kee pan’, (‘what is there’), ‘teek’ (‘OK’), ‘bahir jana’ (‘go outside’) (1;3). She never got past the one-wordutterance stage in Urdu, but had a good passive knowledge. This led to some funny misunderstandings on my part, when I picked her up, and on our way home she would point at a cat and say ‘Billy’. I was impressed with her knowledge of local cats, until the next cat also turned out to be named ‘Billy’. On a different day, she pointed to a flower and said, ‘poo’. I got a bit worried, explaining that the words were ‘flower’, ‘fleur’, ‘bloem’. That way, I learnt another Urdu word. Her first French words were (1;3), ‘poupou’ (target: bonbon, ‘sweet’), ‘froid’ (‘cold’), ‘chaud’ (‘hot’), ‘pabi’ (target: ‘poubelle’, ‘bin’). She produced only the first syllable of Dutch words in that period, ‘scho’ (target: ‘schort’, ‘apron’), ‘wa’ (target: ‘water’, ‘water’), ‘mo’ (target: ‘mond’, ‘mouth’) (1;3). Other Dutch words emerged in a quick succession: ‘tutje’ (‘dummy’), ‘ja’ (‘yes’), ‘bravo’, ‘opa’ (‘granddad’), ‘oma’ (‘grandma’) (1;8). The first multi-word utterances in French and Dutch appeared at the age of two years and two months, (2;2), for example, in French, ‘Four machine est finie’ (‘oven machine is finished’), ‘Papa, Ia pa(r)ti’ (‘Daddy, Livia is gone’), ‘maman manger’

8

Raising Mult ilingual Children

(‘Mummy eat’), ‘Ia content, papa contente?’ (‘Livia happy, daddy happy?’). The utterances became gradually more complex as she approached her third birthday, ‘Je m’appelle Livia avec une barbe et dans mon jardin j’ai des petits abricots et haricots’ (‘my name is Livia with a beard and in my garden, I have small apricots and beans’), (2;11), and in Dutch: ‘p(l)eisters van Ia, voor mij aw aw’ (‘plaster from Livia, for me ouch ouch’), ‘papa TV aan het kijken?’ (‘daddy looking television?’), ‘Nu heb ik een groot bed en ik kan goed slapen en mama en papa kunnen nu rustig slapen’ (‘now I have a big bed and I can sleep well and mommy and daddy can sleep in peace’), (2;11). English was the language used with her dolls and with her friends, ‘Paddington sleep’ (2;4), ‘We’re gonna sleep now’ (2;7), ‘I prepared the lunch and now you don’t want to eat it?’ (3;0), ‘Why did you put down your jacket?’ (3;0), ‘Sorry nursery, those little babies are actually scared of the nursery, could you please leave them alone?’ (3;11). Mixed utterances usually involved two languages, sometimes French and Dutch1: ‘Papa, papa, Ia bijna tombé’ (‘Daddy, daddy, Livia almost fallen’) (2;2), ‘fermer deur sinon kou’ (‘close door otherwise cold’), (2;2), sometimes English-Dutch, ‘Ik jump eruit’ (‘I jump out of it’) (2;5), sometimes English-French, ‘La maîtresse dit’, ‘Can I have something?’, ‘et alors je dis: honey!’ (‘The teacher says: Can I have something? and then I say: honey!’) (3;3) and rarely English-FrenchDutch, ‘Mimi, what do you préfères, een boterham?’ (‘Mimi, what do you prefer, a slice of bread?’) (2;10). She soon realised that objects and body parts are referred to in different words, in different languages, as illustrated in the following conversation about my feet, as we sat barefoot on the carpet watching television. She used the English word first, then the French word, and finally the Dutch word, with a diminutive (2;5), (L = Livia, D = Daddy). L: D: L: L:

‘Grands feet papa!’ (‘Big feet daddy’) ‘Grands pieds?’ (‘Big feet?’) ‘Oui, grands pieds.’ (‘Yes big feet’) (pointing to her feet) ‘Voetje, non-grands feet.’ (‘Small foot, not big feet’) At one point, she used homonymy to translate formulaic expressions with hilarious results, the English ‘thank you very much’ became ‘dank u voor de match’ (‘thank you for the match’), (2;7) in

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

9

Dutch. When she heard me ordering a ‘cappuccino’, she enquired on our next visit, whether I wanted another ‘cup of chino’? Language awareness came very early. She understood very soon that most of her friends, our neighbours and her child-minder, did not understand Dutch and French, but spoke English and other languages. English had become the default language when meeting an unknown child in London. The situation at home was different because of our ability to speak and understand all three languages. When her friend Laura, (age four), came over to play for the first time, when she was almost one and a half years old (1;5), she used her three languages. She must have noticed that her words in Dutch and French did not elicit any reaction, so she shifted to English, and by the third visit, she only used English words. She clearly considered the language spoken by of a person or a ‘doll’ as equally important as their name or hair colour. While taking a bath with the family of yellow plastic ducks, she picked the mother duck and said, ‘Maman petit canard spreken Nederlands’ (‘Mother duck speak Dutch’) (1;9). I ran off to write it down, amazed by the fact that she reproduced our family’s language patterns to the family of ducks, and that she showed explicit awareness of the languages around her. After being corrected by my wife, because she used a French word adapted morpho-phonologically to Dutch, she realised her mistake and said: L: Mum (M): L:

‘En de couteausen op tafel doen’ (‘and put the knives on the table’). ‘De messen!’ (‘the knives’). ‘Ah ja, couteaux is in het Frans’ (‘oh yeah, ‘knife’ is in French’), (2;10).

Her code-switching was clearly linked to the person’s identity, and to the concepts probably learnt at the nursery school, as the following exchange shows: M: ‘Ga je papa roepen, het eten is klaar’ (‘Call daddy, food is ready’). L: ‘Ja maar ik ga het in een andere language zeggen OK?’ (‘yes, but I’m gonna say it in another language OK?’). L: ‘Papa, tu viens manger?’ (‘Daddy do you come to eat?’) (4;1).

10

Raising Mult ilingual Children

She also developed a strategic use of code-switching; if we ignored her request for a sweet or a cookie in one language, she switched to the other, just to make sure we understood her request. While playing Lego, and speaking French with Livia, she was firmly in French language mode and expressed her displeasure at my Lego intervention in no uncertain terms: L: ‘Oui, pas faire là, parce que sinon tout tombe! Tu es un méchant papa! Ca va être comme ça!’ (‘Yes, don’t do it there, otherwise everything will fall down! You are a mean dad! It will be like this’) (3;10). Producing sentences in different languages resembled a game of Lego, where, metaphorically, questions of shape and colour had to be resolved. The following sequence in the bathtub shows her awareness of morphemes in Dutch and French: L: ‘Omdraaien!’ D: ‘Se tourner!’ L: ‘Om tourner!’ (2;4) She used a similar method in French and Dutch to express that something belonged to her. For example, her name (pronounced ‘Ia’, sometimes with the Dutch diminutive ‘-tje’), followed or preceded by the object or body part: L:

L:

‘Ia been (‘leg’ in Dutch), ‘Ia orteilles’ (‘toes’ in French), ‘Ia nez’ (‘nose’ in French), ‘Ia bouche’ (‘mouth’ in French), ‘Ia pajama’ (‘pyjama’ in French) (2;4). However, in the same period she produced a well-formed possessive in Dutch: ‘Voeten van Lies’ (‘Lies feet’) (2;4) and ‘Mijn beentjes’ (‘my legs’) (2;5).

She was particularly happy to claim ownership of objects and places, as the following exchange with Laura shows: L: Laura: L (showing the garden):

‘Are you going to play in the garden?’ ‘OK.’ ‘Mij garden’ (‘My garden’) (2;5).

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

11

Later that day, she combined that strong possessive with a string of other objects and places: L:

‘Mij kamer. Mij papa. Mij mama.’ (‘My room, my dad, my mum’) (2;5).

She produced correct possessives in Dutch systematically, shortly after: L:

‘Da’s mijn kleurpotlood. Mijn kleurpotlood halen’ (‘that’s my colour pencil, fetch my colour pencil’ (2;6).

She also produced her first genitive in Dutch: L:

‘Da’s mama’s brosse à dents’ (‘that’s mum’s toothbrush’) (2;5). The same pattern was repeated in French:

L:

‘C’est ma lavette! C’est pas ta lavette!’ (‘It’s my cloth, it’s not your cloth!’)

Rather than using first person pronouns, she would use her name or a noun: L: L: L: L (hanging from a chair): L:

‘Ia koud mains’ (‘Livia cold hands’ in Dutch and French) (2;5). ‘Ia chercher papa’ (‘Livia looks for daddy’) (2;4). ‘Papa est cherché Ia’ (‘Daddy looked for Livia’ (2;4). ‘Regarde Iatje fait’ (‘Look what Livia does’) (2;5). ‘Iatje aime ça’ (‘Livia likes this’) (2;7).

Sometimes, she would drop the personal reference, when it was clear that she was the subject: L (watching the washing machine): L:

‘Peur de machine’ (‘Fearful of the machine’) (2;5). ‘Pas koud hebben’ (‘not feeling cold’) (2;5).

12

Raising Mult ilingual Children

Personal pronouns emerged after the age of two and a half. She used subject pronouns in Dutch, (‘I’ and ‘ik’, but only stressed pronouns in French ‘moi’ before subject pronouns appeared ‘je’). L: L: L: L: L (pointing at a baby in the park): L: L: L (being anxious sitting in the draining bathtub): D: L: D: L:

‘Ik moet pipi doen, moi faire pipi’ (‘I have to pee, me pee!’) (2;8). ‘Oh papa, moi toi cogné’ (‘Oh dad I’ve knocked you’) (2;8). ‘Moi prêt, je prêt, je prêt!’ (I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready’) (2;11). ‘Ik moet quick een tour maken’ (I’ve got to make a quick tour’) (2;8). ‘Moi connais ce bébé’. (‘I know that baby’) (2;8). ‘Je vais faire l’histoire’ (‘I’m going to do the story’) (2;9). ‘Oei, je va tomber’ (‘Ouch, I’m going to fall over’) (2;9).

‘Hoe komt dat moi peur du bain?’ (‘Why am I scared of the bathtub?’) ‘Je ne sais pas’ (‘I don’t know’) ‘Papa le sait oui’ (‘Dad knows it, yes’) ‘Tu avais peur de disparaître?’ (‘Were you afraid of disappearing?’) ‘Oui, peur de disparaître’ (‘yes, afraid of disappearing’) (2;8).

At the age of two and a half, she was suddenly able to pronounce her name correctly: L (playing a game):

‘Livia Livia regarde, Iatje s’appelle Livia, Iatje wormke, Iatje dikke worm’ (‘Livia Livia look, Iatje is called Livia, Iatje small worm, Iatje fat worm’ (2;6).

Amy, her child-minder, was a practicing Muslim, so Livia was observing the regular prayers of the teenage daughters. So, I should not have been surprised when Livia kneeled on the carpet in the

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

13

living room, after coming home, and told me, switching from English to French and then to Dutch: L: L:

‘Come on papa, prier met mij!’ (‘Come on dad, let’s pray!’) (2;5). ‘Prier maintenant!’ (‘let’s pray now!’) (2;5).

Our parental strategy was to translate some of code-switched items in Livia’s speech, which she accepted, though not necessarily straight away: L:

‘A la crèche ils ont aussi a red teapot’ (‘in the nursery they also have a red teapot’). D: ‘Une théière rouge?’ (‘a red teapot?’). L: ‘Oui, une red one’ (‘yes, a red one’). D: ‘Une rouge?’ (‘a red one’?). L: ‘Oui, une rouge one’ (‘yes, a red one’) (3;5). This shows that she was struggling a bit with finding the equivalent pronoun of ‘one’ in French – not yet realising that nothing needs to be added, as ‘une rouge’ is perfectly grammatical. One day, early in the morning in Bruges, we were staying with my parents, and she told us about a nightmare she had had, in Dutch, after telling it previously downstairs, in French, to her grandparents: L:

‘Zoiets en dan alle andere monsters en dan is hij, dan is hij is hij mmm is hij in de pop gekropen, uit haar buik gekomen en dan jullie jullie opgewekt, maar jullie hebben dat niet gehoord’ (‘Something like that and all the other monsters and then he, and he crawled into the doll, came out of her belly, and then he woke you you up, but you didn’t hear it’). Mum (M): ‘Neen, dat hebben we niet gehoord.’ (‘No, we didn’t hear it’) L: ‘En dan heeft hij die allen omver gegooid, juist op tijd als jullie nog slaapten’ (‘and then he has thrown everything upside down, just on time when you were still sleeping’). M: ‘Sliepen’ (‘slept’ – correct past tense form).

14

L:

Raising Mult ilingual Children

‘En dan is hij vlug in de hoek gaan staan, maar jullie hebben het wel gezien dus’ (‘and then he quickly went to stand in the corner, but you did see it in the end’) (3;11).

This extract shows that she could build complex utterances, with some grammatical errors, one of which my wife corrected, but it did not interrupt Livia’s narrative flow. Livia would be surprised when we addressed her in English, which occurred when English-speaking friends were around. She usually used English with her dolls (‘Mimi, naughty girl!’) (2;6), repeating phrases heard at the nursery school ‘Everybody stop now!’ (2;8), typically emotion-laden, telling them off for various ‘crimes’, ‘Sit down in jouw fauteuil in zitten’, (‘sit down in your chair, sit down’), (2;6). Sometimes, she would invite us to join her play in English, and acted a bit surprised when we joined in using our own language. Code-switching would be the norm, depending on the languages shared by other people in the room, and by the status of the statement (in English for public announcements, in the presence of English-speaking guests or in French and Dutch for private messages). Livia addressed her requests to us in English, to include a friend in the interaction. We answered in English. She might add something else in French or Dutch and then translate it in English for her friend. Her anger was usually expressed in French or Dutch when she addressed us. When she was aware that another person spoke all three languages, she would often code-switch from one language to another. Here, again, her language choice was dictated by the situation. At the nursery, for example, she used French with another French-speaking girl, but only if no other children or adults were involved in the interaction. One could say that Livia had become an applied sociolinguist expert by age three. Here is a little dialogue between Livia and Laura, putting on a performance where Livia played the Moon and Laura the Sun: L:

‘Oh, my God! It’s five o’clock in the morning, where is that sun? Wake up sun! It’s 10 o’clock in the morning now!’ Laura: ‘Sorry!’ L: ‘I can’t be bothered!’ Laura: ‘Oh, well.’

