Tag Archives: language development

24/04/2013 · 10:47 am

Looking for Saturday/Sunday Heritage Language Schools

I am participating in the organistion of the DRONGO festival of multilingualism, being held in Amsterdam on September 28, 2013 (2nd edition).
We are looking for Saturday/Sunday Heritage language schools, to participate in multilingual children’s activities. In particular, we are holding a multilingual reading of Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”. We’d like to have as many languages represented as possible, so if you belong to, or know of a language school, please contact me at eowyn@crisfieldeducationalconsulting.com

Also, if you belong to any other organisation that might like to participate, please let me know – we are trying to include the international community this year, and there will be events and activities in English, alongside the Dutch stream.

Thanks in advance for spreading the word!

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22/04/2013 · 12:25 pm

OPOL: Does it always work?

Over the last decade or so, the OPOL method of raising bilingual children has gotten a lot of positive press. It sounds pretty simple – One parent, one language. So I speak French to my kids and my husband speaks English to them, and they will grow up bilingual. Sounds easy, yes? But the reality, as with anything to do with families or children, is not as simple or clear cut.
Just employing the OPOL method can produce bilingual children, but over my years of working with bilingual families, I have seen that it doesn’t guarantee success. Here are what I find to be the most common complications or limitations of OPOL:

1) Lack of minority language development.
Realistically, if a couple in the Netherlands, for example, have one English-speaking and one Dutch-speaking parent, their children are going to grow up hearing *far* more Dutch than English. By the time the kids are in school (or earlier if they are in child care in Dutch) they will be spending the majority of their time in Dutch, even more so if the English speaking parent works full time. Realistically then, one parent speaking English with the kids for an hour or so every day is possibly not going to be enough to produce “bilingual” children.
What can you do? In this situation, the family needs to find more time for English, whether that means English-speaking child care, or both parents using English at home, some or all of the time.

2) The slide towards the majority language….
In many bilingual families, the minority language speaking partner also speaks the majority language. This happens a lot in the English-speaking world (or other immigrant paradigms) where, for example, a Spanish/English speaking American marries an English-speaking American. Often, the Spanish-speaking parent sets out with the bet of intentions, determined to pass on Spanish to the children. But then they use a lot of English too, to be inclusive with friends and family, and to talk to child minders/teachers… and the kids very quickly pick up on the fact that Spanish is not *necessary* to communicate with that parent, or with anyone. They can use English all the time, and be just fine. So the children start speaking to the parent in English, and while the parent makes a valiant effort to keep speaking Spanish, eventually the use of Spanish dwindles… and the children are not bilingual at all, or anymore.
What can you do? From the beginning, if you are the minority speaking parent, know that your job will not be easy, and you will have to work at it. I meet parents all the time who tell me that they thought raising bilingual children with OPOL would be easy. It’s not, for many of us. If you are serious about passing your language on to your children, set your goals (what kind of language do I want them to have, what do I want them to be able to do?) and then make a plan. Activate all the resources in your network or find a new network that provides you, and your children with the language input and support they need to achieve bilingualism.

3) Lack of cohesion and consistency
Sometimes a parent who speaks both languages (and possibly other languages) in an OPOL family can have problems choosing what language to speak. So, they use a little of this, and a little of that. A lot of the OPOL literature stresses consistency, and I believe it to be true that consistency is desirable, primarily in the early years when the language system is being formed. Also, the early years are the time that the parents have the most influence over their children, so if you are passing on a minority language, it’s important to use these years to transmit as much language you can – there will be lots of time for #1 and 2 above to happen… but if you did a great job of building a language foundation before your kids start to only use the majority language, they have a better chance of coming back to the language later. Does it really mess kids up if a parent uses two languages, intermixed? I don’t think we really know the answer to this yet, as there are too many variations in family language use. But I do think that it’s best to be consistent, as much as possible, in the early years, if only to make your children’s task easier. Once the children are older, and have well-developed language systems, you can be more fluid in your language use. I use English, French and Dutch with my kids all in the same day, and sometimes even in the same conversation, and it’s a way of developing their linguistic abilities, and using translanguaging to deepen knowledge.
What can you do? This comes down to what motivates each parent, personally. You can do some reading on how to best use OPOL, or just make a resolution to only use “your” language with your children. It’s helpful for both parents to be on the same page about this, and to see the benefits of consistent language input for young children.

