The Monkey Tree - Multilingual Families

Home

Multilingual Families

East London and West Essex are very diverse areas. There are many people who speak a wide variety of languages. Many people assume that if one or both parents speak a language, their children will learn it from them, but this is by no means always the case. There are many families where the children speak only English despite the fact that one (or both) parents speak Arabic/Bengali/Croatian/Dutch/French/German ... /Zulu. This is very sad as not only do these children lose an ability to speak another language (which would have been useful both to them personally but also to the whole community), they also lose a great deal of their heritage and cannot communicate well with many of their extended family who do not speak English.

When I speak to people about raising children to speak more than one language, I tend to get one of two opposite responses. Some people assume that it is almost automatic that children will learn a language that their parents speak, almost as if it were in their genes. The opposing camp feels that it will be confusing for a child to hear and speak several languages and may hold them back when they start school.   There are many myths about children speaking several languages, but there are few places that parents can turn for advice. Most health visitors will give some good but very basic advice: “Speak your first/most fluent language to your child”, but will not go much beyond that. Waltham Forest’s Speech Therapy service is good and has bilingualism specialists; however, they only get involved when there are concerns about a particular child’s speech. They don’t give advice to parents whose children don’t have any speech problems.

Britain is a very monolingual country where people speaking only one language is regarded as normal and bilingualism is, at best, an interesting oddity. (In fact, worldwide, there are more bilingual people than monolinguals; speaking only one language is the exception and not the norm.)   Here are some of the totally unfounded myths about bilingualism that anyone from your GP, to qualified child care staff, let alone your family and friends will repeat uncritically:

•    Bilingualism delays Childrens’ intellectual development. In fact bilingual children score consistently better than monolinguals in some tests and score equally overall.

•    Bilingual children are confused and can’t talk properly in any language.   Providing adults speak a language that they are fluent in, children will learn to talk fluently even if they hear three or even four languages.

•    Learning two languages at one time is much too difficult for children. Children absorb languages like sponges at this age, they don’t study them.
One local mum, whose partner was Kurdish, was so unhappy about this situation that she set up a new self help organisation for parents in multilingual families.
Since 2003, Waltham Forest Bilingual Group has given advice and support to hundreds of multilingual families. (Based in Waltham Forest, people are welcome from all areas to attend our drop in events.) We have a monthly drop in session and organise regular workshops for new parents and a variety of experts and specialists have come to talk to the group. We also have a mini-library of books on the topic which members can borrow.
If you are a multilingual family and are just starting out what advice would we give you?

•   Every family is different. There is no “off the shelf” solution. You need to work out what feels right and works for you and your family.

•   Speak your mother tongue or most fluent language to your children; children will pick up English incredibly quickly via child care, playgroups, or nursery. It is probably wise to try to make sure your child has some access to English before they start school but in the end they are much more likely to lose the language that is not English than suffer through not speaking English.

•   If you plan to speak to your child in more than one language within the family, agree on a consistent system e.g. one person/one language, one place/one language etc. Which system you pick is less important than having some system that you stick to (particularly in the early stages).

•   The more input (both in terms of quality and quantity) you put in, the more output in either language you should get.

•   There are a wide variety of resources that you can turn to; from books, videos, DVDs, computer games, through minority language child carers, au pairs, visits to relatives and friends.

•   Set yourself a goal and decide how important this is to you. Do you want your child to be able to speak and understand only? Do you want them to read a newspaper, write a letter, and hold down a job? The higher your goals, the more effort you will need to put into it, the more sacrifices you may have to make – a holiday in a country speaking your language instead of the Caribbean! A Saturday school in your language instead of football, drama, piano or ballet!

•   Whatever stage you are at: Don’t accept advice to stop speaking your language/two languages to your child from those who are not specialists in bilingualism, whether a doctor, teacher, health visitor or midwife. Ask to be referred to a bilingualism specialist speech therapist and discuss your situation in detail with him/her before you do so. In almost all circumstances s/he will advise you to do exactly the opposite.

•   Finally and most importantly, don’t give up. Most children in bilingual families, who end up monolingual, do so because, during a bad patch, the parents gave up. There will be ups and downs. Children will resist, say that they don’t like their weaker language and play power games with the languages in the family, but if you continue to show the children how important this is to you, (without forcing them to speak) a new good patch will begin.
There is information about our next drop in sessions, speakers and events on our website www.wfbilingual.org.uk. There is also much more detailed advice to families starting out at www.wfbilingual.org.uk/tips.
Contacts: Didier on 020 8529 8189, Claire on 020 8531 6448, or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Talk to other parents in multilingual families while your children play:
From 3.30pm – 5.30pm at The Limes Children’s and Community Centre, Somers Road, Walthamstow (just off the market, corner of Palmerston Road). The venue is fully accessible. All are welcome, and it is free. No need to call ahead, just come along.
27th March 2010
24th April 2010
22nd May 2010 1st stages w/shop
26th June 2010

Workshops for Parents of children 0-4 years – 22nd May
Workshops for parents of children
5 years & above - 24th July
Workshops will use light hearted exercises, discussion, and question and answer sessions to give a basic introduction to what the group members have learnt about what works for and in different bilingual families. This event will be run by parents for parents – not by professionals. We won’t have all the answers - but we will know how it feels. A “crèche” is available but space is limited and preference is given to members.