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

15

L: ‘Oh, don’t forget your sunglasses Laura!’ Laura: ‘Bye moon!’ L: ‘Bye bye! Now I now I am gonna practice my ballet, oh sorry. Shush! I am the moon, high up in the sky oups, sun sun!’ The use of phatic language (imperatives, emotional outbursts) picked up at school and used at home with subordinates (dolls and teddy bears) is interesting. It can be a shock when a toddler starts correcting her parents’ English. When my wife asked how her friend Catherine was, Livia answered (2;4): ‘non maman, Catherine’ (‘no mommy, Catherine’ – insisting on the English ‘th’ sound). She also used to get very annoyed when we joined in a song or a nursery rhyme in English, which we ‘massacred’ according to her. Apparently, our English could not be pardoned: ‘ton English n’est pas bon papa, tu es bête’ (‘your English is bad daddy, you’re not very clever’), (4;3). Grandmother was also advised to stick to French or Dutch when reading a bedtime story, because her English was deemed too weak. Her utterances in the three languages were generally wellformed in her early years, with some syntactical and grammatical errors. Transfer errors were relatively rare, and the errors she made were generally comparable to those made by monolingual children of the same age; for example, certain English word orders would sometimes occur in her French: ‘Amy attend moi’ (‘Amy is waiting for me’) (2;7), or Dutch word order in French answering a question of mine whether she was ready, she said: ‘non encore pas’ (‘no not yet’) (2;7). It took some time before she got the position of the French adverb ‘pas’ systematically right. Grammatical errors using the past participle in Dutch, ‘ik heb gedrinken’ (target: ‘gedronken’), ‘I have drunk’ (2;11), with verb endings in Dutch ‘ik gaat raser’ (target: ‘ik ga’) ‘I’m gonna shave’ (2;9), or an occasional third person ‘-s’ for a first-person verb form in English: ‘I wants something’ (2;9) – possibly an ‘-s’ in anticipation of the following word. Sometimes, she would apply Dutch or French morphological endings to English verbs: ‘The sun shinet’ (‘the sun

16

Raising Mult ilingual Children

shines’, probably linked to the Dutch equivalent: ‘de zon schijnt’), (2;9). Replying to my question about what she would wear one morning, she answered: ‘je vais chooser myself’ (‘I’ll choose myself’, the ‘–er’ ending being characteristic of the infinitive of the most common French verbs) (3;4). In other words, the fact that she enjoyed code-switching did not mean she was not able to distinguish between the three languages, though there were some cross linguistic influences. Most of these errors disappeared by the time she turned four, although she did persist in using, occasionally, second or third singular person verb forms, instead of first person: ‘je va faire ça’ (‘I’m gonna do it’) (target: ‘vais’) (3;11). We corrected her errors by recasting them, and she spontaneously repeated the correction. In some rare cases, she resisted, arguing that we didn’t understand the context. The anecdotal evidence from this period shows that a very young trilingual child can grasp concepts like language, and use it appropriately according to the situation. Having been in contact with different languages since her birth, multilingualism was seen by Livia as a rule rather than the exception. As a trilingual child, Livia was sometimes asked to clarify who she was – the type of question a monolingual child was less likely to be asked. The first time this happened, we were in our kitchen preparing dinner, when Laura, amazed by our code-switching, asked us ‘but who are you guys?!’ My wife answered: ‘we’re Belgians’. Livia, age three, disagreed, stating: ‘No, I’m not Belgian’. My wife insisted, ‘Yes of course you are, you have a Belgian passport’. Livia was not going to be swayed by some piece of paper, so Laura asked her directly: ‘What are you Livia?’ She thought for a second and then answered: ‘I’m a London girl’. I loved the answer, and rushed to write it down (children’s funny phrases slip from the mind quickly, if they are not written down). Livia had clearly been thinking about her peers at the nursery, many of them coming from multilingual homes, some Muslim and some Jewish, all having  English as a common language at school, and being Londoners. So, this local level London identity could easily be combined with multilingualism and multiculturalism. Moreover, she must have noticed that people reacted positively when we

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

17

mentioned that we lived in London, and hence, she could be proud of her city. Finally, her gender mattered more than whatever languages she spoke at home.

Livia aged 4

When Livia turned five, the status and acceptance by her peers had become crucially important. I walked her to Garfield, her state primary school, where more than half of the 285 pupils did not speak English at home and received free school meals (meaning their parents were on income-support, asylum seekers or unemployed), and although linguistic diversity was officially appreciated, the only lingua franca among the children was English. We spoke French until we reached the school gate, at which point, she reminded me to stop speaking French and to address her in English, or she would whisper French in my ear. This situation occurred when she wanted to avoid standing out from her peers, even in multilingual London where schoolchildren speak more than 300 languages. Livia’s anxiety on standing out linguistically, disappeared a couple of years later, when I could speak to her in French as we entered school grounds. By age 10, we continued to be amazed by Livia’s multilingual repertoire. Due to the lack of exposure to Urdu, she had lost her linguistic abilities completely, but she remained highly fluent and sounded native-like in the other three languages. This did not mean, however, that she was equally fluent in the languages acquired, or

18

Raising Mult ilingual Children

that the speaking process in all three languages was equally effortless. The linguistic and cultural influence of the child’s environment is much more powerful than anything parents can achieve at home. Going to an English school, being surrounded by English-speaking friends, watching English films, and reading English books led to a logical and inevitable dominance of the English language as part of her linguistic repertoire. It is her social language and one of her ‘inner’ languages. She would mutter in English when displeased about something. I had enrolled her in a French Club, where other British children came to learn French. The aim was purely psychological; she felt quite pleased that her French was better than everybody else’s, and she realised that her knowledge of French had a social value and cultural capital – worth preserving and expanding. The absence of a larger peer-group of French and Dutch speakers meant that, although she was perfectly able to interact with monolingual French and Dutch-speaking Belgian friends at her grandparents’ home in Belgium, her French and Dutch were stilted. My wife and I were her main sources of input for Dutch and French, and what 10-year-old wants to sound like her parents?! She lacked the sociolect of the same age peers in Dutch and French. In other words, she sounded more ‘sophisticated’ in English, was better at telling jokes, and could express emotions, sarcasm, and irony in English better than she could in French or Dutch. It did not mean that she was unable to understand jokes, emotions, irony or sarcasm in French and Dutch, on the contrary, she reacted appropriately when I read to her beautifully sarcastic passages of Alexandre Dumas’ Trois Mousquetaires (which contains a lot of vocabulary and grammatical forms that were unfamiliar to her), and the same applied to my wife’s reading of children’s novels in Dutch. However, the unlikeliness of producing that kind of discourse herself in French or Dutch was obvious, and she would typically switch to English when talking to us about something emotional or when telling a humorous story or a joke. For example, we went to see the film Crusade in Jeans in Bruges, during Christmas break. The film, based on a Dutch novel, was in English. We saw the Dutch dubbed version and Livia was thrilled by it. Yet, afterwards, she preferred to discuss the emotional issues of the movie in English.

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

19

Pre-teen

With time, we gradually relaxed on the rule of one person – one language. Each of us still addressed Livia in our own language but we allowed her to answer back in English if she felt like it. We started to allow English as a discussion language on school issues that were hard for her to translate, like reporting what had happened to her friends’ in class, what the teacher had said, and what someone else had answered. We felt it would be unreasonable to insist on her translating everything, especially because my wife and I are both fluent in English. We also wanted to avoid stifling Livia’s wish to express herself freely. By insisting too much on her using our languages of choice, we feared we could create the opposite effect, namely a complete refusal to use our languages at all. However, allowing Livia to talk about certain topics in English, inevitably opened the gate to speaking English. Since most of her other activities were in English, she reported everything in English, even things that had ‘happened‘ in French or Dutch. She dreamt mostly in English and calculated in English. We still encouraged her to speak our language, but did not obsess over it when she chose to deviate from the family norm. When she came home with friends, I would greet them all with a cheerful ‘Bonne après-midi les filles! Ça va?!’ (‘Good afternoon girls, how are you?’).

20

Raising Mult ilingual Children

This generally elicited a moment of panic among Livia’s friends, who would turn to Livia, exclaiming, ‘Your dad is speaking French to us!’ I could not help but feel surprised that despite several years of French classes, they were unable to react appropriately, (a simple ‘ça va!’ (‘OK’) or ‘bien’ (‘fine’) would have been enough). Livia complained about my French greetings to her friends, but I countered her request by telling her that if her friends were learning French, I had to provide them with an opportunity to use it – even minimally. My wife and I, typically code-switched a lot between Dutch and French before Livia’s birth, and now our code-switching patterns are trilingual which feels perfectly normal. The other crucial fact is that after 13 years in London, my wife and I felt that English had become ‘our’ language too. I realised that English had become my dominant language as far as academic writing was concerned. It did not stop me from making odd or embarrassing pronunciation mistakes – to Livia’s great glee. Her favourite memory is when I asked a waiter for an empty bowl, instead I pronounced ‘bowel’, which elicited a frown of incomprehension. The moment I open my mouth and speak English, I’m identified as a foreign language user, which does not bother me at all. Walking in the Chilterns and asking for directions, I would typically be asked ‘Where are you from?’, to which I invariably answer, ‘London’. This would elicit a frown and a smile, ‘Yes, but where are you really from?’ At which point I would admit my Belgian roots. An episode where my foreign accent triggered some complications was when I wanted to fetch Livia after a ski class in Mammoth Lakes, California. I had lost the ticket, so I simply asked an instructor at the ski school enclosure to fetch Livia. He told me that without a ticket he had to get his manager. Both came back and the instructor told the supervisor, ‘This gentleman with a European accent claims to be the dad of this student who has a British accent’. A quick exchange between me and Livia in French, followed by her assurances to them that I was indeed her dad, despite my foreign accent, convinced them to let her accompany me back to our flat. Having a trilingual child made us realise how dynamic languages are. Livia’s proportion of utterances in English spoken at home peaked before a holiday. During the holidays, we spend more time together, we might go to Belgium where she can speak French with her paternal grandparents; Dutch with her maternal grandmother, her aunts,

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

21

uncles, and cousins; and Dutch with the friends in her grandparents’ neighbourhood. Her friends were typically monolingual and Livia managed to renounce code-switching and stick to a monolingual language mode. The input received in Dutch and French temporarily weakened her preference for English. However, as soon as she returned to school, her English re-established itself. She stopped going to the weekly French club because she got a bit bored with it and because of certain scheduling problems. My wife and I taught her to read in French and Dutch, and she started doing literacy papers in French for younger children. From an early age, she was engrossed listening to audiobooks on her Walkman, sitting in the back of the car. At age 10, she developed a passion for reading English novels for children (J.K. Rowling, Philip Pullman, Enid Blyton and Jacqueline Wilson were her favourites), and she re-read the whole Harry Potter series at least 10 times. She also developed a passion for creative writing (in English). Not surprisingly, she got the highest scores in her primary school class for English in a national test, called SATs (out-performing the monolingual English speakers, and providing me with perfect anecdotal evidence that multilingual children can outdo monolingual peers). She became passionate about theatre and took drama classes for several years where she learnt to project her voice, to articulate clearly, and to overcome stage fright. I am perfectly aware that she may not have been a ‘typical’ early multilingual, but that does not mean that her case is not illustrative of one specific child’s multilingual development – and, by extension, it is perfectly possible for a multilingual child to outperform their monolingual peers. From early childhood, her English sounded relatively posh, even though many children in her primary school used a more workingclass sociolect, including glottal stops, and tags such as ‘innit?’ at the end of utterances, non-standard verb agreement ‘we was’ …). She always avoided using stigmatised variants. In a funny encounter, a Belgian friend in Bruges, wanted to show off his (very limited) knowledge of English, and uttered an offensive taboo word (‘motherfucker’) with a broad innocent smile. Livia was shocked and switched to English, ‘You can’t say that!’, before realising that he had not understood her exclamation. This was a taboo word, she explained, and she had some trouble accepting that her Belgian

22

Raising Mult ilingual Children

friend was unaware of this. I personally thought this episode was interesting. I have been studying the use of swear words in foreign languages, and through research I had come to learn that these words never seem to be that offensive in a foreign language, because they lack the strong emotional connotations of the equivalent words in the first language (Dewaele, 2013). I was also surprised that Livia knew that word at that age. Livia was very happy to be trilingual but she did not see it as an achievement. Many of her friends come from immigrant families, so they speak Polish, Portuguese, Turkish, Somali, Gujarati, Chinese or Lingala. She knows three languages, but only adults offered her compliments about it. She was of course delighted when someone thought it was interesting, such as Professor Marya Teutsch-Dwyer from St. Cloud State University, Minnesota, who interviewed her as a participant in her project on multilingual children, but there are many things she was more proud about (her karate skills, her swimming skills, her patrol leadership in the scouts, her winning poetry, and the novel-writing competitions at school). We realised that becoming trilingual from birth is not that hard, but that the difficulty lies in the maintenance and development of the three languages. It requires a constant investment on the child’s part and their parents to make sure that all languages are actively used and needed. Nothing linguistic is ever completely secured. Using a language is like paddling, the moment you interrupt your strokes, you will start to lose speed, and after a while the current will push you gently against the riverbank where you’ll remain stranded until you push yourself free and start paddling vigorously again. Of course, if you stop paddling in the middle of the river, you may eventually even float back downstream the way you came. This is a little text Livia wrote for Multilingual Living when she was 10, (2006): My name is Livia Teresa Dewaele. I am good at football and netball. I have a red belt (4th Kyu) in Go Kan Ryu karate. I think I’m bright (maybe not) and would like to get into one of the very good grammar schools, Latymer in North London. I am 10 years and 4 months old. At this present moment in time, I live in London, England with my mother and father. In the same house,

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

23

the same road, the same country as I have always done. I have been all around the world, only not Oceana, Africa or Asia. I am a good cook who will and can cook anything. Also, I’m very busy with clubs after school. My favourite club is Drama Club (Helen O’Grady Academy), which I have been doing for almost five years. I am very good at that too. My parents come from Belgium. My mum speaks Dutch with me, my dad speaks French with me but at school I always speak English. So, I speak English, Dutch and French. The language I enjoy speaking most is English. This is because I speak English everywhere apart from with my family. I understand everything my family says, however sometimes I can’t find the right words to use if I want to say something or answer a question. I think this is because almost everything I hear around me is English and I don’t hear much French or Dutch. As well as that, I learn everything in English as I am at a school in London. My friends are amazed that I speak so many languages, they are a bit jealous too. When they hear my dad speaks to me in French, they are like ‘is that French? Oh!’; and ‘I wish my dad spoke French with me’; and ‘you’re so lucky, you speak three languages’. At my school 4 in every 5 children come from another country, although they mostly only speak one or two languages. Their parents are almost always from another country, and rarely get used to speaking English. My favourite subjects at school are literacy and history. My favourite thing in literacy is writing stories and poems. I like absolutely everything about history especially things to do with The Second World War so I went to The Cabinet War Rooms and the Churchill Museum (near Downing Street) where I learnt that for Churchill’s wedding he received seventeen inkstands. Did you know that Churchill’s butterfly collection was eaten by a rat in India?! When I grow up I want to be a hotel inspector and at the same time write fiction books (the stuff my dad writes is not the most interesting of things). I would like to travel a lot, live in London and have a holiday home in the Alps and in Bruges.

24

Raising Mult ilingual Children

At age 11, Livia participated in an entrance exam (including English, verbal and non-verbal reasoning and an interview) to be accepted into Palmer’s Green High School for girls, a selective private secondary school in North London. She obtained the highest mark in English and was granted the ‘English award’, a small – but welcomed – fee reduction. This provided me with more anecdotal evidence that it is possible to be multilingual and beat monolingual peers in the knowledge of their only language.

