How to bring up bilingual children?
A variety of successful language strategies can be used by parents when bringing up bilingual children.
Possible strategies
Strategy 1: Each parent speaks a different language to the child. This ‘one person-one language’ strategy is usually successful in helping the child to become bilingual with ease.
Strategy 2: The parents speak one language to the child who acquires a second language outside the home. In Wales, this refers to both children who acquire Welsh at home and English at school and socially outside the home, and children who learn Welsh at school and come from an English-speaking home. This is also a successful route to children becoming bilingual.
Strategy 3: Both parents speak both languages to the child, switching languages according to situations.
Keeping the two languages separate
Experts on bilingualism have traditionally recommended keeping bilingual children’s language experience separate in the early stages. This happens quite naturally when one parent speaks one language and the other parent speaks a different language to the child. There is a clear division when listening to those two languages which makes it easy for the child to recognise which language to speak to which parent.
A child mixing two languages
There are very few bilingual families where the child does not mix the two languages, at the very least in the early stages. From the child's point of view, language mixing helps the message to be communicated and its meaning understood.
A child using two languages with the same parent
A typical family situation is a child moving away from the language boundaries that have been established. A child may decide to speak English to the mother despite previously speaking to her in Welsh from birth. Tactics are possible to try to keep to the parent's desired strategy without alienating the child and making him or her resent the language.
A parent learning a second language alongside a child
This is not as unusual as it sounds. There are many examples of a parent learning a language from the other parent alongside their child. For example, a father may pick up Welsh from the mother while listening to the mother speaking Welsh to the child. The father will be able to understand basic Welsh conversations in the family, but will continue to speak in English. Although he is perfectly happy for the rest of the family to use Welsh, he would find it artificial and unnatural to speak to the child in anything except his first language.
Homes where nobody speaks Welsh
If parents are eager for their children to become bilingual, there are successful ways of achieving this goal in Wales even when there is no Welsh spoken in the home or the family. Young children can pick up Welsh at a nursery, at a playgroup/Cylch Meithrin and with a childminder before attending Welsh-medium school.
Parents' attitudes, encouragement and interest are vital to a child’s second language development. Praising the child when they hear the child speaking Welsh is a simple way of showing encouragement. Welsh language support may also be provided by English speaking parents in the form of CD's, books, posters and games.