Whether you have a natural bilingual situation in your family, or you are making a conscious choice to include language learning as a part of your child rearing, raising bilingual children involves some thought and planning. This article will discuss some of the different strategies available to you to be successful in helping your child learn additional languages. Please evaluate them and see if they fit firstly, into your beliefs about language, and secondly, into how you use language, or want to use language, within your family. Not every strategy suits every family.
One-Parent-One-Language Strategy
The first approach and a commonly used one is the One-Parent-One-Language (OPOL) Strategy. It works exactly as it states; one parent speaks one language to the child while the other speaks another. This strategy works well if you have one parent who is fluent in one language while the other parent is more proficient in another, such as in bilingual/bicultural partnerships, as this makes the decision of who speaks which language easy. I would always recommend speaking to your child in the language you are most proficient in however as speaking, in one of the most important relationships of your life, in a language you aren’t fully able to express yourself in would be detrimental to your relationship and to your ability to socialise and relate to your child. Recent studies have shown that people feel a greater emotional intensity when they speak their first language making first languages the first choice in developing that close parent-child bond.
The Mixing Method
The next option is the Mixing Method which involves both parents speaking more than one language to the child. This is a more natural approach as it more closely reflects how bilinguals normally use their languages. Bilinguals have greater linguistic repertoires than monolinguals and they will therefore use all of their language resources in conversations with others who are also bilingual as it allows them to more fully and clearly express what they want to say. The Mixing method therefore is a more organic way to develop bilingualism in families that are able to speak more than one language. This method was the way that our family decided was best for us to raise our children to be bilingual. After trialling OPOL I discovered that I had way more interaction with our young children than my husband did and I felt that, even though my Arabic was still developing, I could contribute to my children’s Arabic language learning. Most studies show no significant relationships between the degree to which parents mix languages and their children’s language outcomes, children are very capable at distinguishing between languages and separating them out when required.
The Time and Place Strategy
The Time and Place Strategy involves parents separating the use of languages by time or location, or both. You could use one language for the home and another when you are out and about or one language when you are in your own home and another when you visit grandma and grandpa’s. Separating languages by time could mean choosing one language to speak in at meal times but another the rest of the time. There could be film nights where you watch films only in one specific language and discussion during this time are also held in that same language.
Minority Language at Home Strategy
The Minority Language at Home (ML@H) Strategy encourages both parents to speak the minority language of the family to their child/ren. This works if the family speaks one language but the wider community speaks another, such as when a family has migrated to a country that speaks a different language from their own. This is the case for families who have migrated to Australia or the US from a country that speaks a language other than English. The child’s interaction with the wider community, at school for example, will facilitate their learning of English, the wider-community language, while the parents continuing to speak to their child in the minority language will help them maintain their first language. As I mentioned above however, I always recommend that parents speak to their children in their most fluent language so if both parents are not fluent in the minority language, I would recommend choosing a different strategy.
Final considerations
The most effective strategy will be the one that works best for you and your family and fits your beliefs about language and the ways that you want to communicate in your family. It is also the strategy that you can incorporate consistently in the long run. If learning a language becomes a part of your day-to-day life and is enjoyable it won’t feel like homework and will be more likely to be successful.
I wish you well!