Teenager

Livia aged 17 with her dad at a black belt karate seminar

When she was 16, Livia was asked by Corey Heller, the founder of the Multilingual Living Magazine to write a blog about her experiences as a trilingual child. It elicited many reactions from multilingual parents who liked to hear the perspective of the child, rather than the parents’ or researchers’. This is what she wrote: http://www.multilingualliving.com/2013/04/29/trilingual-sixteenquadrilingual/ Being trilingual from birth definitely has advantages, I thought, as I received my results (A*) for my French IGCSE, sat two years early.

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

25

My entire class at Palmers Green High School (London) agrees – they have all at one point told me and the other native French speaker in the class that they wished their parents had spoken French to them as a young child (French being the compulsory language at GCSE). I agree with them, of course. I’m not the only multilingual, four other girls combine English with Chinese, Turkish, Gujurati and Spanish. Multilingualism is not just handy at school. Travelling last week on the Eurostar, my dad, who is a diabetic, had a hypoglycaemia (a blood sugar low), and fell into a coma as we were going through security at the Bruxelles midi terminal. Since it was just the two of us travelling together, I was the one who had to explain first to the Eurostar staff, then to the paramedics, and finally to the hospital staff what had happened. The thought struck me while there how lucky I was to be able to communicate with them properly, in French and Flemish. Obviously, there is very little chance of this happening to anyone else, but in an emergency, it is always a huge advantage to be able to communicate fluently, no matter where one is. When asked if my multilingualism does not somehow have a negative effect on me, I answer (forgive me for lack of modesty) that I have consistently achieved top grades in both French and English at school, attaining the highest mark in the year in my English GCSE exam last year. Psychologically, of course, some might argue that speaking three languages is affecting my mental balance and I may someday become a psychopathic killer. Not to worry, I have always been happy, and it seems to me, at least, that I don’t have any mental problems, or any issues in fact. If I did, I highly doubt they would spring from my multilingualism. It frequently amazes people that I speak three languages, but to me it is not special, not an achievement. If anything, it is my parents’ achievement, for making sure I always spoke in French/ Dutch to them, and stuck to the one parent/one language rule. If not properly enforced, I would have lost the ability to speak either or both languages, especially as I became most proficient in English. This is the case in my two younger cousins who live

26

Raising Mult ilingual Children

in Brussels – they have lost their confidence in French, due to overwhelmingly hearing Flemish at school, at after school activities and from their mother. It seems a shame. I have my end of course Spanish exams in three weeks, and I’m studying hard. A fourth language, yes, but it does not feel like that. This is the first time I have had to try to learn a language, and I’ve come to appreciate the difficulty of learning a language later in life. That said, I have an advantage since Spanish is similar to French, making it very easy to understand what is written and said – or it would be if they didn’t all speak so fast! So, I encourage all parents to speak their native language to their child, and if it’s not English, even better! One blog reader, Jenny, commented on the difficulty of using languages with children when some people, who did not speak or understand these languages, may feel left out. Her advice was: I’ve raised four bilingual children and have encountered all of the situations in which people tell you not to speak the ‘foreign’ language to your child. Don’t listen to them! Stick to the OPOL rule and it will pay off in so many ways. (…) Make sure the other people know you’re not talking about them, and make sure your (child) knows that it’s not appropriate to talk about other people in front of them in another language. Livia added to this: It’s always difficult when there are people around who won’t understand what you’re saying. My dad always speaks French to me when there are other people around and he is not speaking directly to them, which can startle them at first, but they soon come to find it normal. We speak French to each other, that’s just the way it is. However, of course, when talking to others who will not understand, it is unavoidable to speak English. (…) My dad speaks French to me, my mum speaks Dutch, although they are lenient when we are talking about something that happened at school, which would be difficult to translate. This stopped me from being resentful at having to speak a certain language, I think.

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

27

Another reader, Fiona, commented: We hear so much from parents and hardly anything for our children. Were there moments that you wanted to rebel? Did you ever just want to be ‘normal’? How did you avoid the pull of just speaking English, like your cousins with Dutch? Livia answered: Rebel? No, not really. I think it is just so natural to speak French/ Dutch to my parents, speaking English to them would feel wrong. I think it also helped that although English is my dominant language, we never (rarely) spoke English at home, which helped me avoid speaking English. The main problem with my cousins is that they are not confident enough in French, and do not get enough input in both languages. Parker, parent of a trilingual daughter also named Livia, wondered about the cultural conflict between the languages: I was wondering about if you have any experience with the clash of cultural mind-sets that is present in each language. Belgium is an interesting case study in this. How have you reconciled these differences in yourself? Livia answered: About the clash of cultural mind-sets – they haven’t been too dramatic. My parents find it hard to understand my penchant for chocolate digestive biscuits and marmite, my friends don’t understand why I don’t drink tea with milk and sugar. As to bigger issues – I don’t know how much is my personality and the way I’ve been brought up, and how much is due to different cultures. This may also be because culturally there are not as many differences between Belgium and England as there are between, say, Saudi Arabia and England. That said, I was shocked at how forthright people in Belgium can be, which I was not used to. In that way, I’m English, I think!

28

Raising Mult ilingual Children

Livia’s observations about how forthright Belgians are related to a sailing camp she had attended in Nieuwpoort, on the Belgian coast. Her experience with Flemish peers triggered a bit of an identity crisis. Until then, she had always presented herself as Belgian. She brought back chocolate and speculoos for her school friends after taking trips to Belgium. The new teachers at her school would ask whether she was French, and the whole class would chime in, ‘No, she’s Belgian!’. However, during the week in Nieuwpoort, she realised how British she was in her way of communicating (i.e. indirect and avoiding face threat), in her values (standing in orderly queues), and in her cultural references. Her Flemish peers were at a loss because she was someone who sounded native, but had no trace of a dialect. Since most teenagers in Flanders speak a local dialect, traces of which are audible in the standard variant, they can easily be identified as coming from Limburg, Antwerp, or Western Flanders (where I am originally from). Since Livia was never immersed in these dialects she has no trace of them in her Dutch, which marked her as an outsider. Moreover, she had little knowledge of the Flemish teenagers’ sociolect. Consequently, her speech may have come across as belonging to an older age group, and therefore definitely uncool. The course also involved some reading and writing, which worried her a lot because she has not had any formal training in Dutch spelling nor grammar. She is perfectly able to read, but the only time she uses written Dutch is when she is texting her mum. It is perfectly understandable, but not comparable to the production of a Flemish-educated peer. She came home and declared that she was not Belgian after all, because she felt closer to her British friends and the British ways of communicating, rather than the Belgians’. She decided that she is British with Belgian roots. Livia dropped her Spanish class, after her GCSEs (where she got 12 A*), focusing on maths, history and French for her A-levels at Dame Alice Owen’s, a semi-selective state school in Potters Bar (where she got one A and two A*). Inevitably, her Spanish had become a little rusty after receiving little input in the last three years. She decided to study French and linguistics at university and is presently in her second year at Worcester College, University of Oxford. She loves her peers, her teachers, the beauty of the place

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

29

and the intellectual stimulation. She developed a passion for rowing during her fi rst year and joined the Oxford Women’s Lightweight Rowing Team – up at 5.30 am six days a week, training 36 hours per week. She sat multiple written tests, interviews, and scored high on the MLAT (Modern Language Aptitude Test). Yet, she complains bitterly about the complexity of spelling and grammar rules in French. It is impossible to attribute the MLAT score to her multilingualism, but it is not surprising; her interest in languages, the development of metalinguistic and metapragmatic awareness has boosted her verbal ability and her understanding about the functioning of a language in general. Her multilingualism undoubtedly fired up her passion for language and literature. Some concluding remarks The famous bilingualism researcher, Colin Baker, pointed out that success in childhood multilingualism depends on a variety of factors; the most important ones being the child itself, the child’s social environment and the parents’: It is not just parents who control or influence the destiny of a child’s three or more languages. The child does as well. Children are influenced by their peer group and the mass media, by family friends and extended family, by experiences in the street and playground. Parents are like gardeners that prepare the soil, plant, water and care. (Baker, 2007) I particularly like the metaphor of parents as gardeners and their children as seeds. Parents can do their best, but some aspects are beyond their control. As far as Livia is concerned, we were lucky. Speaking two minority languages at home meant that English could be kept at bay within the family context. This did not need to be a watertight separation, as friends, television, books and newspapers brought English into our home, but our main interaction languages were French or Dutch. The fact that my wife and I are equally fluent in French and Dutch also meant that nobody was excluded when one or the other language was used. Moreover, we agreed on the family language policy and on the amount of flexibility that we would allow. This is

30

Raising Mult ilingual Children

particularly important because children are very good at spotting disagreements between their parents and are quick to exploit it to their perceived advantage. Another advantage we had was that French and Dutch were viewed positively in Livia’s environment. The fact that French is typically the first foreign language introduced in British schools helped convince the people that Livia interacted with that she was lucky to master the language. Her Belgian nationality never elicited negative comments. Most British people find Belgium totally uninteresting and unimportant, but the quality of chocolate and beer have become positive cultural stereotypes. Livia’s linguistic profile may have been very different had she spoken languages that elicited negative reactions around her or negative cultural stereotypes, which could have pushed her to hide her origins, and blend in as well as she could by rejecting her cultural and linguistic roots. Another factor that played a role in Livia’s early trilingualism was the fact that she never had brothers or sisters. Research by Suzanne Barron-Hauwaert (2011) shows that the arrival of siblings often affects the frequency of using home languages by older children. The dominant language from outside the home typically sneaks in, and parents are powerless in preventing a language shift between siblings. Our effort to maintain Livia’s multilingualism has undoubtedly played a role. Xiao-lei Wang, the mother of two biracial, trilingual boys, explains in her (2008) and (2015) books that maintaining three languages required unrelenting effort, including reading in minority languages, authentic material in various languages, regular visits to their home country, and positive attitudes toward minority language-cultures. I have long maintained the practice of reading French books to Livia before bedtime – preferably funny books that make us smile and chuckle. The effort also needs to be underpinned by an awareness of the bilingualism literature, and confidence in the decision to raise children multilingually, to reject the wrong advice from ill-informed, self-appointed judges. I remember a health care worker that we visited when Livia turned four (part of the visit involved a language assessment in English – which she passed easily), who told me that it would be better if I stopped using French with Livia and to switch

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

31

to English ‘to make sure she integrates in British society’. I pointed out that Livia also spoke Dutch, and that her multilingualism was an asset rather than a liability, which left him speechless. I was furious that someone in his position would dole out that type of uninformed stupid advice, which laypeople from minority groups, wishing the best for their children, may have taken on board. I pointed out that I had a PhD in linguistics, was specialised in bilingualism, believed that early multilingualism worked, and that his advice was completely wrong. Realising he could not win the argument, he went silent. I left the place fuming. I remind my students that they should be careful when drawing conclusions from data they have gathered, because it is crucial not to jump too quickly to conclusions. The case study of Livia merely suggests that it is perfectly possible for a child to grow up with multiple languages, and that there was no lack of brain capacity to absorb these four languages simultaneously in her first years. It also shows that early multilingualism was not linked to any delay in her acquisition of English, French or Dutch. Livia regularly obtained higher scores in English than her monolingual peers. However, it is likely that she would have obtained lower scores compared to monolingual French and Dutch peers, especially for literacy, slang, and probably for vocabulary size. Does this matter? Probably not, as she can pass for a native speaker in both languages. And her motivation to pursue the study of French at university stems from the realisation that her French is not quite as rich as her English. Interestingly, the government figures for the 2014/15 academic year on GCSE, and the equivalent results of pupils at the end of Key Stage 4 in England (those starting the academic year at the age of 15), showed that Livia is not such an exceptional case. Among pupils with English as an L1, 57.5% obtained a good score of 5 or more, A* to C scores for GCSE, including English and maths compared to 54.6% of children for whom English was an additional language. For the EBACC2, the difference was reversed, so pupils who had English as an additional language scored higher rates of entry and achievement of the language component of the Ebacc (42.1% and 26.4%), compared to English L1 pupils (38.1% and 23.9%). In other words, the pupils who had English as an additional language outperformed the

32

Raising Mult ilingual Children

English L1 pupils in languages, including English. (https://www. gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/494073/SFR01_2016.pdf). Another question is whether the successful trilingual first language acquisition was linked to something in Livia’s genes or to the environment. My wife and I are quadrilinguals, her grandparents were -or are- at least trilingual, and her paternal grandfather used to teach ancient Greek, Latin and French. Thus, Livia was born in a family that values multilingualism and literature. Living in a highly multilingual environment and going to a school where plenty of pupils were multilinguals meant that she never felt as the odd one out, she was never stigmatised for her multilingualism, and we all encouraged her to embrace it. I’ve included a lot of data in the first part of this chapter, showing instances of code-switching or grammatical and syntactical errors. This is partly because I happened to write down deviations more often than non-deviant productions. But I feel that this serves a crucial purpose, namely to show that from some apparent messiness in language use, a clear, well-functioning system emerged, consisting of several languages. Parents of young multilingual children should avoid unrealistic expectations; languages are complex systems, and it takes a while before children (even monolingual) sort it all out. Hence, parents should not obsess about linguistic errors or apparent random code-switching. It also helps to accept that there is always a dominant language, and that this can shift depending on the amount of input received in a language. I would also argue that when children refuse to answer back in the parent’s language, it is better not to give up, as it might be a passing phase. Even if they keep refusing to use a particular language, I would argue that by continuing the use of the minority language, the child will at least maintain passive multilingualism, and can decide to re-activate it at some point in the future. Inevitably, children make judgments about the usefulness of their languages. Why would anyone invest energy in something that is perceived as useless? An hour a week with a special tutor to learn a new language might not be convincing to a child if the future benefit still lies years ahead.

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

33

To conclude, we managed to raise Livia trilingually. We realise we were lucky in many respects. She is 20 now, semi-independent at university, and we hope that, some day, she will be able to pass on her love of languages and cultures to her children, our grandchildren. P.S: Livia re-read the current chapter and agreed with its content and its wording.

Notes (1) Words in French are presented in normal font, words in Dutch in bold and words in English in italics. (2) English Baccalaureate (EBacc) is a school performance measure introduced in 2010 in the UK reflecting the proportion of pupils with a grade C or above in the core academic subjects at Key Stage 4 in any government-funded school.

References Baker, C. (2007) What Research says about Multilingualism. Multilingual Living Magazine. http://www.biculturalfamily.org. Barron-Hauwaert, S. (2011) Bilingual Siblings: Language Use in Families. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Dewaele, J.-M. (2000) Trilingual first language acquisition: Exploration of a linguistic miracle. La Chouette, 31, (pp. 77–86). Also at: http://www.bbk. ac.uk/llc/french/chouette.htm. Dewaele, J.-M. (2006) Interview on Trilingual first language acquisition. Multilingual Living Magazine. www.biculturalfamily.org. Dewaele, J.-M. (2007) Still trilingual at ten: Livia’s multilingual journey. Multilingual Living Magazine. www.biculturalfamily.org. Dewaele, J.-M. (2013) Emotions in Multiple Languages. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Dewaele, L. (2013) Teenager’s reflections on her multilingualism. http://www. multilingualliving.com/2013/04/29/trilingual-sixteen- quadrilingual/ #more-15379 (accessed May 2016). Wang, X. (2008) Growing up with Three Languages: Birth to Eleven. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Wang, X. (2015) Maintaining Three Languages: The Teenage Years. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

The Story of Aya & Noam Julia Festman

Multilingual Parents Ever since I met my husband (a Hebrew native speaker) in France, our language of communication had been English, because at that time I did not speak Hebrew and his knowledge of French and German were fragmentary. We lived in Israel (where I learnt Hebrew and obtained my PhD) and in the UK for several years before coming back to Germany, right before Aya was born in 2004. 34

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

35

As a German native speaker living in Germany again (after years in France, Israel and the UK), I spoke German to Aya, while my husband was not quite sure which language to use.