This post was inspired by a question on a Facebook group I belong to – I’ll be back, hopefully next week, with a post about translanguaging, and also one about a seminar I attended with Jim Cummins last week.

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18/03/2013 · 9:34 am

Guest post: Bilingualism and Survival of the Toughest Language

A few weeks ago I was approached by a writer, asking to submit a guest post to my blog. This isn’t something I do very often, but she is a former ESL teacher and is interested in bilingualism. She works for a UK college that supports international students preparing for university studies in the UK. So, I thought, why not give a guest post a chance? (NB. I was not paid to publish this…) Here is the article from Corina David.

Bilingualism and Survival of the Toughest Language
There are more and more scientists and researchers that dedicate their time to the study of languages, and the discovery of their common ancestor. According to Mark Pagel, in one of his TED lectures: “Each of you possesses the most powerful, dangerous and subversive trait that natural selection has ever devised. It’s a piece of neural audio technology for rewiring other people’s minds. I’m talking about your language”.
Language and the way language is acquired is indeed a fascinating subject.
Consider children: they start with strange sounds, then half words, then funny words, then proper words and proper sentences. They need no explanation as far as how to link words, how to start a sentence or how to ask a question. They know it instinctively. Now, in families where two languages are spoken this is all the more interesting. Of course, only if the parents decide that both languages will be spoken.

Confused?!
Now, one of the major concerns in bilingual families is that being exposed to two languages, the child might be a bit confused and therefore start using language only later. While this is a popular concern, it is also a myth, as researchers do not have any data to support that bilingual children start developing language with a certain delay.
On the contrary; according to an article in Science Daily babies as young as seven months can distinguish between, and begin to learn two languages with vastly different grammatical structures. The research was done by University of British Columbia and Université Paris Descartes. The study revealed that infants in bilingual milieus use pitch and duration cues to distinguish between English and Japanese – languages that have opposite word orders.
Werker, a linguist at the Université Paris Descartes and co-author of the new study said: “If you speak two languages at home, don’t be afraid, it’s not a zero-sum game.” “Your baby is very equipped to keep these languages separate and they do so in remarkable ways.”
Even if other researchers state that talking to children in two languages, mixing words or borrowing them from the other language might confuse the child at first, they still admit that bilingualism has much more advantages in the long term. It is also recognised that bilingual children have a better “working memory” than monolingual children.
Bilingualism as part of international mobility
Children are exposed to a second language not only because of a bilingual family, but because of international mobility. This makes it all the more interesting as the parents themselves may not speak the new language, and therefore cannot explain it to their children, yet these manage to master it. Age plays an important role here. If children are exposed to the new language as babies, they will acquire and speak it as if it were their native language, without parents contributing to this. The older they get, the more difficult it will be for children to acquire the new language without any help.
Now, with international mobility, the use of the internet and globalisation, English has come to be the dominant language. It may not be so in 20 years’ time, but for the time being it is. And what if there were really gifted children who cannot get their ideas across because English might constitute a barrier?
This is a very interesting question and it was voiced by Patricia Ryan, English teacher (30 years of experience) in the Arabic countries. One of her brilliant questions is: “What if Einstein had to pass a TOEFL test?” Her TED talk can be seen here.
The question is absolutely mind boggling, and although there is great truth in her statements and efforts are made to preserve the endangered languages, the rule of success is that children, students, adults and entrepreneurs will have to accept that the same rule of the survival of the toughest applies in the fascinating universe of languages. Some languages slowly fade away, some struggle and others just bloom. It’s a matter of getting adapted to the new rules.

