Summer tips for your bilingual family
It’s official, Summer is here! Many families are going to spend the Summer holidays in their home country, happily boosting their children’s language skills. For those who won’t be travelling to foreign countries this Summer, we are sharing some ideas to boost the child’s heritage language (the term heritage language refers to the language the child acquires from their parents, and that is not used by the majority of people in the child’s environment), but most of these ideas might also suit families who speak a minority language, like Irish!
Read, read and read some more!
Reading is a great way for children to learn new words and to become familiar with long and complex sentences and structures that they may not hear in everyday conversations. Some children can read in the heritage language, some can’t, and some others would prefer to read in English because they are faster and they understand it better. Don’t let this deter you! All children love a good story, so you can read to them in your language, and talk together about the characters and explain words they don’t understand. Examining the pictures together is also very useful to develop oral language skills in younger children.
Some children may not feel ready to read a novel in the heritage language, so you can get them started with a magazine or a short story. You will discover that your child lacks some essential vocabulary, maybe because the use of the heritage language is confined to some specific contexts. This is one of the main reasons why books and other written materials provide a fantastic opportunity to engage with the heritage language and to learn new words and sentence structures that would not be common in everyday conversations.
Public libraries often display bilingual books and foreign language books, reflecting the increasing diversity of the Irish population. For many parents, one of the main deterrents to supporting their children’s literacy is the lack of suitable resources and the lack of awareness of what is currently accessible in libraries. Therefore, a visit to your local library might be the best way to start. If you are unsure about how to find bilingual books or books in foreign languages, ask your librarian, and remember that you can order books from any library in Ireland, even from the comfort of your home, by browsing the online catalogue.