Aya and Hebrew – A Complicated Story Initially, my husband spoke Hebrew to her but he felt that her German was much better and that he didn’t ‘reach’ her when talking in Hebrew. Despite my encouragement, his impatience won and he stopped using Hebrew. You may wonder why? Well, for one, he felt rather marginalised using his native language, because Hebrew was strongly underrepresented where we lived and in our speaking environment. At the time, we worked in Magdeburg, a provincial city in Germany, with not a single peer around using Hebrew actively (had we lived in Berlin at that time, it might have been different). Additionally, my husband felt reluctant to use his native language outside of our home, and he did not like his daughter to make use of the language outside of our home either. These restrictions influenced her exposure to Hebrew. My husband felt that he should catch up with his German, as it was the language he needed to use to get along with the people in his everyday life. His efforts in learning German were extremely fruitful and were the best way for him to communicate with Aya. So, having a multilingual partner and living abroad made my husband multilingual, too. When Aya was about five years old, my husband started to occasionally speak or read in Hebrew to her. In the ‘safe’ environment of our home, Aya learnt to count in Hebrew, to say a few crucial sentences, to write most of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet and she found songs and DVDs in Hebrew that she loved. Our relatives from Israel sent us some DVDs with children stories and songs. One of them inspired Aya a great deal and she had her own fitting outfit that she enjoyed wearing when playing the DVD. It was the combination of action and music that made it a special treat for her – language learning and practice is fun! (A DVD which was at that time highly recommended by her for Hebrew is Etz Ha’Shirim by Michal Tzafir).

36

Raising Mult ilingual Children

Aya enjoyed dressing up and dancing and singing to Israeli music

In our bi-cultural family we wanted to provide room for each of the two cultures in which we, as parents, were raised. Therefore, we celebrated all the holidays, the Christian/German and the Jewish/ Israeli holidays, by telling the stories, singing songs, making food, decorating, etc. After a while, we even met a family from Israel who had moved into our neighbourhood. We enjoyed celebrating the holidays together. For our children, these celebrations turned out to be more authentic. We celebrated one of the Jewish holidays, Sukkot, a holiday during which little ‘houses’ or ‘tents’ are built with a roof made of branches. We found our own special way to enable our children to have these experiences (we used an old table, put a blanket around it, brought some branches, and the kids built their Sukka). Most importantly, they all enjoyed it.

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

37

Not long ago, in 2015, when Aya was almost 11, she said, ‘If only I had learnt more Hebrew, that would be cool. Then I would be able to use a language nobody else here knows.’ Currently, she has about four Hebrew pop songs on her mobile and she plays them every now and then. This is right now her way of maintaining this language.

Aya age 10

Aya’s discovery of English Since her birth, Aya was only ‘passively’ exposed to English. We mainly spoke German with her, but she heard a lot of English – however, not involving child-related topics (such as talking about work at university, science, administration, etc.). Her English fi nally became active after we started to directly address her in English, her L2, and by including more child-related English into our family communciation. One example was the daily use of a calendar made for children (Langenscheidt Edition) when she was five years old. The daily page contained about five words introducing a new topic, and the words (along with others) are repeated during that week, with riddles, pictures, and games. Aya enjoyed the calendar very much, and we used it during breakfast. She enlarged her vocabulary dramatically, she understood that she could easily learn the language her parents were speaking

38

Raising Mult ilingual Children

daily, and it was a constant activity that quickly became part of her daily routine. I was asked to play the ‘teacher’ who explained certain things to her (fair enough, with a PhD in English). Additionally, in her kindergarten, one of the caretakers offered a one-week English session. Aya joined in and realised that the other children were also trying to learn English. She found it to be entertaining and she enjoyed it a great deal. After about a year of interacting with the calendar and her English input in kindergarten, she occasionally pretended that we were an ‘English family’, declared ‘my name is Elizabeth’ and involved all of us in role-playing. Then, we all spoke English for as long as she wanted. Aya gave me the idea of inventing songs for routine activities. One evening, when she was about six years old, she suddenly said, ‘I will brush my teeth’. And she started to invent a melody, and sang. I joined in. With her toothbrush in her hand I sang to her, ‘and now you’re brushing your teeth, brushing your teeth ….’. When her teeth were all clean and shiny, she sang, ‘and now I will take my brush, take my brush… and comb my hair, comb my hair …’. And we went on and on, from one task to the other. By singing, not only did we describe all our actions, but we also exercised different grammar aspects. After we finished singing, she was tired, but not during the tasks! And she revealed her creativity by enjoying her multilingualism knowledge.

Aya’s love for French When Aya was two, a friend of mine from France, Marie, came for a visit with her daughter Jeanne (age five). Aya heard us speak French and loved the sound of it so much that she also tried to make some French sounds. For example, we heard her call ‘maman’ (mum) in French, rather than saying it in German. A year later, when the family came again for a visit, Aya tried to articulate in French again and she really enjoyed it. When she was five years old, we liked to sing songs with her in French (which is my third language (L3) and her L4). She often chose a French good-night song and sang along and we had quite a repertoire built-up. At present, she is 12 years old. In one of her girl-movies, a French teacher speaks with a heavy French accent in German. My

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

39

daughter imitates her perfectly in intonation and pronunciation. Aya has a good ear for French. Recently, she told me that she will have to choose a foreign language for her high school class next year, and that it will be French. In the end it turned out to be Spanish, a language she loves. She was the first to stand in front of the entire class as the ‘teacher assistant’, helping the teacher in Spanish with certain chores such as asking the classmates how they are, etc. In my experience, it was fruitful to make my children aware of languages, multilingualism, and the fact that not everyone speaks the same language. I remember a Chinese girl who was in the same group as my daughter in kindergarten. I saw them sitting together in the sand, but there was no verbal interaction between them. So, I asked my daughter whether she was talking to her, and she said no, because the girl had not been talking to her. I explained to my daughter that she does not speak German yet, and that she could help her learn it by pointing at the sand and saying SAND, pointing at the bucket and saying the word slowly, and even repeating it a few times. Even performing actions such as digging in the sand with the appropriate movement and saying the words. The next day, when I went to the kindergarten, they were already trying to communicate just by using the new words the Chinese girl had acquired. They had fun, the girl became more confident, she was laughing, and they soon became friends. When my daughter went off to school, the Chinese girl (age 3;6) became my son Noam’s (age 3) best friend, who had just started going to the same kindergarten.

Noam and his multilingual experiences Aya also liked to play Noam’s teacher. I remember moments when she explicitly taught her brother the name of colours in English. Early on, Noam was exposed to Aya’s multilingualism and confronted her with it. There were moments when he was very angry about not understanding words or songs in English, but he soon caught up. Sometimes, he would be allowed to choose a DVD. He loved to watch interactive DVDs in English from the series Ben and Bella (www.benandbella.com); for Hebrew he liked Barney, the

40

Raising Mult ilingual Children

purple dinosaur, which introduced several topics such as ‘imagine’, ‘eating right’ (Eating right with Barney, Sisu Home Ent., 2005), as well as stories about Stephanie and Sportacus in Lazy Town (which can be found on YouTube in many different languages). Noam loved it when I read books to him. One of his favourites was Pfister’s Rainbow Fish – opposites (North-South books). Every two pages, you will find two pictures with contrasting terms such as many (crabs) – few (crabs), big (whale) – little (fish). Noam learnt all the words in no time, accompanied by pictures, words and movements (for big, small, over, under, long, short, etc.)

Noam, age 3

Around age seven, he was able to ask for things he wanted in English. Noam understood that when our Finnish friends Alina and Miika came to visit, it was best to communicate with them in English. And he did so successfully. Miika would be asked to come

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

41

and play some LEGO with him or would be urged to let him play with his tablet. As for his Hebrew, Noam knows numbers and many Hebrew songs. A book that Noam liked in Hebrew is Uzi Weill and Iris de Botton’s Panda Panda (Am Oved Publishers), a nice story about cleaning the house and information regarding misconceptions about what ‘order’ and ‘cleanness’ mean. Every page describes a location or action of cleaning, such as ‘There’s filth on the table. No problem. Panda is cleaning up immediately.’ Noam would always look at the last part of the text, and even now, years later, looking at the book, he will remember and say in Hebrew ‘No problem. Panda is cleaning up immediately.’ But since his dad passed away, he has not been interacting with the Hebrew language, and his knowledge of Hebrew is slowly fading. On the other hand, he loves learning new languages. In one of his science audio stories, he learnt about a volcano in Iceland. In passing, he caught some words in Icelandic and would tell his grandmother how useful these words are in case she should travel to Iceland someday. This shows that although he has developed an extraordinary knowledge of German (L1), and has an advanced level of English (L2) compared to his classmates, his Hebrew (L3) is far from being described as fluent. However, the multilingualism seed has fallen on fruitful ground.

The Story of Loïc Greg Poarch

My wife used Dutch and I used English exclusively from birth onward with Loïc, while German was the language of the environment. Then, from the age of two, he went to German-English daycare and later attended a German-English kindergarten. Interestingly, until the age of four, he spoke Dutch to both of us, having realised very early on that I also understood and spoke that language. Nevertheless, I addressed him in English only. Then, at age four, he finally switched to speaking English with me. What bliss for me as the father who had persevered.

Here’s Loïc, age 5, at his aunt’s house in the Netherlands, reading in Dutch to his mother in Germany over the telephone

However, around the age of nine, having attended a German primary school for three years, he switched to speaking mostly German with both his mother and me. 42

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

43

During a brief interlude in 2012, we spent two months together in Toronto, Canada, during which Loïc went to a sports camp at the University of Toronto and attended primary school for two weeks. His English skills flourished immensely during his brief stay.

Loïc, age 10, at fencing camp, University of Toronto, summer 2012

Now, at age 14, he uses English rarely (even though I maintain speaking English with him) and Dutch even less. Hence, German is his strongest language, followed by relatively fluent English with some minor word finding issues, and less fluent Dutch with greater word finding difficulties. His varying language proficiencies can be clearly correlated with the amount of exposure to and his active usage of the three languages. Thus, inviting English or Dutch speaking friends to our home, going abroad, and sending him to his Dutch and American grandparents during the holidays are our way of offering him various opportunities to actively use and practice

44

Raising Mult ilingual Children

his other two languages apart from German. Now, he is receiving substantial English input by reading books (which I’m very happy about) and watching online videos (which I’m not always thrilled about). Either way, these activities offer him additional English input apart from mine (and the limited input he receives in English classes at school). Here are a few standard situations that we have been faced with in the past and our way of dealing with them (see Chapter 5 for more general advice). Situation 1: Loïc had one of his German monolingual friends, Otto, over to our house. At the time, I was the only parent at home and both children ended up asking me many questions (as six-year-olds are known to do). Loïc asked these questions in German (for his friend’s benefit) and English, while his friend did so only in German. My way of dealing with this situation was to answer Loïc’s questions in English and Otto’s questions in German. Loïc often felt obliged to translate some of the verbal exchanges from English into German for Otto’s sake. In some cases, I also addressed Otto directly in German, and repeated what was previously said in English. Situation 2: Loïc and his mother were on the streetcar on their way to school and spoke in Dutch to one another. Every so often, a person sitting next to them would give them a puzzled look. Loïc and his mother maintained their conversation in Dutch and after a while, they became oblivious to the puzzled looks they had received from other people. Situation 3: Loïc and I were at the doctor’s office and the doctor addressed both Loïc and me in German. We kept speaking in English to one another and both of us spoke German to the doctor. Granted, this could be construed as artificial; nevertheless, our doctor became familiar with our situation, and it also meant additional English input for Loïc. Situation 4: When visiting one of his German friends, Loïc and his mother spoke Dutch to one another, and German to Loïc’s friend and his mother. In essence, this strategy may have offended some people who felt left out, but it gave Loïc more practice in speaking Dutch.

The Stor ies of Our Mult ilingual Children

45

Finally, as a general note, in our trilingual Dutch-English-German family, we have never forced our son to speak the language in which we had addressed him. I ever so often implore him to try to repeat in English what he has just uttered in German. This strategy, however, only works now and then, and it is not something I use daily. However, recently, he has started to speak in English to me again, particularly when he has friends over. Go figure!

3 Some Background Information on Learning Methods, Language Policies, and Suggestions to Ensure an Early Successful Multilingual Acquisition

While reading through chapter two, you might have wondered to what extent the elaborate story of one child and the brief descriptions of three multilingual families can relate to your own family’s language situation. We hope that you have come to the realisation that every family situation is unique in various ways, for example the language combinations, and the number of family members, just to name  a  couple. Understanding how learning works, and which principles to rely on, will help you decide which method might be the most appropriate for your family and your child. We will explain what language policies are and how they can be helpful for your multilingual endeavor. Sometimes, on your multilingual journey, you might have doubts or concerns, so by offering you practical advice, we want to support you in your choice for multilingualism.

46

Learning Methods, Language Policies, Suggestions for Early Successful Multilingual Acquisition 47

Learning a Language Children can easily learn a language – they are born with this ability. How do they do it and when do they start developing this ability? While still in the mother’s uterus, babies listen to the outside voices such as their mothers’, so at the end of the pregnancy they become familiar with the melody of one or more languages to such a degree that they cry in a language-specific melody. A research group at the University of Würzburg, Germany, and the Max-PlanckInstitute in Leipzig, Germany, examined the cries of new-borns in a hospital in Germany and in France (Mampe, Friederici, Christophe, & Wermke, 2009). They found different sound structures produced by babies of German and French speaking-parents. This indicates that babies learn the prosody of a  certain language (the typical melody of language) during the last stages of pregnancy, and right after birth. From then on, babies listen to the people in their linguistic environment, interacting, communicating, and maybe singing and reading out loud. Depending on what children hear, they start to understand that everything can be named, and  that language is used to express oneself and to communicate. They learn to understand words before they learn to pronounce them. After they have used single words to express themselves for a while, they start to use their knowledge about language structures. From listening to spoken language, they figure out some of the basic rules of the language surrounding them. After a while, they can use these rules, and when entering school, children usually know an enormous number of words they can understand and use, and they are quite familiar with the basic grammar rules of that language. Therefore, language input is so important; WHAT children hear and WHO interacts with the child.

Children Love Repetition Children learn best by using repetition. Mothers often intuitively repeat what they say to their babies and toddlers. Children first learn the words that they often hear from the people who talk to them (mommy, daddy, their own name, etc.), or the type of

48

Raising Mult ilingual Children

words that are of particular interest to them (for example, teddy, car, etc.). They imitate what they hear. Right at the beginning, it is often difficult to understand their words exactly, since it is more babbling; it is best to be patient and to encourage the child to try again. At this stage, the child is exploring sounds and training verbal production. When repeating what they already know, it gives them a feeling of familiarity and security. But repetition also plays a very important role in learning. The brain can remember best what is often repeated. Then connections in the brain can be established, and with frequent repetition every word representation can be strengthened. As a consequence, a memory trace is formed. Children repeat the words they are able to use again and again, and from that beginning onward, they almost daily enlarge their active word knowledge. The same principle, repetition, could be used with very young children, if you are more of an instructor who likes focused language use. Repetition involves using the same vocabulary and phrases, you might want to repeat reading the same books, listen to the same songs for a while – then the child will turn to be secure with the words and phrases of the songs and the stories and will be able to grasp their content.

