Raising Multilingual Children

by Julia Festman, Gregory J. Poarch, Dr. Jean-Marc Dewaele

Have you ever been told that raising your child to speak multiple languages will harm their development? Are teachers or other professionals suspicious of your efforts? Are you sometimes unsure if you are helping your child’s language development, or are you uncertain where to start? It is increasingly recognised among researchers that, far from harming a child’s development, being exposed to multiple languages from birth or early childhood can result in linguistic, creative and social advantages. The authors, all multilinguals themselves, parents of multilingual children, and researchers on language and multilingualism, aim to provide advice and inspiration for multilingual families across the world. The latest research on multilingualism and the authors’ own experiences are used to provide a friendly, accessible guide to raising and nurturing happy multilingual children.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction

120 pages, Paperback

Published March 29, 2017

Reviews

[Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good introduction of ideas. I would have preferred a summary of the suggestions, to dos and not dos. One has to rad through the whole book to understand what works and what doesn't. Has many practical suggestions, and many literature references.

[Jesus · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of common sense here, at least if you've been thinking of this for a while, but still some nice stuff. The best bit is likely to be the personal experiences of the three authors, which demonstrate that multilingualism can go in very different ways, as well as the advice at the end. It would have been nice that one of the personal experiences didn't come from the authors but from someone who isn't a university professor. The book it self is a bit superficial but it is nice that it is less than 100 pages long because reading something that isn't fiction is not something you have a lot of energy for when juggling 3 languages and a running toddler. A particular nice feature is that it has several readers in mind, not necessarily the middle class heteronormative couple with two different languages living in a third country.

[Caleste Hawthorne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book so much. The authors clearly appreciated the time, energy, and capacity that their readers might have when they were creating this book. Information was shared in an understandable manner even if you don't have a degree in linguistics. During the segment that discusses Livia's experience there were terms that seemed to be specific for language that I did not recognize but the examples really helped me get the gist of what was being explained to me. I also really loved that they included a segment for folks who don't already speak another language who would like to encourage multilingualism in their houses.

[Petr Kopač · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's short (<100 pages), contains multiple experiences and practical advice. Overall what I was looking for.