This is a guest post on behalf of an International College in the UK. Their main goal is to help international students achieve their ambitions, and therefore offer various courses to help them do that. English language courses and IELTS preparation courses are also available.

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13/02/2013 · 4:22 pm

Can one parent pass on two languages?

Every so often, I meet a parent who would like to pass on more than one language to their children. Sometimes they are a single parent, dealing with a home and societal language, sometimes they are a bilingual themselves and want their children to speak both of their languages. So, the question comes up, is it possible for one person to be “in charge” of passing on more than one language?
There is no absolute answer, but I lean strongly towards “not a good idea”. While I understand the reasoning behind the desire, the elements for successful bilingualism are hard to achieve with one person and two languages.
Firstly, in the early years, consistency is important in helping your children’s brains anaylse input and create a fully competent language system. If one parent is attempting to use two languages, it would be very hard to structure the input to be always consistent in language usage. For example, you could try and do one language each day, and alternate, but may find that sometimes you slip into the other language without noticing. While this may not be a problem once in a while, trying to maintain artificial language use patterns may ultimately feel too hard.
Secondly, the amount of input needed to truly acquire a language is substantial, and one person trying to provide input in two languages may have a hard time finding enough waking hours in which to do so. A general benchmark is 20% input is the minimum for successful language acquisition, although I personally find that children need closer to 30% to begin using the language. So, if a child is awake 10 hours a day (when they are young), you would aim for about 3 hours minimum in each language. Of course input doesn’t need to be this rigid, sometimes it comes in chunks on the weekend and is limited during the week (for a working parent), so I encourage parents to look at the pattern of weeks. But realistically, it’s very hard for one person to have enough interaction time to successfully transmit two languages.
Now, that being said, some people do choose to pass on two languages, and work very hard to ensure success. The vast majority of the time though, they need to bring in outside support for one or both, in order to ensure adequate input and consistency.
If you have a story of someone doing this successfully, I’d love to hear it.

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27/01/2013 · 1:08 pm

Guest post: The Power of Reading in Raising a Bilingual Child

This amazing post is courtesy of a fellow-blogger and parent of bilingual children. Adam lives and works in Japan, and we have been sharing and comparing ideas for a few months now. Adam’s specialization is reading to promote the minority language, which is a very important topic for many of my readers. He was kind enough to write this blog post for me to share with you. Enjoy, and check Adam’s blog, which is chock full of great tips and activities for every day in the bilingual home.

The Power of reading in Raising a Bilingual Child
by Adam Beck, blogger of Bilingual Monkeys

Raising a bilingual child—particularly when that child attends a majority-language school—requires a whole range of efforts to promote the development of the minority language. In My Best Tips for Raising Bilingual Kids, I offer a lengthy list of ideas to help address this challenge.

In this article, though, my focus is solely on reading, the area that I feel has had the most powerful impact on the language development of my children and the children I have worked with over the years as a teacher of bilingual kids.

Reading aloud

It seems hard to believe that something so simple, so pleasurable, could have as much influence on language development as the practice of reading aloud, and yet all my experience as a parent and teacher—as well as all the research I’ve seen on the subject (see The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease and The Power of Reading by Stephen Krashen for persuasive proof)—point to the enormous impact of this humble activity.

It’s honestly hard for me to overstate the importance of reading aloud—for all children—but it’s particularly vital when it comes to nurturing the minority language of a bilingual child. This means reading aloud every day, from day one, with the newborn on her back and the parent cuddled close with a stack of suitable books. You needn’t—and shouldn’t—wait until the child is any older. Begin right from birth and continue reading just as long as you possibly can, even after the child has begun reading on her own.

If you make reading aloud the bedrock of your efforts—at least 15 minutes a day, day in and day out—this routine will not only fuel the growth of the minority language, the child will come to associate books and reading with the warmth and pleasure of your time together. Reading aloud—picture books, poetry, chapter books, novels, and nonfiction, too—has long formed the core of my efforts to promote language development and a love of literacy.