Children Love Novelty Principally, children love everything that is new. They adore a challenge, otherwise they lose interest. Novelty promotes their development and their language acquisition. At first, children start to establish a basic set of what they know, and then enlarge it by adding more information about words, the language, and the world around them. This is in no contradiction to what we said about repetition: children need both repetition for promoting familiarity and security (when they are very young), and novelty to foster their development and maintain their interest and motivation. Novelty helps them to get more and more specific in their knowledge about the world, and in their own way, they can express this knowledge by using more and more specific words.

Learning Methods, Language Policies, Suggestions for Early Successful Multilingual Acquisition 49

Often, parents feel like they should introduce new words to their child. One way is ‘fast mapping’ – showing an object (for example, a banana) and then pronouncing the word (often very articulated) while pointing at it. This way a connection is meant to be established for the child between the object and its name, the banana. Aiming to increase the child’s knowledge of words and things, parents go from ‘big’ to ‘small’ (from general to very specific words) when teaching their toddlers. For example, they first introduce the sound an animal is making (‘woof’ for a dog), then the word ‘dog’, and only later the type of dog, such as a poodle. It is good to have this logic in mind, for example, when introducing different animals, the sounds they make, where they live, what they eat, etc. Using this procedure, the child’s knowledge becomes more and more specific and you can accompany the child in the word learning process leading to the next new word. The same is possible for actions which can be shown or ‘played’, for example, eating, drinking, cutting, picking, etc. Performing an action and using the corresponding word helps to make the connection between the action and its name. That way children can extend their internal lexicon and build up very solid connections in the brain between the name of the action and the action itself.

Children Love Playing When playing, children apply what they have learnt, they relive experiences, and they explore what is new. Also, language use is like a game for them (see Chapter 2, when Livia is playing with her dolls in different languages). They use words they know in different contexts and situations (just think of how many men are called ‘daddy’ before the child uses more specific words). Livia knew that she could use harsh language with her dolls without risking being told off because the dolls would not complain. She realised that adults offered her leeway in addressing her dolls brutally because it was all part of ‘play’. As children become socialised in their environment, they learn that different people expect to be addressed in different ways by children. Livia could safely experiment in expressing

50

Raising Mult ilingual Children

extreme displeasure in her different languages, repeating words and utterances picked up at the nursery or from television. Other ways to play with a language when children still need you to be involved in their games is to repeat words and simple sentences, and then to ask them to repeat these; in a second stage, you might want to vary a certain word and make a game of it, for example ‘I love cherries’ – and then you use other kinds of fruit (melon, apple, strawberry, etc.) or toys or anything else you love in the same sentence structure (‘I love melon / apple …’). Children might come up with words they know, possibly from their other languages – or they may simply make up new words. These inventions are part of the language development and should not make you worry. They can be part of a particular game, and they are a sign of children’s creative use of their personal language repertoire. At this point, children are exploring the language, so do not underestimate the fun aspect of language learning.

Language Acquisition at Home: Exposure, Input, and Emotional Involvement Acquiring a language at home is very different from learning it at school. At home, children are in a language environment in which anything they do will be a meaningful activity for them, which is not always the case when a child is participating in language lessons at school. Also, children observe their parents who are engaged in activities around the house, and they love to join in. By joining you, they acquire vocabulary for objects in the kitchen, for example, and the verbs referring to various actions when cooking food. The same applies to other areas of domestic life. They are learning a language (or multiple) in a certain context while doing things, occasionally dropping things or messing things up. All these actions strengthen their memory. These words will acquire emotional connotations and will strengthen the links between words. The word ‘pancake’, for example, will be linked to words referring to the ingredients needed to make them, the instruments, and the sequence of actions to prepare the dough, the excitement of

Learning Methods, Language Policies, Suggestions for Early Successful Multilingual Acquisition 51

pouring the dough in a hot, sizzling frying pan, the delicious smells that will fill the kitchen, the masterful flipping of pancakes, and the hilarious failures when the pancake lands on the floor or the unseen disasters, when the pancakes were left for too long and started to burn. Following the sequence of events, the pancakes will be served, set fire to them (“flamber”), utensils will be used to eat them, syrups, jams, or chocolate will be poured on top of them, and maybe they’ll admire dad adding Cointreau, and aligning the pancakes perfectly. Being a part of such experiences, the child will never forget what a pancake is and will have a whole story to tell about what a pancake means. The richness and the connectedness of the words learnt in this context will contribute to the vividness of their memories – something that cannot be learnt in a classroom, where the only smell is the teacher’s perfume, the smell of cleaning products and chalk while sitting on a chair, rather than being actively involved in the exploring, tasting and understanding of words, objects, and actions. Of course there are schools that are more progressive in teaching methods. And one example from Aya's new high school is that at the open day of the school, the English teacher had initiated the selling of hot dogs. Pupils prepared menues with the different toppings, one had to order in English, pupils interacted with their customers in English and prepared the hot dogs – a delicious intercultural experience… It is not just the richness of things and actions in a home environment that boosts the child’s knowledge of a language; it is also the emotional environment that encourages language acquisition. Every time a child attempts to express something at home, it will be directed at family members and their intention to speak is not necessarily to say things correctly, but to get what they want or to express their feelings. Therefore, it is important to make sure that children are immersed in the languages in a loving environment, and that they receive attention and affection through all the spoken languages. At school, usually one teacher instructs around 20 pupils in language-related subjects, the teacher familiarizes children with different topics and the most relevant words, teaches them grammar rules, and tries to involve them verbal interaction. Individual verbal output is often time-restricted in the classroom (some pupils

52

Raising Mult ilingual Children

are very shy in the classroom and only speak when they are asked by the teacher), and there is a strong focus on grammatically and lexically accurate output. Parents are great language ‘teachers’, different from school teachers because they can be more forgiving with errors. Also, they understand their child better than a teacher does on an emotional level, as well as knowing their child’s personal interests better. Parents are also interested in how to best motivate their child. Finally, in a traditional language learning school, only the language being taught receives a primary focus, while at home, this focus might be divided between several languages at the same time. While at school, language instruction usually follows a specific curriculum, at home no curriculum exists. Language is learnt through interaction, use, and through everyday situations and personal interests. If you are interested in finding out more about learning and language acquisition in general, there are two excellent books we recommend: Uta Frith The Learning Brain: Lessons for Education (with Sarah-Jayne Blakemore), Oxford, Blackwell Publishing 2005; and Patricia J. Brooks and Vera Kempe’s Language Development, BPS Blackwell 2012. The many figures and summaries may support you in understanding the academic writing of these books. So far, we have described some basic principles of learning a language. The importance of repetition and novelty which are the driving forces for acquisition; the role of children playing, the need for exposure and rich input, and contrasting language acquisition at home and at school.

Different Ways Towards a Multilingual Family In the following sections, we will focus on language acquisition at home. In parents’ guides for bilingual language acquisition as well as in research, different language acquisition situations are usually distinguished. We will present the most familiar ones, various background factors (e.g. language of mother and father are the same or different, country of residence/speech community, etc.) might play a role that will guide them through the process of

Learning Methods, Language Policies, Suggestions for Early Successful Multilingual Acquisition 53

identifying or feeling more comfortable with one method or another. To make our explanations more concrete and to the point, you can find tables and figures in the Appendix, at the end of this book. If you want to use them, feel free to make your own personal notes and fill in the tables. We will point to the appendix whenever there is some depiction or further information addressed to you.

OPOL = One Parent – One Language The most frequently propagated method for bilingual language acquisition is OPOL, and was initiated by the French linguist Maurice Grammont in 1902. Its basic principle is that each parent should always speak their native language with the child. It is assumed that by doing so, after a while, the child will be able to achieve native-like language competence in each language. It would be best if the child receives comparable amounts of exposure to both languages. Then it is possible for the child to reach similar language competence in both the parents’ languages. The language each parent uses with the child is usually the most ‘natural’ language for them. This is usually their ‘dominant language’, meaning the language in which they have high proficiency (a large vocabulary, a good grasp of grammar, and pronunciation/intonation) as well as cultural background (including familiarity with children stories, nursery rhymes, lullabies, as well as spontaneous reactions and knowledge about appropriate language use in various situations). Moreover, the language each parent uses should be the one in which emotion can be expressed naturally and easily. Exposure to the parents’ native language allows the child to acquire both languages and their cultures authentically. The child can then learn both languages in a very natural way, in parallel, and in a manner of communication that is natural for the parents, and in which each parent feels confident. However, this book is about multilingual children, and thus we will consider cases of OPOL in a linguistically complex environment. An ideal situation, for example, for trilingual language acquisition is when each parent speaks his/her native language to

54

Raising Mult ilingual Children

the child, and a third language is spoken in the child’s environment. Here are three examples: • (Jean-Marc): As described in Chapter 2, Livia is trilingual from birth and speaks two minority languages (French and Dutch) at home. English is the language spoken outside of her home. We only address her in English if she is with friends, and the message is not of a private nature. We are a code-switching family, but we can stick to one language if needed. • (Greg): As described in Chapter 2, Loïc is trilingual from birth and speaks two minority languages (English and Dutch) at home; German is the language spoken outside of his home. We still address him in Dutch (my wife) and English (myself) even in situations involving others who do not speak Dutch and English (and then translate into German for the benefit of any present German speakers, if necessary). For a depiction, see Figure 1a in Appendix A. • (Julia): Aya and Noam are trilingual from birth. At present, German is the majority language spoken inside and outside of our home; thus, they learnt two minority languages (English and Hebrew) at home, and continued with their formal education in English at school. Since Julia’s husband passed away, both children have no longer been exposed to Hebrew (only when visiting native Hebrew speaking friends). Today they are very open to multilingualism and other cultures, and are very eager to learn other languages (French, Spanish, Icelandic, Finnish, etc.). What is clear in these examples is that multilingual acquisition will be most successful if the child has the opportunity to be exposed, and is actively involved in the multilingual environment. If children are not in a situation where they can learn the languages or use the languages they learn, the progress will slow down. However, this does not happen because a third language is involved but because of a lack of sufficient exposure. Language input and exposure in the three cases above are different: Greg’s and Jean-Marc’s language situation in their families is more balanced compared to Julia’s. And it should be noted that language input and exposure can often change over time, as in Julia’s case with the loss of the other parent, or in other cases following migration, separation, relocation, etc.

Learning Methods, Language Policies, Suggestions for Early Successful Multilingual Acquisition 55

How About a Third Language (L3) as Language of Schooling? When we started writing this book, Loïc (from the example above) was already enrolled in a school where the language of instruction was his L3 (German). You might wonder about exclusive schooling in a third language, and expect some difficulty for the child with an additional L3. Children who start with a third language at school only will need some time until they figure out this new language, while their monolingual class mates, who are only knowledgeable in this language, will be far ahead. This should not trouble you. Also, if the teachers might not show the necessary understanding of the child’s language situation, they may see the lack of proficiency in the L3 – the official school language – as a consequence of knowing two other languages. As we said before, a lack of exposure (or only a short period of exposure) of the child to a third language is by no means a reason to avoid learning an L3 at school. Children are usually fast language learners, especially in a supportive environment, they will catch up. The acquisition of an L3 (if the child is bilingual already) does not need to be postponed when they start primary school. If possible, the parent can try to get the child involved with their peers by speaking the official school language as early as possible, for example, in kindergarten, in play groups, and/or in a sports club, where they can make friends who speak the child’s L3, and can learn that language along with them. Then, it will be natural for the child to use the L3 (which will later be the official school language) outside of the classroom; this will take the load off for having to acquire the school’s language, on its premises only.

Unbalanced Exposure to Three Languages The next section describes how families use three different languages at home, one of them being the language spoken primarily in the child’s environment, and the other being the parents’ dominant language (like Julia’s family language context with German, Hebrew and English, see Figure 2a in Appendix A). The other

56

Raising Mult ilingual Children

parents’ native language is, for example, one hardly spoken in the country they are living in (e.g. it is not a language spoken in a neighbouring country, there are no speech communities in the country of residence, or the language has a low status in the country). Then, language exposure to the two languages spoken by the parents is most likely unbalanced, since the child is exposed to one of the languages (one parent and speech environment) more often than to the other (one parent). Some parents who are speakers of minority languages might feel that they are living in isolation with their native language (if they do not know other users of this language in their speech environment). But this does not need to be a reason for giving up. It is great if the child can learn some of it and connect on some level to its culture. A third language is plausible when the parents use an additional language for their communication with each other. Then, the child would be regularly exposed to that language, but would not necessarily have to use it. Language input and exposure in this case is unbalanced compared to Greg’s and Jean-Marc’s language situation in their families. However, not every family can offer balanced exposure to three languages. Even in conditions of unbalanced exposure, the child will still learn the languages they are less frequently exposed to (but probably to a lesser degree) and will profit from it. In a situation, such as this one, the parents themselves may often use different languages with the child and with each other. In Julia’s case, both parents used all three languages, depending on the situation or on the person (as in the usual OPOL described in the beginning of this chapter).

OOPOL = One Other Person – One Language Another possibility for trilingual acquisition is the following: parents of a bilingual child want the child to learn an L3, but each parent speaks only their native language, and there is no additional language in their general speech environment. What should be done in this situation? For example, one other family member speaks a native language other than the ones the child is already learning. Or someone outside the family might be part of that family for a while,

Learning Methods, Language Policies, Suggestions for Early Successful Multilingual Acquisition 57

such as a nanny or an au-pair. If a personal relation develops between the L3-speaker and the child, one would expect a good progress, if a regular L3-exposure is possible, and the child is interested, and has fun learning that language (see Appendix A, Figure 3a). One such example is a family in Japan with one parent being a native Japanese speaker, the other parent speaks French, and a nanny brings L3 English into the ‘house’. Later, parents might want to enroll the child in a language course. The advantage of a language course is that the child discovers that many other peers are learning the language they already master to a certain degree (remember Aya’s discovery that other children also want to learn English in kindergarten). This makes the child realise that their language is a precious asset within the peer-group. Moreover, a continuous use of the new additional language is secured. Grandparents can also play a vital role in the multilingualism of their grandchildren (Braun 2012; Quay and Montanari 2016). Quay and Montanari found that a code-switching grandmother tried to shift her grandson’s dominance from the home language, Cantonese, to the societal language, English, in preparation for formal schooling in Canada. The boy’s grandfather, on the other hand, wanted to maintain his own Mandarin-speaking abilities by using this language with his grandson, who did acquire Mandarin as a result.

