Blog Posts

How to help your children become bi-literate

24/10/2019

Last week Ute Limacher-Riebold and I met with parents from around the world to discuss ways to help children keep reading in their home languages.

It was again an enriching discussion and I’m eager to share some insights with you.

Reading and writing in any language involves three crucial aspects:

Knowledge of print.
Knowledge of language.
Knowledge of the world.

And it is important for those supporting the child not to lose sight of the biggest purpose of reading, which is to understand a message; and of writing, which is to communicate an idea.

That’s why language and knowledge are so important!

But let’s go back to print for a bit, because that’s where the whole mechanics of learning to read and write starts.

Children need to learn to do three things with print:

Recognize the letters/characters/symbols.
Connect them to sounds or meanings.
Form them, write them correctly.

And all that must become automatic and fluent for them to be competent readers and writers.

A few ways to practice reading and writing in a fun, sensory way at home:

Have magnetic or wooden letters to play around with forming words.
Make cards with letters, words or pictures that they’ve been learning. Create games such as memory, dominoes, categories, make up a story, etc.
Sort objects or toys into categories (initial/final sound, rhyme, etc).
Play I Spy and I’m going on a trip.
Play Scrabble and Hangman.
Organize a Word/Letter Hunt around the house.
Play Word Snake or Word Ladder.
‘Blind read’ with sandpaper letters.
Make letters from different materials: play dough, clay, pipe cleaners, Lego, etc.
Draw and write with different equipment: chalk, paint, crayons, markers.
Write with your ‘magic body parts’ in the air.
Write on someone’s back.
Write on a sand/salt/rice tray or on a Ziploc bag filled with hair gel.

The more hands-on and fun the activities are, the more eager children will be to learn!

As they grow and develop, it’s important to keep finding context and purpose for reading and writing. Some interesting practices could be: writing letters, cards or emails to family, writing stories together, writing a journal or keeping a happiness jar.

Language transfer and different alphabets

It is true that once a child learns to read in a language they’re likely to transfer those skills to the other, especially if they share the same alphabet. The task here is to work on the letters and combinations that are read in a different way. There might be a bit of initial confusion, especially when writing, but with time and practice it will sort itself out.

Children learning different alphabets or writing systems will have more to learn and probably need more time to master both, but on the other hand they might experience less confusion.

Literacy development requires time, patience and consistent practice. And if you're learning more than one language, even more so!

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This meeting followed Reading in different languages with babies and toddlers.

For more Free Online Meetings on Multilingualism, check out Ute's calendar.

Test your children's reading skills in English and find out what you need to bridge the gap.

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Reading in different languages with babies and toddlers

5/10/2019

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I just had an awesome Zoom chat with Ute Limacher-Riebold and parents from around the globe who care deeply about their children’s multilingualism and literacy skills.

Here are some insights:

Literacy starts early, even though your young child is not formally being taught to read and write. Literacy starts with language development, with communication.

At this stage the best way to support your child’s language/literacy development is to offer as much input as possible, motivate their curiosity and open doors to discovery. Help your child learn new words and understand the world around him/her.

You can do that through conversation, singing, playing games and of course, reading aloud.

What does reading aloud to a baby or toddler look like? Can they sit and listen to a story? They might. Or not. And it’s ok.

It’s ok not to finish a book.
It’s ok to read a story over and over again.
It’s ok to stop and play, laugh, talk, cuddle.
It’s ok not to have a set time and place to read.

Follow your child’s lead. Don’t push.

Reading with such young children involves more looking and talking that actual reading.

Look at the pictures in the book. Describe them. Ask questions. Teach new words. Go beyond what’s on the page.

Reading aloud needs to be engaging, dynamic, memorable. Choose books that are interactive, that have textures, flaps, pop-ups. Pay attention to the language: does it have a good rhythm? Rhymes? Repetition? Interesting words?

Are the topics and characters relatable to your child?

Then, the way you read is crucial. You need to show enthusiasm! Use your voice, facial expressions, props.

Reading together as often as possible, having meaningful conversations, singing, playing, drawing, building… this is the foundation upon which literacy instruction will be built later on.

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You might also like:
Home Literacy Environment Checklist (Reading Rockets)
Literacy Milestones Birth to age 3 (Reading Rockets)
Literacy Milestones ages 3-4
Strategies for reading aloud to young children (video)
Support literacy even before your child starts to read
No Print, No Prep - Phonological Awareness Games (PDF)

Books:
Reading Magic, by Mem Fox
Learning to Read and Write in the Multilingual Family, by Xiao-Lei Wang

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Find support in our Facebook Communities:
Raising Biliterate Children (Ana)
Multilingual Families (Ute)

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Reading and writing in the minority language

7/3/2019

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It still seems to be a controversial topic: can children learn to read and write in more than one language at once? Will they get confused and not do well in either language? Shouldn’t we wait until they can read and write in one language first?