Building a home library

Of course, in order to maintain this regular read-aloud practice, the other challenge—in addition to your firm commitment—involves obtaining a steady supply of suitable children’s books. In my experience, this is the other obstacle that parents of the minority language must make a special effort to overcome.

No matter how tight your budget, building a home library of books in your target language should at least be a small part of it. In the long run, the money you spend on books will be a modest investment with a substantial payoff: your child’s language ability, and interest in reading, will be much stronger. It’s a question of priority, in the same vein as making the time to read each day: if you have to cut back on some other aspect of your current lifestyle in order to free up funds for books, it’s an adjustment worth making, in my opinion.

I also suggest a practice of giving books as gifts for birthdays, Christmas, and other special days. Giving books as gifts—and encouraging others to do the same for your kids—is another way to add to your home library while also elevating books as “special things.”

At the same time you’re building your home library, the public library may be another source of books in the minority language. If such books are available, head there regularly with your child. You could also extend the effort to exchange books with similar families in your area.

It’s vital, as well, that you seek out suitable books for your child’s age and interests. After all, if you find the time, but not the right books, your read-aloud effort won’t be as effective and enjoyable as it should be…and could even peter right out. So you must be willing to invest additional time in searching for books that suit your child, which can easily be done online. (For English, a wealth of recommended titles can also be found in The Read-Aloud Handbook and How to Get Your Child to Love Reading.)

Subscribing to one or more children’s magazines in your target language—magazines your child would regularly look forward to receiving—is another effective way to enrich your home with appropriate material.

Reading with your children

Once your child has begun to read in the minority language, you should read with them daily, taking turns, page by page—this “shared reading” is in addition to your ongoing read-aloud time. Because the child’s listening comprehension will be considerably higher than her reading ability, up until an older age, you’ll now be working with two different kinds of books: easier books for shared reading; harder books for reading aloud.

When your child is about 3 or 4, you can add “chapter books” to your read-aloud routine (while continuing to read picture books and poetry). This is an important development, because chapter books—those that come in a series of 5 or 10 or even 20 or more books and feature familiar characters and plot lines—are a wonderful way to help hook a child on books and literacy. (For a list of such books in English, see How to Get Your Child Hooked on Books.)

For shared reading, the early books will consist of simple picture books, which can then slowly increase in difficulty as proficiency grows. Eventually, when the child is ready, you can “graduate” to suitable chapter books—particularly the chapter book series that you’ve already read aloud. Since the child has heard these stories once before (or even several times—it’s fine to reread favorite books), this should help ease her move into chapter books.

Children reading on their own

Although reading aloud should be maintained throughout childhood (both fiction and nonfiction at increasingly sophisticated levels), over time the amount of shared reading can decrease as the child reads more on her own.

All children are different, of course, and some will eagerly read by themselves. Others, however, are less inclined to pick up a book, particularly when there are already heavy demands on their time in connection with the majority-language school.

In order to increase the odds that your child will read independently, there are several strategies you might try:

1. Make use of captive reading.
What I call “captive reading” is the idea of posting reading material in a location in the home (like the bathroom), where the child’s eyes will be automatically drawn to it. In fact, the use of captive reading can start when the child is just beginning to read by putting a small whiteboard in the bathroom and writing simple messages and riddles on it. As the child’s reading proficiency grows, you can eventually post short fiction and nonfiction texts, and even write your own “serial stories” with the child as the main character. (See Turn Your Kids into Eager Readers with This Fun, Simple Strategy.)

2. Match books with interests.
Whatever interests your child exhibits, or concerns they may express, you can likely match that interest or concern with a suitable book in the minority language. If you’re proactive about this, and locate appealing titles, the child will be far more likely to spend time reading on her own.

3. Use reasonable incentives.
There are various views when it comes to “rewards,” but I’ve found that offering reasonable incentives for reading in the minority language—like a small prize or treat—can help heighten enthusiasm and maintain motivation.

