Advantages And Disadvantages Of Bilingual Children

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Of course and absolutely! To successfully raise a bilingual child you might need to put more effort in than mixed-language couples, but this really depends on the language of your environment: A. Does your environment provide the same language you and your partner speak ? This will mean you will have to invest a lot of effort to expose your child to another language. B. Or is the dominant language of your environment (language of the country/school/nursery) different from yours ? In that case you will be faced with relatively low effort. Below is a summary of key challenges and recommendations for the high effort scenario. Monolingual parents in a same-language environment (e.g. English speaking parents in an English speaking country) You…show more content…
In order to give your children the gift of bilingualism you have to "adopt" a new language into your DAILY life. For your children to eventually become fluent in a language, they need to have regular, continuous exposure to it - a 1 hour/week language club alone is not enough (although this would be a start and could be the basis for a later increase in exposure). If you aim for bilingualism, i.e. sophisticated language skills - as opposed to basic skills - your children should be exposed to the language for at least 1 hour a day. As the environment does not help you, all the effort will have to come from you - but it will be worth it ! You need to find enough language opportunities for your children which they can enjoy (personal interactions and media), plan trips to the country, show an interest/respect in the people from the country and maybe learn the language yourself. A good idea is to join or start a support group to surround yourself by others in a similar situation who can encourage you along the…show more content…
Get support: Join a support network and find other families in the same situation. Teaming up with others in the same situation makes your job much easier. Not only do you have others to share your experiences and challenges with, you can also bring together enough children to start new clubs/courses. You can swap materials to keep the language input new and interesting without spending more money. Your children might also find it more fun and less daunting to see other children with similar background in the same situation. A support network can get you in touch with equally committed families and save you the job of having to find new language opportunities by phoning

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