“OLU”: Occasional Language Use, for Example, Weekday-Related or Event-Related Let us consider another bilingual family constellation with one parent speaking two languages. A monolingual English mother and a French father use OPOL, so the mother speaks English and the father French to the child. Additionally, the father has advanced knowledge of a second language, Spanish for example, because he travels a lot in Spanish-speaking countries as part of his job. The mother wants the child to learn Spanish from his father, but the father is home only during the weekends, and the mother does not speak Spanish. The weekend-language situation can then be called ‘occasional language use of L3 Spanish’ (See Appendix A, Figure 4a).

58

Raising Mult ilingual Children

The weekend-language situation would be a great challenge for the family. Why not join in? The mother could also learn Spanish, along with the child; maybe in the beginning, it would seem too difficult for the father to use his ‘work-language’ with his family, but using it for child-activities, and child-related actions without specific, work-related vocabulary, he might enjoy it more than he initially had thought. The weekday and weekend language condition in this family will diverge. See Appendix A (Figure 4a) for how the language input might ‘travel’ with the person knowledgeable in these languages. Here is another case of occasional language use that is more event-related. (see Figure 5a in the Appendix). The father has some knowledge of a second language that he acquired in school (e.g. L2 French), but the mother feels that his French is not perfect, and the father has not used it in a while. Still, the father likes this language, and would like his bilingual child to learn it from him. They have decided that during dinner they would use French with the child. In cases when a parent is uncertain regarding the own language skills, it is good to bring in additional sources of language exposure, recordings of songs or stories in native-like pronunciation, friends who are native speakers in that language. This will improve the parental language skills just as well and add to the authenticity of the language learning. Children can ‘filter’ out the occasional errors in the speech of their parents, and attain a higher level of proficiency if they have other models who use a fluent and grammatically correct language with them. If the native language is used primarily to interact with the child, but the parent has set the goal that the child should be familiarised with the parents’ L2 to some degree, this can turn out to be an enjoyable project. Since the exposure for the child is reduced in L2, the language competencies would be too. Still, the parent can give the child a head start in learning a language that the parent prefers, and have the same language learnt at school or sometime later in life. If the family decides to use a native language and an additional language with the child, be aware that there are only so many hours in a day, in which a parent can interact and speak with the child. The parent will then always have to make choices as to which

Learning Methods, Language Policies, Suggestions for Early Successful Multilingual Acquisition 59

language to use in various situations, which can become a demanding task. Thinking how a parent wants to tackle this task will be a time well spent. One way to think about it practically is: When would it be best for me and the child to introduce the second language? For example, as regularly as possible for about one hour in the afternoon? Or once a week, but for a whole day? Or during the weekend, or during breakfast?

How Much Input is Enough? We believe that the attained competence in each language will depend a great deal on the amount and type of exposure of the child to the relevant language. Whichever strategy you choose will depend on some of the issues mentioned above. In doing so, it is important to keep in mind that the more a child is directly spoken to, the more information they will have to process and come up with suitable replies. It is best if ‘rich language’ (correct grammar, complex structures and a large vocabulary) is used, because children take this as a model and imitate, catch up some new words, and verify their grammar structures. In choosing a strategy for the languages spoken at home, one will need to realise that the more input children receive for each language, the more they will process each language. Even if a child refuses to use a language, it might still be worth continuing to have that language around. Indeed, a passive understanding of a language can easily be transformed into an active knowledge of that language later in life. It is much harder to resuscitate a language that was totally abandoned in childhood. To summarise, there are many ways one can bring multilingualism into the family, and involve their family members in their language of choice and cultural background. Language knowledge develops over time, over a lifetime, and one will see the best success with consistent exposure, quality and quantity of input, personal communication with the family, peers as interlocutors, and making language learning fun by providing a variety of lively situations for input, and occasions to use the languages, as well as time to process them in a supportive environment.

60

Raising Mult ilingual Children

Reference Braun, A. (2012) Language maintenance in trilingual families – a focus on grandparents. International Journal of Multilingualism 9, 423–436. Mampe, B., Friederici, A.D., Christophe, A. and Wermke, K. (2009) Newborns’ cry melody is shaped by their native language. Current Biology 19 (23), 1994–1997. Quay, S. and Montanari, S. (2016) Early bilingualism: From differentiation to the impact of family language practices. In E. Nicoladis and S. Montanari (eds) Bilingualism Across the Lifespan: Factors Moderating Language Proficiency (pp. 23–42). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

4

Developing a Good Language Policy for the Multilingual Family

It is crucial for (future) parents to agree on family language policies beforehand. Once a certain pattern is set, it can prove to be very hard to change this established pattern later. In this chapter, we would like to guide parents in choosing a realistic language strategy for their family. In doing so, we will attempt to unravel possible factors for family disagreements and difficulties in putting language choices successfully into practice; for example, when children might disagree with their parents’ language choices. We also hope to avoid curbing parents’ enthusiasm for having a multilingual family. Here are a few general goals that parents may have in bringing up their child with multiple languages: • ‘I would like my child to be able to hold a conversation within the family.’ • ‘I would like my child to be able to understand a radio broadcast or TV programme.’ • ‘I would like my child to be able to use their languages in everyday situations.’ If you like, take a moment, and go to Appendix B, Table 1 and note down your own goals. Fill in Table 2 to get an overview of what you expect your child to be able to do (referring to the four language skills understanding, speaking, reading and writing) in their languages. 61

62

Raising Mult ilingual Children

To begin, we would like you to think about the following: Have you ever asked yourself whether all monolinguals are equally proficient in their one language? This may be a silly question, but still, we would like you to consider this for a minute. When we, the three authors, do this, we generally agree that, no, not all monolinguals are equally proficient in their one language, simply because language proficiency is influenced by a multitude of factors. We will get back to those in a minute. First, we would also have to ask ourselves what proficiency means. In this chapter, we will ask you to agree with the common definition of proficiency as ‘how well an individual understands and speaks a language, and is able to use this language appropriately in every-day communication’. Your language proficiency is often related to how long you went to school, if and how long you went to university, how often you read newspapers and books (possibly also what kind of newspapers and books you read), how often you write in the language in question and so on. Additionally, the language interactions during the time you grew up and lived at home will also have an impact on your language development. All the factors above influence children’s language development and proficiency – these factors in turn are influenced considerably by the socio-economic status (SES) of the child’s family. Socio-economic status is a construct that is usually measured by assessing the parents’ level of education, occupation, and annual household income (see, e.g. Hoff, 2003). In the past, SES was also measured by assessing how many books were available in the household, as the number of books positively correlates with children’s initial reading competence (Aiken & Barbarin, 2008). However, since the advent of e-readers, this measure may have become slightly outdated. Interestingly, when it comes to multilinguals, what we detect is a shift in perspective. Multilinguals are very often expected to know all the words and sentences that exist in all the languages they speak. If they cannot pull that off (and believe us, we have not found the multilingual yet who could), their legitimacy as language user is questioned. When multilinguals do not know words or phrases in one or any of their languages, it is often perceived as undermining their status of being a ‘real’ multilingual. This, we believe, is simply unfair. What do you think?

Developing a Good L anguage Polic y for the Mult ilingual Family

63

Multilinguals will display either a narrow or broad vocabulary knowledge depending on how often they have heard and read words in their languages and, critically, how often they have used the words when speaking and writing. This could mean that, for a specific idea, thing, or concept (the concept ‘cat’, for example, carries information that this is a furry animal, has four legs and a tail, purrs, sleeps a lot, wants to be fed, may scratch you with its claws etc.), multilingual children and adults will sometimes know words or phrases in more than one language, and sometimes they will only know the word for a concept in one language. So in one specific domain of life, for example, football, terms used in football will be available in multiple languages, simply because the multilingual person sometimes watches football matches with German and sometimes with English commentators. However, in a different every day domain, for example, cooking, terminology may only be available in one language, since the individual only uses English cookbooks and, while growing up, the main caregiver spoke English when cooking. Another domain with specific vocabulary learnt and used in one language only is the school environment – that is, if the child attends a monolingual school. Finally, one could also assume that there are life domains in which one possesses terminology in neither language (for example, knitting, in Greg’s case). As a result, multilinguals will have very diverse language repertoires. Now that we have established that multilinguals are not walking dictionaries for all the languages they speak, and that multilinguals usually vary in their language proficiencies, please go back to Table 2 on the ‘preferred language proficiencies’ and assess whether your expectations are realistic. Moving on, we turn to the family’s language choices during the child’s language development. These language choices in multilingual homes become more complex the more languages are involved and will influence the child’s language acquisition outcomes. Thus, we will look at what we have coined The Multilingual Family Language Profile. The Multilingual Family Language Profile gives you an overview and thus a better idea of the languages that you are planning on speaking with your child, the language(s) of the community you live in currently, the language(s) you feel passionate about passing

64

Raising Mult ilingual Children

on to future generations, and your language usage patterns with the people in your daily environment. For the profile, you will be asked to indicate which languages you use in your daily life and how often you use each language within and outside your family. Why? Well, your child will be processing language(s) in these various settings, even if they are not actively participating in conversations and interaction. And the more diverse the language environment is in these settings, the more input your child will receive in each language. To assess your Multilingual Family Language Profi le, fi ll in Table 3 in Appendix B. Now look at your answers to see which languages are used most in your family, and which ones are used less. To be more precise, the percentages you have calculated for each of the languages you are using daily will give you an estimate of how much input your child will likely have in each language and how proficient your child will become in each language. Based on your answers, you can then make decisions on how to proceed in your endeavor to raise your child with multiple languages. There are a few more general issues to consider such as which language you like most, which language you prefer using in public, which language you know best, and which language you know child-related words and songs in. All these will influence your general language usage and the language(s) you will use with your child. To summarise, taking all the above into consideration, you should get a pretty good idea of these three main issues: (1) The languages you as parents use more and those you use less (see Table 3 in Appendix B), (2) the language(s) your child will be exposed to most and those that they will be exposed to less (see Appendix A and choose the depiction that fits your family’s language situation), and (3) the languages your child already uses most and those they use less (see Table 4 in Appendix B). The following section will offer some strategies that might be fitting for your specific family language environment.

Developing a Good L anguage Polic y for the Mult ilingual Family

65

Multilingual parents must choose. Choices will be driven by personal preferences based on emotional, cultural, and pragmatic considerations. Language choices between family members become quickly automatised. This means that seeing a family member or friend activates the language usually spoken with that person in the blink of an eye. It is hard to break this habit. Still, these choices may be regularly re-assessed if necessary. Language development is dynamic, so the choices you make concerning which language you use with your family can also be adapted to changing circumstances. Furthermore, children are known to suddenly change the language they use with parents without an apparent cause. We will address family language strategies in more detail in Chapter 5. The first step in choosing a language strategy for your family is whether to support the community language at home or to consciously use two non-community languages. In general, if your child perceives multilingualism as positive and valuable, it will be much easier for you and your child to maintain the non-community languages, and for you to coax your child into using these languages with you regularly. Furthermore, languages are known to have specific statuses in different countries, which means that some languages are perceived as more and some as less desirable by the public. In Germany, for example, English and French are considered high status languages. Thus, it may be useful to assess which statuses your non-community languages have in your community and how comfortable you feel using these languages in public. Speaking and maintaining low status languages in public may take more effort on the parents’ part simply because they may feel less accepted in their language choices. Finally, your child may mix languages and make mistakes in the non-community languages, so be prepared for that (more on coping strategies in Chapter 5). Remember: Longer, intense, and sustained exposure to the noncommunity languages will lead to higher, and if fully successful, age-appropriate levels of language competence.

66

Raising Mult ilingual Children

References Aikens, N.L. and Barbarin, O. (2008) Socioeconomic differences in reading trajectories: The contribution of family, neighborhood, and school contexts. Journal of Educational Psychology 100, 235–251. Hoff, E. (2003) The specificity of environmental influence: Socioeconomic status affects early vocabulary development via maternal speech. Child Development 74, 1368–1378.

5 How to Foster a Multilingual Home and How to Deal with Various Concerns About Multilingualism

In the previous chapters, you have read about multilingualism within the family and in other situations. You may have decided what would be most appropriate for your family and your child. In this chapter, we will present a wealth of practical hints and detailed information on how to make learning and usage of multiple languages successful and have fun at the same time. We will also include several frequently asked questions about multilingual families and acquisition practices. We came across these concerns when reading blogs, and we will attempt to provide answers and suggestions based on our scientific knowledge as well as parental experience.

Enjoy Multilingualism Children in multilingual homes experience how much the other family members use different languages on certain occasions and with different people. They see and hear how much fun it is, and they can share this experience with family members and others. We believe that these experiences are transmitted to the children as well. If a speaker enjoys the use of multiple languages 67

68

Raising Mult ilingual Children

(rather than perceiving it as a task and burden because someone was told to do so), then the child might do the same much more easily.

Exposure to One or Both the Non-Community Languages and Interaction One issue that we want to stress again in particular is that children need to hear the languages they are supposed to learn. They need this kind of stimulation. They will only learn to understand a language if they are exposed to it substantially (which we call language input) and will only learn to speak this language if they have ample opportunity to use it in meaningful situations (which we call language output). Parking children in front of the TV for many hours is not sufficient. Listening to language is fi ne, but as passive consumers, the children are not actively involved and they do not interact with anyone. Language needs to be used. Children need to try out sounds, words, and sentences. They need practice. Some educational material on TV, DVDs or YouTube, however, tries to involve children. For example, children are encouraged to jump up from their sofa and join in to sing along the songs and dance. This can be, every now and then, an interesting challenge for the child, but it will never replace the necessary personal interaction with a real-life speaker to whom the child is emotionally attached.

One Person – One Language (For More Details, See Chapter 3) One parent always speaks minority language A to the child, the other parent speaks minority language B to the child, and the community language is learnt in kindergarten and school. OPOL might be the perfect way to make a child trilingual. However, we understand OPOL is not possible in every family. There are other ways too, and we have described some examples earlier in this book. Any language acquisition setting will

How to Foster a Mult ilingual Home and How to Deal w ith Var ious Concer ns

69

inadvertently be successful depending on the quality and quantity of the language input and output. There are many factors that influence input and output, and you as a parent can only influence several of these. It is crucial that the parent creates favorable situations and conditions, so that the child will have a diversity of ‘language moments’ to explore languages and try out their own language abilities. Here are some possibilities to increase the input and output of non-community language(s).

Language Days Designate language days, afternoons, evenings, weekends, where all family members are asked to speak one of the languages only (this naturally only works if all the family members are fluent enough to do so). Alternatively, play the ‘language change’ game, in which the other members get to choose which language you should speak for one day.

Language Choice and Playtime Sometimes it may be difficult for a family to extend the use of a certain language to an entire day, afternoon, etc. There are also options for shorter but intense and specific use of a language. Here is one example: When parents play a game with their family, they may want to think – just for a moment – about which language(s) to use. Parents aiming for a multilingual family do not have to buy games for every language they want to use at home. ‘Non-language’ based games (those that only have colours or pictures, such as domino, memory, Mikado etc.) invite multilingual playing. Many other games can be played in any language. Imagine the German board game ‘Mensch-ärgere-dich-nicht’. In every language, different exclamations are used when one gets lucky during a game, throws the dice and quickly moves towards the target, when one is losing the game, etc. It can be a great experience and it increases vocabulary knowledge and the natural use of the languages if you sometimes play games in a different language than the family uses while playing.

