Kletsheads [English edition]

Transcript Are you looking for a book about bilingual children to give to someone in the holidays? Or perhaps you just fancy a new book to read for yourself. Then this special episode of Kletsheads is definitely one for you! Because together with a panel of experts, we are reviewing three recently published books on raising bilingual (and trilingual) children.  These are the books: And here our the members of our (all-women!) panel: Cécile De Cat is originally from Belgium and has lived in the UK for over 20 years. She is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Leeds. In her research, she asks what makes individual bilingual children differ from each other in how they learn and use their two languages. Via Language@Leeds and the Centre for Applied Education Research she also works with teachers to enhance research-informed approaches to education. Cécile is also raising her son bilingually (French and English).  Christine Taylor is originally from the US and now lives in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, where she is raising her two children bilingually (English and Dutch). She is a professional storyteller, helping others to tell their own personal or professional stories. Find out more at her website storycraft.nl Mari Varsányi was born in Budapest, Hungary and now lives in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She is the mother of a trilingual (Hungarian-Hebrew-Dutch) 3-year-old. She works as an educational consultant and trainer at human-ed (www.human-ed.org), working in the field of intercultural and inclusive education.  For each book, we talk about stengths and weaknesses, whether the authors achieved what they set out to, whether the book is suitable for its intended audience, and we'll each give the book a final rating from one to five stars - just like on Amazon, but then more fun! Of course, as reviewers, we each come to these books from our own personal and professional experiences, and these may be different from yours. Have a listen and hopefully, whatever your background, there'll still be enough in this episode to give you a good idea about which books might be a suitable choice for you, or for someone you know.  Because I really wanted to do justice to each of the books discussed in the episode and give both the perspective of a parent and a scientist, we could only fit in three books in total (and even then, it's still quite a long episode!). There are many more books available on this topic. Here are a couple of tips for other books which you might be interested in: A Parents' and Teachers' Guide to Bilingualism offers a wealth of practical advice to parents and teachers of bilingual and multilingual children. Written in a reader-friendly question and answer format, author Colin Baker, (former) Professor of Education at Bangor University and father of three bilingual children, provides up-to-date, factual information on issues relating to the family, language development, reading and writing and education. It’s easy to dip into and covers almost every aspect of raising bilingual children you can think of. This is the book I always recommend when talking to parents. The only issue is that it was last revised in 2014 and so it's starting to get a bit old. I don't know that this will change much of the advice given but there are no doubt some insights from the latest scientific research which will be missing. Nevertheless, still worth a look! Read more here. Dual Language Development & Disorders is aimed at language professionals, such as teachers and speech language therapists, who regularly come into contact with bilingual children. Now in its second edition, this book provides a clear and accessible overview of the latest research in bilingual first language acquisition and child second language acquisition. The first chapter introduces profiles of various children which are used to guide the reader through the relevant issues, including diagnosing disorders.

Transcript Bilingual children grow up in many different circumstances. In some families each parent speaks his or her own native language with their child.  So, for example, Mum speaks Italian and Dad English. This is what's generally known as the "one parent, one language" strategy. In other families, both parents speak the same language, for example Arabic, and the child only comes into contact with the language of the wider community at a childcare centre, in the playgroup or at school. Some children hear their two languages from native speakers, whereas others also get language input from people who are less fluent in the language in question.  In some families there are other family members in the neighborhood who speak the home (heritage or minority) language to the child, while in other families this language is only spoken by one parent and no one else. All in all, this means that there can be big differences between children in how much language they hear and what kind of language they hear, and this holds for both their languages. In this second episode of the English edition of  Kletsheads, together with Professor Erika Hoff, we explore the extent to which these differences affect the language development of bilingual children. Our Kletshead of the week (starts 18:05) is French-English bilingual boy, Loïc, and in Let's Klets (starts 35:28) we speak to secondary school teacher, Marjolein Koster-Leppink, who tells us why she decided to speak her second language to her child.  Erika Hoff is Professor of Developmental Psychology at Florida Atlantic University in the USA. She is world-renowned for her research into the language development of bilingual and monolingual children and currently leads a research project following a large group of Spanish-English bilingual children from 2½ years of age up to and including their tenth birthday. In her research, she focuses on the factors in the young child's environment which predict later language development. Our conversation took place in June 2019 when Erika was a guest researcher at Radboud University. Marjolein is trained as an English teacher and since 2016 has worked as a teacher trainer at Windesheim University of Applied Sciences . She is a native speaker of Dutch and studied English at Utrecht University. As you'll hear, her English is amazing, and she tells us how she already decided to speak English with her future children back in her student days. She now has a son, Owen, who is almost 2 years old, and in addition to her native Dutch, she regularly uses English with him whenever she can. 