There’s no black and white answer to these questions. Like other aspects of parenting, you must do what’s best for your children and what works for your family.

A great article on this topic is Biliteracy: When should kids start to read and write in their second language? on Bilingual Kidspot. The author differentiates the scenarios of learning to read in similar alphabets versus different ones, as well as different writing systems.
“Children can learn to read and write simultaneously in two languages if given the time and resources to do so.” (Chontelle Bonfiglio)

Despite initial confusion and transference between languages, there’s no proof that learning to read and write in more than one language simultaneously is harmful. Children all over the world grow up - and thrive - in multilingual contexts.

So, it’s never too early or too late to reflect on your family’s choice to pass on a minority language. Here are some questions to guide you:
★ What are your expectations?
What level of speaking, reading and writing would you like your children to obtain?
★ What is their motivation?
Is there a clear purpose for learning?
How do they use the minority language in real life?
★ What are the family’s long-term plans?
Are you likely to move countries? Will the children attend school in another language?
Where are they likely to go to University?
★ How supportive is your environment?
How involved can friends and extended family be in your children’s education?
Can you count on their school?
Can you find minority language resources?
Who can you go to for specific help?
★ Can you teach them yourself?
What will you teach them? When? How often?
Will you hire a tutor or enroll them in weekend lessons?

Another fantastic resource to help you understand multiliteracy and support your children’s development is ‘Learning to Read and Write in the Multilingual Family’, by Xiao-lei Wang. Her book is research and experience based, with lots of practical tips for each age group, planning advice and reflection.

No one will ever regret having taught their children their heritage language. The opposite is not always true.

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Find support in our Facebook community.

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Reaching out for community and support

20/1/2019

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When you had your first child, how high were your expectations?

What were your families'?

Did you have a plan for raising him multilingual? Or no clue at all?

In this interview, Elena shares how important it was for her to let go of unrealistic expectations and to be kind to herself and her children as they grow up learning her mother tongue, Russian.

She gives amazing advice based on what's working for her family (which is what you should do).

Tell us a little about yourself and your family.
My name is Elena Mutonono, I am from Ukraine and my husband is from Zimbabwe. Right now we live in New Orleans (USA) and have two children who are 6 and 3 years old.

What’s your approach for raising them multilingual?
One thing I noticed from reading your blog is that every family decides what works for them. The same is true for us. I speak to my kids in my mother tongue -- Russian -- all the time. We’re also a part of the Russian Community here in New Orleans where my kids get to learn the language, traditions and mingle with other kids and grownups.

My husband speaks Shona, but unfortunately he didn’t keep up with it as the kids began speaking English for the most part. They still understand some, but don’t speak it.

How do you incorporate the minority languages in your daily lives?
Russian is the language I use to communicate with my kids. Now my son can read it, so I let him read something almost every night. As a reward for doing some Russian practice, he gets to watch his favorite Russian movies. In the evening I read for them in Russian and sometimes in English, but if they have questions we discuss them in Russian.

I speak Russian at our table as well. You can hear us going back-and-forth in 2 languages, but my husband never feels excluded. In fact, just by being exposed to me talking to kids all the time, he understands 75% of conversational Russian. He sometimes responds in Russian, which always gives kids a chance to laugh.

Once a week my older son goes to his Russian lessons and choir practice (it’s done by a Russian-speaking teacher as well). It’s a great opportunity for him to connect with other kids who are also practicing their minority language and developing literacy skills.

One of the keys to successfully raise multilingual kids is consistency. How does your family stay motivated and focused?
For me staying consistent has been easier than letting go of my high and unrealistic expectations. There’s this notion that was ingrained at some point: as long as you speak and read to your kids, they’re going to be bilingual. I discovered that it takes a lot more work than just speaking and reading.

It’s also been humbling to let go of my own expectations and those of my parents’ (who are monolingual and don’t understand why speaking Russian while living in the US can be hard). I’ve learned to be kind to myself and to my kids when they mix languages, adopt foreign word order when they speak, and ask me to repeat or translate what they didn’t understand.

I’ve learned that it’s more important for me to share the love of the language and to inspire them to speak even if they make mistakes than terrorize them for their lack of accuracy.

How are you introducing Russian literacy to your son?
My son didn’t start speaking until he was almost 3, but he began spelling and identifying letters at 2. That was an unusual development, and I wondered how to introduce the Russian alphabet to him (which is Cyrillic, not Latin).

So I connected with a group of Russian teachers enthusiasts (www.RussianStepByStep.Com) who were publishing books for Russian immigrants in the US and asked one of the authors to give me some tips. She said that I could either introduce Russian letters at an earlier age or wait until he starts reading in English.

