The Guardian – Lucy Ward
“No matter what your family’s heritage, parenting has a common lexicon: brush your teeth, look up from that screen or stop bashing your brother can be found in most family phrasebooks. But what if the language you were born with differs from the one your kids use daily at school, or if you and your partner each have different native languages? Today almost one in five children in UK primary schools now has a mother tongue other than English. According to Professor Antonella Sorace, director of the Bilingualism Matters centre at Edinburgh University, the demand for information and advice on how to navigate the challenges of bilingual parenting is now “enormous”. Top tips the centre often gives includes encouraging parents not to wait for children to have a good start on a first language before introducing the second – that approach pretty much guarantees kids will see the second language as less important.”(more)