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Articles
New Stork Times
On a cool Saturday afternoon, on the 24th, March, about fifty of us collected to hear the wisdom and advice of Tracey Tokuhama Espinosa on raising multilingual children sponsored by the New Stork Times. The workshop was based on the book of the same name, ‘Raising Multilingual Children’, which arose out of Tracey’s extensive research into this very specific area of language education. Being a parent herself in a multilingual family, as well as being a trained educator, Tracey’s interest in the field is both personal and academic and the workshop covered both aspects. Tracey had quite a task on her hands. The research covers such areas as neurology, psychology, linguistics and education and fifty different parents had fifty different expectations and fifty different language situations. But that, apparently, is what it is all about. While there are general ingredients to the teaching of multilingualism, the measure of the proportions differs greatly according to the individual situations.
Tracey’s started by taking us through a controversial true false
quiz. We looked at eleven general assumptions about various aspects of
language and had to decide if they were true or false. It generated a
lot of interesting discussion as we all tried to work out what the ‘right’
answer was, although no one was willing to concede that they didn’t
know a particular answer in front of such a large group. Then we moved
on, looking in detail at the ten key factors in raising multilingual children.
The first, and perhaps most important for many of the people there, was
when to start. When is a child ready to be exposed to another language
and how can we best exploit this readiness. Multilingual from birth, while
ideal, seems also to depend on not giving up, being patient, but at the
same time not being pushy. Then, if there are no other developmental factors
to consider, your child will get it, it just may take a bit longer than
you as a parent want it to. Although the younger the better may make it
easier, because you don’t have to worry about formal input, the windows
of opportunity, if recognised and used right, are there until about seven.
After that children start becoming too self conscious to just learn.
Then we heard about the importance of strategy and consistency. Again,
I think it surprised many there that what they were already doing naturally
was considered a formal strategy. There were many different strategies
presented and the emphasis was on using the one that worked best for you
in your family and using it consistently. Consistency was constantly reiterated.
As with all dealings with young children, being consistent and therefore
predictable to a child is important, but when providing language input,
it becomes even more so. Not that there is any discussion about whether
children can cope with the input of multiple languages, they can. However,
to make it easier on a child, who says what, in what language, when, has
always to be the same. Language is a vehicle of self expression and it
determines how we view ourselves and the world around us. To make it easier
on our children, who have to come to terms with their own individual relationship
with the world, we just have to be consistent.
Other important factors, that we as parents can assist are, motivation, aptitude and opportunity. Although motivation is partially related to personality, repeated positive experiences will, of course, give a child more motivation. However, motivation can also be driven, to a limited extent, by anxiety. A sociable child will want to learn a language to fit in with other children. Aptitude for language, far from being a given, can be influenced enormously by motivation, opportunity and the experience of language learning. A sociable child with low aptitude, we learnt, given a positive learning experience, and an opportunity, will be motivated to learn and will do it successfully. Opportunity could be loosely defined as the when and where a language is used. What is the language, or languages, at home? What is the language of the community? And what other activities can a child participate in ? Using Tracey’s own family as an example, where the spheres of use are clearly defined, and the opportunities are great, the children are exposed to four different languages. They have the input of English and Spanish from their parents at home, they go to a German school and whole family lives in Geneva. However, it may be important to mention that not all the children are equally talented at all the languages, possibly because of the other factors in raising multilingual children.
Some of the other factors in raising multilingual children that we are
less able to influence are, the linguistic relationship between the languages
being learnt, if there are siblings and how many, what sex the child is,
and what hand they prefer. Interestingly, when learnt from birth, the
relationship between the languages used matters very little, but when
more formal learning is considered, the closer the languages, the more
overlap, the easier it is. Siblings are both an advantage and a disadvantage.
The obvious advantage is the companionship and play time, the obvious
disadvantage is assumed role of interpreter and spokesperson. Gender plays
a role because of the different tendencies between girls and boys. Generally,
girls become communicators from a very young age, boys do not. Understanding
hand preference is important because it enables a deeper comprehension
of where and how language is stored and retrieved. And then there is personality.
Personality was a factor that was always touched on, but it was never
really discussed in depth because it the is the least quantifiable and
biggest unknown. All children are different and will respond differently
within a given situation and As parents, it seems that providing a multilingual
environment is not much different from any other kind of parenting. We
have to be supportive and encouraging, we have to be sensitive and patient,
and we have to be accepting of who they are even if it isn’t quite
what we would wish for them.
Tracey was a energetic and enthusiastic presenter who knew obviously loved her topic and wanted to share her experiences with her audience. The workshop was a good mix of research and anecdote but there was still an enormous amount of information to digest and assimilate in a short time. And there was a problem that individual people wanted individual answers to their specific questions, for which there were just too many people and not enough time. Personally, I found what Tracey had to say both helpful and reassuring and I enjoyed the chance it gave me to meet other parents in the same situation. The whole afternoon was an interesting, thought provoking and entertaining .