I was curious how to go about introducing letters early as some, for instance “B,” have different sounds in Russian. Wouldn’t the child be confused? Her response was, “When you introduce the letter and he names it in English, you tell him, Yes, that’s in English, but in Russian this letter reads like this.”

It worked. He learned all the 33 letters of the Russian alphabet before he started speaking.

Can you tell us about one of your proudest moments?
I love it when we’re in the car, his sister says something in English, and he translates it to me into Russian. I love when both kids act out Russian cartoon characters and speak Russian to each other as they play.

As a language nerd, I love that my 6-year-old son makes deep linguistic connections between languages. Right now he attends an immersion school where he studies French, and he always connects words and their meanings in Russian, French and English.

There are many of such proud moments. The main thing for me is that he stays curious and interested. I want to nurture and celebrate it. I never force him to do any Russian, and don’t overwhelm him, but I like it that language learning is now a part of his being.

What has been the biggest challenge so far? How do you try to overcome it?
The challenge for me is to keep him interested and motivated. I understand that it might be hard to keep speaking Russian when English is so much easier. I’m proud of him for making an effort every day.

I think taking a trip to a Russian-speaking country to visit relatives will help greatly.

Another challenge, as I mentioned earlier, is coming to grips with the fact that he’s not as accurate as a six-year-old living in Russia. He speaks like a little immigrant, but I don’t want him to feel deficient about it.

I’m concerned that when he goes to Ukraine, he might feel (given the unfortunate cultural nuance of shaming) at fault for not speaking well. I want to be there for him and tell him how well he’s done so far and that making an effort to speak, even as he makes mistakes, is an act of courage.

What are your favorite minority language resources at the moment?
We’ve been using all the books by Russian Step By Step, and I can also recommend Marianna Avery’s series called “Soroka.” Marianna is my son’s Russian teacher, and she’s passionate about helping Russian-speaking kids learn and develop their literacy skills.

What’s your advice for parents considering teaching their kids to read and write at home, especially with different alphabets?
Find support. Don’t be afraid to reach out to book authors (especially if these are self-published authors). They are usually approachable and happy to share advice.

Make small adjustments and don’t be hard on yourself. I see this happening in expat communities all the time: mothers wish they had started speaking sooner, they feel bad for not having done enough of this and that. Small steps are important.

If you haven’t been speaking to your child in a minority language, try to find a group or a couple of friends who do that. If you want to help your child with reading, introduce new letters as you play and spend time reading and looking for these letters as you read books before they go to bed.

Learn everywhere and don’t force it when a kid is tired or overwhelmed. If you haven’t done reading today, maybe ask him to “write” something for you (even if it doesn’t make sense). Sing a song, watch a cartoon, ask questions about the characters.

Whatever you do, be kind to yourself and to your child. You both are doing an incredible job!

Tell us about your work and the Opted Out movement.

I started Opted Out at the end of 2015 to connect with my first book readers -- language teachers who wanted to start teaching online. Then it turned into a bigger movement of people who wanted to build small and sustainable businesses online doing what they love best -- teaching languages.

As a coach and a language teacher myself, I inspire people to grow as individuals through mindful self-discovery, focused learning and reflection so they build authentic businesses, not cheap copycats.

I also believe in making white space in life and business so people can become more creative in their daily lives and channel their creativity to make the world a better place.

Photo Permission: Elena Mutonono

Elena Mutonono is a business coach for online language teachers and a writer. She loves books, meaningful conversations, jazzy instrumentals, good food and wine and time with friends. She enjoys spending time with her family, checking out New Orleans eateries (there are many) and taking trips to new places.
She’s on a mission to help online language teachers discover the freedom and creativity that their job can bring to them, their families and their clients.

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Hands-on Trilingual Parenting

4/1/2019

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Hi there!

In this interview you'll get to know a little bit about Hanna's family. She's Hungarian, her Husband is Tunisian and they live in France. They're raising two trilingual sons with lots of play and a laid-back and positive approach where the extended family plays an important role.

Check it out:

Tell us a little about yourself and your family.

My Tunisian husband and I met in Nantes, France, during our studies when I left Hungary to spend my Erasmus scholarship there. We fell in love 4 weeks before the end of my stay and we didn’t really believe that this relationship could work out… well, that was 12 years ago :) We moved a lot in France and a little in the UK but we ended up working near Nantes again where our two boys were born. They are 4 and 7 years old now.

What’s your approach for raising them multilingual?

