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K

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Growing up with Three Languages: Birth to Eleven (Parents' and Teachers' Guides, 11)

by Xiao-lei Wang

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Jan 03, 2022 01:12AM

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The Toolbox for Multilingual Families

by Ute Limacher-Riebold (Goodreads Author)

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K said: " I'll start off with my complaints and then finish off on a happy note.

This book is best applied to Latin-based (European) languages, which is not surprising as the authors are only familiar with such. It may require significant effort from the reader I'll start off with my complaints and then finish off on a happy note.

This book is best applied to Latin-based (European) languages, which is not surprising as the authors are only familiar with such. It may require significant effort from the reader to implement ideas for other language systems, such as many Asian languages. It would have been nice for the authors to involve a colleague who was fluent in at least one non-European language, for content input, examples and feedback.

I was also disturbed by the fact that one of the games in the book was called 'Chinese Portraits' while the game itself had absolutely nothing to do with any Chinese languages or dialects. Confusing at best. Surely the multilingual (and thus more culturally aware? apparently not) authors could have given this game an updated and more globally appropriate name? I've played the game myself before and never heard it called that. Yes, I am tired of the Western world naming things 'Chinese' just to make something seem 'other'. Just, why? It literally has nothing specifically Chinese about it. A much more sensible name would be 'Portraits' or 'If I were...'.

The book uses the terms 'minority language', 'target language', 'additional language' and sometimes it's not clear whether they're meant to mean the same or different things - surely a 'minority language' IS a 'target language'?

I bought the physical book off Amazon and was surprised to find that the book itself was printed by Amazon, which would not be a problem in itself except that the quality of the book was rather mediocre - a blurred cover, the pages inside look like they're straight from a MS Word document (Times New Roman, my friends), and the word spacing is visibly uneven across lines due to the way the paragraphs have been justified.

I would have appreciated a few more activities and suggestions for lower age groups (toddler age) as this is a critical language-acquisition phase.

To end on a happy note as promised, there are some nice suggestions in here and it is certainly useful in supporting multilingual families (especially those of European languages ;) ). Activities are suggested across a wide range of age groups, with many different activity ideas for school-aged kids. ...more "

Aug 30, 2021 03:11PM · see review