70

Raising Mult ilingual Children

Parrot Let us assume your child answers in the environmental language instead of the language you customarily use with your child. In such cases, you could ask your child to repeat this in ‘your’ language. Another option is to repeat what your child just said in your language and phrase it as a question. The goal is to communicate as much as possible in a meaningful manner without making this a tedious exercise for both you and your child.

A Word about Playacting Ignorance Children sometimes use a different language than the ones parents use with them. In such cases, parents may choose to pretend not to understand their children, hoping that this will persuade the children to use the ‘right’ language in the given context. We do not recommend this strategy although we have been told by parents that they have successfully used it. For one, children very quickly figure out which languages each parent knows, and then they may feel tricked. Furthermore, some children said that they almost felt betrayed when they figured out that their parents only pretended not to understand a certain language. It is most of all a question of how much the parents want conversations with their children to remain strictly monolingual or whether they are open to multilingual exchanges.

Laissez-Faire or Pressure? How much fun is it for your child to use the non-community language? And is it necessary to exert pressure on the children to use the other languages? It is a matter of taste whether you attempt to coax your child into using all the languages your family has to offer by making the languages interesting or by taking an approach in which the child is called upon to adhere to certain language rules, personal character, and family dynamic. In his trilingual Dutch-English-German family, Loïc was never forced to speak the language in which he was

How to Foster a Mult ilingual Home and How to Deal w ith Var ious Concer ns

71

addressed. He was implored to try to repeat in English what he had just uttered in German. Such a strategy, however, will only work ever so often. Allow the child to use whichever language they want to, but as the parent, stick to your language. The outcome, nevertheless, may not always be to your liking. For example, Loïc spoke Dutch with his Dutch-speaking mother and English-speaking father until the age of five. Then, somewhat miraculously (at least it was so for his father), Loïc changed to English with his father. Around the age of nine, he changed again to using mostly German with both parents, which is not very surprising as he attends a German-only school. We will get back to these language shifts later.

Foster Interest in the Non-Community Languages and Increase Exposure to Other Native Speakers If the parents have the opportunity to interact with native speakers of the different languages they use at home, they might not feel as if they are isolated on a ‘language island’. The use of all the languages involved in the child’s multilingual language acquisition setting thus becomes lively. Also, cultural knowledge and pragmatic cues are passed on. Use the non-community language(s) to discuss most language school subjects. This may be a very demanding task and you may not want to attempt this every day. However, if you persevere and engage in using the non-community language regularly, you and your child will become accustomed to these exchanges and it will benefit your child’s vocabulary.

Use Events Such as Celebrations, Holidays, Etc. to Involve Languages or to Focus on a Language Multiculturalism is not limited to a summer party where guests might be asked to bring along traditional food. In educational

72

Raising Mult ilingual Children

settings such as school or kindergarten, countries (and languages) can be used as a theme. By playing original music and eating traditional food from related to those countries, it all becomes more vivid and authentic. Let the children play around with real and/or invented languages, let them feel how it is to be a child from another country, prepare such events with lots of information about the countries in question, language samples from CDs, and best of all, invite native speakers to join in. When Aya went to an art workshop this summer, the theme was Latin American art. It all became easily accessible to her on the first day because there was a Mexican woman there who taught the children some songs in Spanish. Exposure to non-community languages can be increased through regular visits to extended family in the parents’ country of origin. Such visits should help in making the other languages more meaningful for your child. Are there other opportunities in your community to use the non-community languages regularly? Do you have friends who speak these other languages? The more you interact with non-community language speakers, the more your child will view such interactions as normal and possibly desirable.

A Note on Dealing with Mistakes and Language Mixing During the first few years of language development, children will make certain mistakes that parents are prone to try to fix. Making mistakes during language acquisition is what happens to every learner. Do not correct these errors harshly, do not look perturbed, but try to reformulate unobtrusively for the child. It is a sign that the establishment of a new system is ongoing, that it needs revisions, restructuring, specification, etc. Be aware that making mistakes is not exclusive to multilingual children. During language development, monolingual children make mistakes as well and in most cases these mistakes do not differ significantly from the mistakes made by multilingual children. What monolingual children do not do is mix languages, simply because there is no second language to mix. Language mixing is a

How to Foster a Mult ilingual Home and How to Deal w ith Var ious Concer ns

73

phenomenon that is relatively common in multilingual children and  adults. In most cases, children will very quickly learn that there are settings in which mixing does not hinder communication (e.g. when speaking with other multilinguals who speak the same languages), while there are other settings in which it will impede communication (e.g. when speaking with monolinguals). Hence, giving your child the opportunity to interact with monolingual peers should offer them sufficient practice in choosing to be consistent in their language use according to the situation.

A Note on Language Choices Members of multilingual families will sooner or later make a choice about who speaks which language to which person within the family. This may be the strategy all family members have jointly chosen or one that has simply evolved over time. Be aware that such decisions may need to be revised ever so often because the language needs of family members may change over time. However, these changes do not need to be major; it can simply be a minor rebalancing within an established pattern of usage (e.g. using the majority language with your child to discuss specific new school subjects) or a change that is achieved gradually over time. The chosen language strategy or strategies within the family are usually geared at situations when no other person is present, but what happens when (1) your child has friends over, when (2) you and your child are in public, when (3) you are at the doctor’s office, or (4) when you visit friends? These situations are representative for the hard choices parents need to make. Your main choice is whether you stick to the language you and your child usually speak to one another, irrespective of the environment or whether you are accommodating the people around you. There are three issues we would like to make clear. First, there are no right or wrong choices here. Second, whichever choices you make, they either add or subtract from the input and output your child will experience. And third, you may change your approach as your child gets older, which is perfectly understandable (but see the previous sentence). So, either you accommodate bystanders by using their language with your

74

Raising Mult ilingual Children

child, or you can add to the ‘other language time’ for your child by maintaining the language that is foreign to bystanders. It is your choice. Again, if you do choose to use your family language with your child in the situations described above, be aware that this may be socially awkward – you are essentially excluding others from your conversation. However, not doing so can substantially limit your input in your child’s ‘mother’ and ‘father’ language. To alleviate situations of social awkwardness, you can simply repeat things in the majority language to accommodate other listeners. This kind of ‘mediation’ is a highly important skill for multilinguals in a multicultural society and it is best to act as a role model for your child and maybe even other parents. And even if you do not offer a wordby-word translation, your way of being aware of the language situation and your actions upon that might be helpful to all speakers involved. In the end, bystanders, friends, and your doctor should become used to your choice of language usage.

A Note on the Child’s Refusal to Speak a Certain Language/’Language Shift’ Many bilinguals and multilinguals whom we have spoken to in the past have reported a phenomenon that makes parents doubt their efforts. Multilingual children may for a period of time refuse to answer in the language in which the mother or the father speaks to them. In other words, the children may reject one or both languages the parents use with them and perform a language shift to one of the other languages they speak. This can have many causes, one of which is that children simply do not want to be different from the other children. Now, if many of their friends and schoolmates are multilingual, you may never have to deal with this problem. However, if your environment is monolingual, this may be more likely to happen. In our experience, when this does happen, it makes sense to remain calm and just stick to speaking your language with your child. Doing this also gives them a clear signal that the other languages used in the family are important and are not discarded once the majority language is used more extensively by one of the family members, in this case your child. And

How to Foster a Mult ilingual Home and How to Deal w ith Var ious Concer ns

75

remember, it may take some time before your child comes around, so hang in there and don’t give up. Note that forcing your child to speak your language is also an option, but, as we hinted before, it is not an option that we have used or endorse.

Children as ‘Language Communicators’ In our experience, it can be fruitful to make children aware of languages and multilingualism from early on, and that not everyone speaks the same language. Furthermore, if there are older siblings in the family, they can become the younger sibling’s ‘teacher’ (see Chapter 2, Aya & Noam).

Sing Songs in Different Languages Frère Jacques, Brother John, Bruder Jakob. Some songs have versions in many languages, just as ‘Are you sleeping, Brother John?’ does. The internet has homepages on which song collections are available for download (www.mamalisa.com – a website with songs from almost every country/in the original languages with text, sheet music, recordings, MP3 to download, often with translation …). Otherwise, there is always YouTube or other online examples such as Les comptines de Gabriel, which is a great combination of nice music, accompanying pictures, and even song lyrics. Singing songs helps children to dive well into native-like pronunciation, it tunes the ear, and the repetition helps to memorise words, collocations, and sentences. Julia’s children have favourite songs in all their languages.

Read, Read, Read We know from research how important it is to expose children to written language. Written language is very rich in vocabulary and structure. Since the writer thinks more carefully about the choice of words and sentence structure, the reader comes across a multitude of words and grammar phenomena. Even uncommon

76

Raising Mult ilingual Children

words are often used in books, their sentences are usually complete and longer, and they are more complex. With exposure to such richness, children will develop their language skills. Written language also includes a variety of grammatical phenomena that are not always found in oral speech. Therefore, reading to children is so great for their language acquisition (see Livia, Chapter 2). From an early age, it is best to read books out loud. Interactive reading, of picture books in particular, will help children understand and memorise words or the entire story. Some aspects of interactive reading are: reading slowly, pointing at objects and actions, allowing children to see the pictures you describe with your words, involving children by asking them questions, giving them time to think and to ask questions; remembering not to rush through the story.

An example of interactive reading with a group of children in the kindergarten project PROBIMUC (for more detail, see p. 79f and Appendix C)

So, reading a book out loud to young children from the first word to the last with no pause will not be enough. Children will soon lose interest, at the latest around the third page, because they cannot absorb all that information. It is too much and too fast. Slow down. You want them to follow the story, to carefully look at the pictures. One of the internationally-known children’s book writers is Eric Carle, probably most famous for The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Another great book is From Head to Toe. Children learn animal names, their

How to Foster a Mult ilingual Home and How to Deal w ith Var ious Concer ns

77

own body parts, movements, and the repetition of ‘Can you do that, too?’ – ‘Yes, I can’. Through the course of the book, they learn how to turn their head like a penguin, swing their arms like a monkey, or bend their knees like a camel. Children love to do these movements. Combining action with the spoken word has a very strong effect on memory: you remember faster, better, and for a longer time (Macedonia & von Kriegstein, 2012). So, let your children stomp their feet like elephants and say ‘stomp my feet’ – they will remember. And then you could always ask the question: ‘Can you do it?’ and they can reply in the language you are using ‘Yes, I can’. Some parents stick to the ritual goodnight story. The internet, travelling, and globalisation have made it much easier to download and buy language materials (and books) in different languages. Aside from complex and well-told stories by Marcus Pfister, available in many languages now, some editing houses also use images to create easier versions. One such book is Pfister’s Rainbow Fish – Opposites. On each double page, you will find two pictures contrasting two words such as many (crabs) – few (crabs), big (whale) – little (fish). We took our time in getting to know the words and pictures, we pronounced them accurately, repeated the words slowly and that way Noam learnt all the words in no time. When reading to children, take your time, read slowly in the beginning and enjoy this activity. By using this method, children have time to process the auditory information and the opportunity to learn words, collocations, grammar, sentence structure, intonation, and if you read in a dramatic voice, it can even turn into role-playing. A great book for family role play is Little Quack, Dial-a-Duck by Lauren Thompson, with pictures by Derek Anderson. The story revolves around five little ducklings going to the water for the first time. It contains repetitive phrases, for example, when the mother duck encouragingly tells her children, one by one (one per page) to courageously jump into the pond. ‘Come, little ducklings, paddle on the water with me.’ – ‘No, Mama, no! We’re too scared!’ – ‘You can do it. I know you can.’ When Julia read the story to her children, Aya would say what the mother duck says, and Noam voiced the ducklings’ response. Look through your books at home for repetition phrases and let your children get actively involved in ‘reading’ a book before they learn to read at school.

78

Raising Mult ilingual Children

Reading books to children can also be done by presenting a book with great pictures, and allowing the child to tell the story. An exemplary book that promises success and fun is Rotraut Susanne Berner’s Dag Hoed. In this story, a child loses his enormous hat on a winter’s day, it is carried off by the wind and lands on different animals’ or people’s heads through the seasons until the boy finds it one winter later on the head of a snowman. He exchanges his hat with a basket then he decorates the snowman. This is a book with pictures that invites children to describe the action, the people, the situation, the seasons, etc. The advantage of picture books without text is that parents can choose the language to tell the story, thus inviting multilingualism. It is, of course, possible that the reader prefers to stick to a printed text rather than invent his own stories in his own languages or to describe pictures. If there is no printed material available in your language, or you cannot afford it, you could attempt to translate a book you have. It may not always be easy to find child-friendly wording, but it could become an interactive activity for both of you in the end. There are also books available that present the story in two or more languages, printed in different colours (e.g. there is a GermanFrench book with a truly wonderful story and pictures entitled Das Allerwichtigste/Le plus important, written by Antonella Abbatiello – with a CD containing the story in eight different languages including English, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Greek and Russian). It is about which ability or characteristic is the most important among all these animals. Is it a long neck like a giraffe’s? In the end, they all agree that each animal has something truly important. A new small publishing house in Berlin is offering a solution for all ‘language learning heros’ who grow up with several languages. They produce ‘visual dictionaries’ in nearly every language combination possible. When ordering your individual book you can chose up to 4 languages which are then printed under the relevant picture (several pictures per page). They offer a ‘Multicultural Children’s Visual Dictionnary 1’ with single words for 2-year olds and up, and a ‘Multicultural Children’s Visual Dictionnary 2’ with complete sentences for 4-year olds and up. On the website https://www.milchmaus.com/en/ you can even find a video explaining how it all began and why they produce the books this way.

How to Foster a Mult ilingual Home and How to Deal w ith Var ious Concer ns

79

Organise a Read-Aloud Club Think about friends, children’s friends, people in the neighbourhood, kindergarten, school, etc. Some parents might want to read their favourite stories to their children. Also, involve parents who speak other languages to bring along books in those other languages. If they do not have books in that language, try the public library, or translate a nice book from one language to the other. Often, the public library offers read-aloud events for children. Finally, children may at one point even want to start reading books to you (see Loïc, Chapter 2).

A Note for Caretakers, for Example, in Kindergarten Children with a different first language (e.g. Mandarin) than the one spoken in kindergarten (e.g. German) will initially have a hard time. We ourselves can experience this feeling when we go abroad, and we do not speak the country’s language. Children with no knowledge of the language spoken in their new kindergarten have to leave whatever they have acquired in terms of verbal expression and perception at the door, if there is no Mandarin speaker in kindergarten, be it a caretaker or child. The caretaker will then have to rely on the kindergarten language to explain daily routines, activities, and other announcements to the child. If the parents do not speak German well, use little notes written on paper to help explain what they need to bring, for example, food, clothes, etc. In such a way, they can acquire the new words involved in kindergarten conversations more easily. Otherwise, you could rely on more structured language learning approaches. One such approach is PROBIMUC, a programme for bilingual and multilingual children (for more detail, see Festman, 2013; Festman & Rinker, 2014). The programme was established for the parallel acquisition of German and English, but it can easily be adapted to any other language/language pairs. One of the key principles of PROBIMUC is to involve the children’s home language as well as the parents. We used worksheets for the children to colour in, and sometimes included riddles, etc. Additionally, we asked the

80

Raising Mult ilingual Children

parents to fill in the words/translations in their home language (for examples see Appendix C). That way, we hoped that parents would use this ‘task’ to discuss the topic with their child, to introduce multilingualism into their house, and to relate to words that their child learnt in kindergarten by conversing at home.