The goal was clear from the beginning. We wanted them to be able to talk to their relatives in Tunisia and in Hungary in their mother and father tongues. We started with OPOL but then we just realized that they didn’t need the OPOL system to distinguish languages from each other. Both of them understood that we were talking 3 different languages when they were about 2 years old. At this age they stopped mixing them.

How do you incorporate the minority languages in your daily lives?

I started by reading Barbara Adelilah-Bauer’s books even before they were born. This helped a lot and we understood that the secret is exposure, exposure and exposure.
It was a lot easier in the beginning when we had only one child. We had more time and no one was talking to him in French at home. We were playing and reading in Hungarian and Arabic all the time.

Since his brother was born the situation changed a lot. They love playing together but they use only French - the majority language. We are both working parents, so they spend their days in French environment (nursery before, now school) and they just don’t switch. But we keep following the plan.

One of the keys to successfully raise multilingual kids is consistency. How does your family stay motivated and focused?

We never lost motivation because we know our priorities. We decided to teach them multiple languages :
> so they would be able to keep a strong relationship with their families;
> to help them to have better opportunities in the future;
> to help them grow up as open minded, respectful and tolerant human beings.

To motivate them, we have 3 strategies:
> Keeping this learning process fun and non-obligatory. We highlight success and never point out errors. We never oblige them to speak any language.
> By showing them how these languages are useful in everyday life with books, games, videos, magazines.
> By creating situations where they are in full immersion: playdates with other bilingual children in France, and holidays in Tunisia and Hungary.

The grandmothers help us a lot too. We “import” one of them for every short school holiday. Instead of sending them to an activity center we try to create full immersion at home.

How are you introducing minority language literacy?

Arabic and Hungarian are two languages that are easy to read once you learned the alphabet because you pronounce all the letters but reading French is quite complicated with its phonemes and silent letters. This is why we decided to wait until they read and write French before introducing minority language literacy.

The surprise came when at age 7 our older son came back from 3 weeks in Hungary and spontaneously started reading Hungarian. He said grandmother had showed him the letters to pronounce in a different way. And he auto-corrects his mistakes when he hears them. Now we can concentrate on learning the Arabic alphabet.

When I was pregnant with the boys I realized that most of the Arabic educational games were not as high quality as the resources we can find in other languages. The products I was looking for just didn’t exist. This is why I decided to create a new collection of educational games in collaboration with Arabic teachers and linguists.

Daradam was born in 2016. My third “baby” is this publishing house dedicated to create love for the language(s) and the cultural heritage of the Arab region. Our games can be used at home just like in school, and they are great for native Arabic speaking children and also for those learning Arabic as a second language.

Can you tell us about one of your proudest moments?

I must tell you a story. It was last summer when I went to Budapest to drop the children off at grandma’s house:

Ali (4yo): I want to go back to France.
Me: Why?
Ali: Everyone is talking to me in Hungarian here and I don't understand everything.
Me: So why don't you tell them when you don't understand something?
Ali: I do. But they KEEP talking to me in Hungarian. 😯
Me: You know this is very normal. But don't worry, because you have a "super hero" brain with great capacities and you just need to be patient for 2-3 days so your brain can get used to Hungarian.
Ali: *smiling and being proud of his brain* 😀
> 1 day later
Aunt: This is Tonton Jean. He doesn't speak Hungarian.
Ali: It's ok. He only needs 3 days.
Us: 😂😂
> 4 days later on Skype
Ali: I speak so much in Hungarian I started to forget French.
Us: 😂😂( *not worried about that)

What has been the biggest challenge so far? How do you try to overcome it?

We are still struggling with Arabic.
The biggest challenge is creating Arabic language immersion:
> with a low budget. Flight tickets are just so expensive compared to flights inside Europe.
> with a 99% French speaking Tunisian family.
> in a small French city where we don’t have a lot of choices when it comes to Arabic language classes.
I believe we will find solutions in 2019 when the kids will be able to travel a little more.

What are your favorite minority language resources at the moment?

Obviously our favorite resources are the Daradam games because we created them just like we wanted them to be: fun, responsible, cultural and educational with an elegant and modern design.

We believe that reading is important for education so we are always searching for the best Arabic children books: like the ones of Kalimat, Samir, Ossass stories, Petites Histoires Tunisiennes, and many others.

Daradam is a family project, inspired by lots of love. Thank you, Ana for letting me talk about it. Every share, every like, every post is a great help for a small business. We highly appreciate them because it’s the Daradam community that helps us grow. And growing means publishing new fun resources in Arabic.

Photo permissions and credits: Hanna Lenda.

Hanna and her Tunisian husband have two trilingual sons. She has a Master degree in Product Design. She has lived in Hungary, the UK and France.
She has worked on numerous interior design projects in the MENA region before launching Daradam, a new brand of educational games highlighting the language and the cultural heritage of the Arab region.

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