Transcript Are you or your partner pregnant, and do you speak a different language from each other? Then chances are there's not just a baby on the way, but a bilingual baby! At least that's what a lot of parents hope when they find themselves raising a child together with someone who has a different mother tongue. It’s not always clear though what exactly the best approach is in such a situation. Should you both continue to speak your own language, or are there other choices you could make that might lead to better outcomes? What do you do if you don't understand each other's languages and speak a third language amongst yourselves? What will your conversations with your future offspring look like? And if you do speak the same language as each other but this is a different language from the one spoken in the community around you -- Dutch in the case of families here in the Netherlands --  you may wonder how your child will learn that language properly. In short, then, how do you plan for a bilingual child? Don't worry if you've have already started your parenting journey and are already raising bilingual children, there's plenty for you in this episode, too.  In this first episode of Kletsheads we talk to Eowyn Crisfield about how you and your partner can make a plan for the languages in your family, something that’s often referred to as family language planning. We hear that it's wise to think about this early on, that it's necessary to involve all the important people in your child's life, and that this plan may change over time. Eowyn gives us her six building blocks for success so that you can be sure that there is a bright bilingual future ahead for your child. This episode is mostly intended for parents, but if you’re a speech language therapist, teacher, or other professional working with young families, there’s plenty of useful information in here for you, too. Every episode we speak to a bilingual child about what it’s like to grow up with more than one language, in our feature Kletshead of the week. This episode we have two Kletsheads of the week (starts at 13:43), two brothers from Utrecht, the Netherlands, Quinn and Aiden. As part of our feature Let's klets, we speak to a parent or professional about their experiences with bilingual children. In this episode we speak to Dessu (starts at 22:37) from Ethiopia about his very multilingual family. Our conversation took place at the Kletskoppen child language festival held in Nijmegen on 29th February, 2020. Sharon interviewing Dessu at Kletskoppen child language festival Eowyn Crisfield is an expert in multilingual education and parenting. She comes from Canada, where she earned her Bachelor in Teaching English as a second language and her Master of Applied Linguistics. She has over 20 years of experience in teaching, teacher training, and research in this field. She has a very accessible blog www.onraisingbilingualchildren.com where she writes about her professional and personal experiences with biilingualism. Here you can also read more about her services, including a webinar on bilingual education. Eowyn is the mother of three trilingual children (English, French & Dutch) and works as a lecturer at Oxford Brookes University in the UK. During my conversation with Eowyn several topics came up that we discussed in the first season of the Dutch-language edition of Kletsheads, such as the mixing of two tasks (Aflevering 1: Is het praten van twee talen door elkaar reden tot zorg?), language problems (Aflevering 4: Hoe weet je of een meertalig kind een taalachterstand heeft?), and whether bilingualism brings many cognitive benefits (Aflevering 5: Zijn meertalige kinderen slimmer dan eentalige kinderen?). Eowyn also gave Colin Baker's book A Parent’s and Teacher’s Guide to Bilingualism van Colin Baker as a reading tip. This is also one of my favorites!  Keen to hear more from Eowyn and her approach to family language planning?

Find out more about the new English-language edition of Kletsheads, the podcast about bilingual children for parents, teachers and speech language therapists.