A Note for Teachers When you are teaching a new class, allow language to be a topic right from the start. Use a world map and let children explain where their parents come from, what languages they use at home and with their grandparents. Set out a language policy for the classroom; the main language for communicating is usually the school language, because it is the one everyone is supposed to speak and understand. Let monolingual children speak about holidays in foreign countries, and some other words they might have picked up. Those who do not master that language yet should get help from the teacher and from the other pupils, and should not be left alone. Early language acquisition works best through interaction, and therefore, it is crucial for children who do not speak the new language yet to interact as much as possible with their native peers. If they do not know a certain word in the school language, they might use their home language. It could be that another child knows the translation of the word in question. Let them work together in matters of language acquisition and use. Today children look up or Google everything, so they can also make use of dictionaries, be it the paper or electronic version. Get pupils and parents involved. In autumn let them bring along autumn songs, during winter, Christmas songs, and let them talk about the way they celebrate the end of the year, etc. Children are usually very interested in different cultures, when they are allowed to experience and explore (e.g. taste) them. Some more general remarks about dealing with multilingualism in the classroom can be found in a shortlist of recommendations entitled ‘The more than 10 Commandments for dealing with multilingualism’ for teachers and multilingual speakers (Festman, Franceschini, Heine, Prochazka & Piske, 2014). These commandments focus on the value and wealth of multilingualism and

How to Foster a Mult ilingual Home and How to Deal w ith Var ious Concer ns

81

encourage teachers to take multilingualism seriously into account for the classroom, and for their relationships with pupils. In the teachers section these authors recommend the following: • To consider that pupils feel connected to several languages. • To appreciate multilingualism as a resource, to learn to use it as such, and to make use of it in the classroom. • To encourage the knowledge of several languages and to honour all languages. • To not punish production in several languages (mixed). • To avoid robbing pupils of their multilingualism. • To allow pupils their individuality, and to recognise and support their abilities. • To use different languages while teaching. • To not forbid the different languages. • To have pupils teach the teacher their languages. • To let pupils learn with a multisensory approach. • To be forgiving regarding pupils’ mistakes. • To gain a clear picture of the pupils’ languages.

References Abbatiello, A. (2010) Das Allerwichtigste/Le plus important (Hueber Verlag). Berner, R.S. (2002) Dag Hoed! (Der fliegende Hut) Carl Hanser Verlag. Carle, E. (1999) From Head to Toe. London: HarperCollins. Festman, J. (2013) PROBIMUC – ein Programm für bilinguale und multilinguale Kinder. Ministerium für Bildung, Jugend und Sport (ed.) KITADEBATTE 1, 118–121. Festman, J. and Rinker, T. (2014) PROBIMUC – A Program for bilingual and multilingual children – Ein Sprachförderprogramm. Sprachförderung und Sprachtherapie in Schule und Praxis 1, 45–54. Festman, J., Franceschini, R., Heine, L., Prochazka, A. and Piske, T. (2014) Die “>10” Gebote der Mehrsprachigkeit. In H. Böttger und G. Bien (eds) The Multilingual Brain. Zum neurodidaktischen Umgang mit Mehrsprachigkeit. Konferenzband TMB 2014. Eichstätt: EAP, 223–224. Macedonia, M. and v. Kriegstein, K. (2012) Gestures enhance foreign language learning. Biolinguistics 6 (3–4), 393–416. Pfister, M. (2005) Rainbow Fish – Opposites (North-South books). Thompson, L. (2005) Little Quack, Dial-a-Duck. London: Simon & Schuster UK.

Conclusion

We hope that you have found some useful advice in this book. You will have noticed that there are many strategies on how to introduce multilingualism into your family, and involve many family members with their language and cultural backgrounds. Language knowledge develops over time, over a lifetime, and you will see the best results with consistent exposure, quality and quantity of input, interaction with the family and peers as conversation partners, and making language learning fun by providing a variety of situations for input, and occasions to experience and use the languages as well as time to process them. We used our own stories as illustrations of the complex phenomenon of multilingual first language acquisition. We acknowledge that while general principles can be extracted from individual experiences, there are no ready-made, one-fit-for-all solutions for all families. We are aware, for example, that we are in a position of privilege with our own children. With our PhDs in linguistics, we could easily brush aside the unfounded objections of people in our environment on our decision to bring up our children as multilinguals. We hope that through this book you will be able to do the same thing! Another aspect is that our children speak languages that are generally appreciated in the environment in which they grew up. In other words, they were never mocked or ridiculed for using a language that some may have considered hostile or stupid. Moreover, as parents we convinced our children that their languages and the cultures they represent are an asset, something to be proud of. While all of us should be equally proud of our cultural and 82

Conclusion

83

linguistic heritage, it can be harder for immigrants, or for their children, should they be faced with prejudice about their backgrounds. A British politician commented during the last election campaign how uncomfortable he felt on the train out of London not hearing any English-speaking individuals around him. Had he had the power, he would have forced everybody to speak English only. What the politician did not seem to understand was that the passengers were probably all able to communicate in English, but in their private conservations they had every right to speak whatever language they wished to use, just as they had every right to dress however they wished, and to have their own political and religious convictions. Being free to learn to speak the language(s) spoken by your parents and family, and having the choice to speak any language you choose at home and with friends, should be a basic human right. Therefore, multilingualism should be a basic human right, too, and it should to be defended as a basic right in any democratic pluralist society.

Appendix A

84

Fill in Figure 1b, if you already have a clear OPOL-situation (like the ones described by Greg and JeanMarc) in your family. If not, skip filling in this depiction and continue below.

Figure 1a Greg’s OPOL-situation: L1 Dutch-L2 English-L3 German in the environment

Appendix A 85

Figure 1b Fill-in version: OPOL (= One Person − One Language)

86 Raising Mult ilingual Children

Figure 2a Julia’s family language-situation: L1 German-L2 English-L3 Hebrew (German in the environment)

Appendix A 87

Figure 2b Fill-in version: Unbalanced exposure to three languages in the home

88 Raising Mult ilingual Children

Figure 2c Fill-in version: Balanced exposure to three languages in the home

Appendix A 89

Figure 3a OOPOL (= One Other Person – One Language); L1 and L2 are used by the parents, and L3 is brought into the home by another person (e.g. a nanny, grandparents, au-pair, etc.)

90 Raising Mult ilingual Children

Figure 3b Fill-in version: OOPOL

Appendix A 91

Figure 4a OLU (= Occasional Language Use) with L1 used by the monolingual mother during the week with the child while the bilingual father is away for work. L2 and L3 only play a role during the weekend when the father is home. (weekday-related)

92 Raising Mult ilingual Children

Figure 4b Fill-in version: OLU (weekday-related)

Appendix A 93

Figure 5a OLU (= Occasional Language Use) (event-related, e.g. for conversations and interaction concerning dinner)

94 Raising Mult ilingual Children

Figure 5b Fill-in version: OLU (event-related)

Appendix A 95

Appendix B

The first and most relevant question is: Which languages are you planning on having your child grow up with? Please note down:

Table 1 Note down a few of your goals • • • • •

Table 2 ‘Preferred’ proficiencies in each language in the four main language skills Language A

Language B

Language C

understanding speaking reading writing

On a scale from 1 to 10 (from 1 = ‘not at all’ to 10 = ‘fully fluent’), how well do you want your child to master each language? 96

Appendix B

97

Table 3 Multilingual Language Profile – languages used by parents Parent A3

Parent B

1) Languages are you planning on speaking with your child: 2) The language(s) of the community you live in now: 3) A language you feel passionate about passing on to future generations: Do you always speak to the following people in only one language or do you switch between two or three in some situations? Note down the language(s) you use most. 4) With your spouse/ partner: 5) With your parents: 6) With your siblings: 7) With your friends: 8) With your colleagues: 9) Percentages of average _________ = ____% _________ = ____% language use: _________ = ____% _________ = ____% _________ = ____% _________ = ____% 3

We could use the term mother and father in some examples, but given the very diverse nature of families nowadays and that there may be a very different family situation in your home, we have chosen this option.

Award up to 100% for each of the languages you have noted down. Make sure that the total score in each box never exceeds 100%. So, for example, for 2), if you live in England, you will probably note down ‘English = 100%’. If you speak French and English with your spouse or partner (5), then you might note down ‘English = 50%’ and ‘French = 50%’. Once you have noted down the percentages, you can average the percentages that you use each language in your daily lives in 8). .

98

Raising Mult ilingual Children

Table 4 Language usage assessment for the child/children Which language(s) does your child use most with: parents? siblings? grandparents? friends? other family members (aunts, uncles, etc.)?

Child 1 (age: _________)

Child 2 (age: _________)

Child 3 (age: _________)

Appendix C

Some worksheets used in the PROBIMUC-project (Festman, 2014) to involve parents of children who learnt German and English in an immersion kindergarten. Parents were asked to fill in the worksheets together with their children while using their home language.

99

100

Raising Mult ilingual Children

Appendix C

101

102

Raising Mult ilingual Children

Appendix C

103

104 Raising Mult ilingual Children

Appendix C

105

106

Raising Mult ilingual Children

Resources Websites: Multilingual Living was founded by Corey Heller in early 2003. It was originally named the Bilingual/Bicultural Family Network, and is the home of Multilingual Living Magazine, a popular digital publication dedicated to families raising bilingual and multilingual children. Multilingual Living is a place where parents raising children in more than one language and culture, can find inspiration, tools, advice, wisdom and support! It is about living multilingually, in each and every way possible. Multilingual Living is a place where parents raising children in more than one language and culture can find inspiration, tools, advice, wisdom and support! It is about living multilingually, in each and every way possible. http://www.multilingualliving.com This is a homepage that hosts discussion forums for several (mostly family-related) topics on multilingualism. You can also subscribe to receive an informative magazine. The Bilingual Family Newsletter: Archives. The Bilingual Family Newsletter, which ceased its publication in 2010 (its 27th year), was designed to help all those families who, for various reasons, are in a situation where they can give their children (and themselves) the advantages of being bi- or multilingual. The newsletter published short infor mative articles on current thoughts on language learning, bilingualism, biculturalism, mother tongue, schools, etc. It also published descriptions of how particular families have managed in their particular situations, problems encountered and how these were overcome. Readership: mixed marriage families; expatriate families in embassies, schools, contract work etc.; immigrant families; students of language learning; researchers in field of bilingualism (htt p://www. multilingualmatters.com/bilingual_family_archive.asp) www.bilingualism-matters.org.uk Here you will find a homepage from the University of Edinburgh that specialises on the topic of bilingual children, with advice and information provided by the University’s experts.

Appendix C

107

http://parents.ecml.at This website is part of the european council and wants to involve parents in plurilingual and intercultural education. A wealth of information for parents and teachers, videos, book suggestions, project information, etc. can be found here. http://arts.ucalgary.ca/lrc/home/parent-counselling-service/ websites-helpful-information Information on multilingual education is available on this site. http://www.francoisgrosjean.ch/myths_en.html This is an English-French homepage explaining and disproving urban myths about multilingualism. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-bilingual Francois Grosjean’s blog on the reality of living with two (or more) languages. http://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/home This page, provided by the Charles Sturt University, Australia, focuses on speech (sound) disorders in multilingual children. You can find a compilation of speech assessment tests and diagnostic tests as well. Podcasts: TED-Ed talks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WLHr1_EVtQ (The benefits of a bilingual brain) https://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_ryan_ideas_in_all_languages_not_just_english (Don’t insist on English) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfEZXR2DNXA (Citizens of the World: The multilingual child and adult) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr_ekwQyt2k (Bilingualism and Multilingualism in Today’s Global Era)

108 Raising Mult ilingual Children

Books on multilingualism Anstatt, T. (2007) Mehrsprachigkeit bei Kindern und Erwachsenen. Erwerb-FormenFörderung. Tübingen: Attempto Verlag. Burkhardt Montanari, E. (2007) Wie Kinder mehrsprachig aufwachsen. Ein Ratgeber. Frankfurt am Main: Brandes & Apsel. Dalgalian, G. (2000) Enfances plurilingues: Témoignage pour une éducation bilingue et plurilingue. Paris: L’Harmattan. Elsner, D. and Keßler, J.-U. (2013) Bilingual Education in Primary School. Aspects of Immersion, CLIL, and Bilingual Modules. Tübingen: Narr. Fthenakis, W. et  al. (1985) Bilingual-bikulturelle Entwicklung des Kindes. Ein Handbuch für Psychologen, Pädagogen und Linguisten. München: Staatsinstitut für Frühpädagogik. Gogolin, I., Grapp, S. and List, G. (1998) Über Mehrsprachigkeit. Tübingen: Stauffenberg. Gogolin, I., Neumann, U. and Roth H.-J. (2005) Sprachdiagnostik bei Kindern und Jugendlichen mit Migrationshintergrund. Münster, New York, München, Berlin: Waxmann. Grosjean, F. (1982) Life with Two Languages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grosjean, F. (2010) Bilingual: Life and Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hagège, C. (1996) L’enfant Aux Deux Langues. Paris: Odile Jacob. Hélot, C. (2007) Du bilinguisme en famille au plurilinguisme à l’école. Paris: L’Harmattan. Hélot, C. and Rubio, M.N. (2013) Développement du langage et plurilinguisme chez le jeune enfant. Toulouse: Eres. Kielhöfer, B. and Jonekeit, S. (2002) Zweisprachige Kindererziehung. Tübingen: Stauffenberg. Leist-Villis, A. (2009) Elternratgeber Zweisprachigkeit. Informationen & Tipps zur zweisprachigen Entwicklung und Erziehung von Kindern. Tübingen: Stauffenberg. Lüdi, G. and Py, B. (2002) Etre bilingue. Bern: Peter Lang. Montanari, E. (2007) Mit zwei Sprachen groß werden. Mehrsprachige Erziehung in Familie, Kindergarten und Schule. München: Kösel Verlag. Moore, D. (2006) Plurilinguismes et école. Paris: Didier. Ringler, M. (Hrsg.) (2007) Kompetent Mehrsprachig – Sprachförderung und interkulturelle Erziehung im Kindergarten. Frankfurt a.M.: Brandes & Apsel. Röhner, Ch. (Hrsg.) (2005) Erziehungsziel Mehrsprachigkeit. Diagnose von Sprachentwicklung und Förderung von Deutsch als Zweitsprache. Weinheim: Juventa. Saunders, G. (1982) Bilingual Children: Guidance for the Family. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Appendix C

109

Tophinke, D. (2003) Sprachförderung im Kindergarten. Julia, Elena und Fatih entdecken gemeinsam die deutsche Sprache. Weinheim, Basel: Betz. Tracy, R. (2008) Wie Kinder Sprachen lernen. Und wie wir sie dabei unterstützen können. Tübingen: Francke. Triarchi-Herrmann, V. (2006) Mehrsprachige Erziehung. Wie Sie Ihr Kind fördern. München: Ernst Reinhardt Verlag. Triarchi-Herrmann, V. (2006) Sprachdiagnostik bei mehrsprachig aufwachsenden Kindern. In: Sprache – Stimme – Gehör 31, (pp. 151–155).