It has been fantastic to have Evan Furlong as our guest speaker for the Christmas edition of our families’ meeting. Evan moved to the cold emerald isle from exotic Taiwan 17 years ago and she is raising two multilingual children.

Evan talked to the group about some of the challenges of raising bilingual children in families where parents speak different languages and shared some of her tips based on her experience as a parent and a teacher of multilingual children.
In her experience, despite much research has shown the benefits of using two languages from an early age, it is still common to meet parents who give up their mother tongue.
In her talk, Evan tried to encourage parents to persevere and to use their mother tongue when talking to their children as much as possible.
Evan does not believe in the stereotypical “Tiger Mom” methods but believes that it is important to encourage children to learn their parents’ language and to also learn about the culture of their parents’ countries of origin.

Evan has a Masters in Education from UCD, and she is the principal of the Dublin School of Mandarin Chinese, which has its base in Greystones, County Wicklow.
The school offers weekly classes and summer camps to primary and secondary school children.
To find out more about the Dublin School of Mandarin Chinese, you can visit their website www.dsmc.biz/ and their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/DublinMandarinSchool/

Evan will also run an exciting Chinese papercutting workshop for kids 8+ at our Mother Tongues Festival. Find out more here.

Claudia Kunkel