Put reading at the heart of your efforts

Put reading at the very heart of your daily efforts and you’ll not only be more effective at promoting the development of the minority language, you’ll also be establishing an early love for books and literacy that will serve your child well throughout her lifetime.

Adam Beck is the blogger of Bilingual Monkeys, a site of ideas and inspiration for raising bilingual kids (without going bananas). Based in Japan, Adam is a former teacher at Hiroshima International School, and now a freelance writer. He is the father of two children who are bilingual in English and Japanese.

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21/01/2013 · 12:07 pm

Dropping a language: Is it ever the right choice?

People often presume that if a bilingual child is struggling, the best thing to do is “drop” a language. I’ve worked with parents who have had this advice from doctors, teachers, speech therapists, family and on and on. It sounds fairly logical – if your child is struggling with two (or more) languages, just drop one, and they will get better. But is it actually true?
The bottom line is that it is not true that dropping one language will help the other become stronger. Children who are struggling with bilingual language acquisition would also be struggling if they were learning only one language. And generally, children who are being raised bilingual have a true need for both languages, so it would do them no favours to drop one language. In addition, it isn’t always obvious which language would be the best candidate for “dropping”. A child who has heard two languages consistently and in amounts that are substantial (over 30% of input) may not be obviously dominant in one language or another, or they may have mixed dominance. If the choice is made to drop a language and the wrong one is chosen, the consequences can be severe and long-lasting. With young children, parents often can not really tell which language they are most mature in, in terms of cognitive development. If the strongest language, in terms of cognitive development, is removed, you are left with a child who is at a cognitive disadvantage, and that can be hard to recover from, and can have permanent effects on their learning.
I was presenting with Annick De Houwer recently, and she used a very good analogy. Imagine your child is learning to play the guitar and the piano. They are better at the guitar, although you’d like them to be better at the piano. Will having them stop playing the guitar improve their piano playing? The answer is, of course, absolutely not. Only more practice or better teaching will improve your child’s piano skills. In addition, the skills learned from playing the guitar (such as reading music) are useful to apply to learning piano as well.
I thought this illustrates very well the lack of relationship between dropping one language and improving the other. If your child is struggling, you need to consider giving them better input to learn from, or looking for outside resources (professional help etc.) that will improve their language skills.
There is one situation in which I feel that dropping a language could be the right thing to do, and that is in cases where one language has been artificially introduced. For example, parents who decide to put their children in preschool or school in a new language may sometimes find out that their child has a language or learning difficulty. If the second language is obviously (from age of introduction) not dominant, and the language is not “necessary”, but was chosen for enrichment purposes, then there may be an argument for letting the second language go. But that is another post for another day…

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01/11/2012 · 11:06 am

TinyEYE: Online, multi-language speech therapy

vOne of the most difficult problems parents can face when raising children with more than one language is the difficulty in getting accurate assessments and support if a child needs speech therapy. Unfortunately, most training programs for speech therapists do not address bilingual speech development, and few therapists have access to resources for bilingual children.
When advising parents with concerns, I always emphasize two aspects of this issue. Firstly, you need to have the child evaluated in both/all languages, to get a clear picture of their development. It isn’t as easy as you may think to determine the child’s “strongest” language – they may have more vocabulary in one, but better grammar in the other. The best case scenario is one speech therapist who can evaluate/support in both languages. That is usually not possible, so the next best choice is two or more speech therapists, working in their own languages. In this case, it’s important to work with speech therapists who are “bilingual friendly”, so that they don’t treat your child as a monolingual. However, finding local therapists who can work in other languages isn’t always easy.
A few months ago, I was introduced to a new system of telespeech, an online platform called “TinyEYE”. TinyEYE was created in Canada, where there are many remote populations where children have no access to speech therapy services. It provides professional services via Internet, with a qualified and trained speech therapist assigned to each child. This is a fantastic development not only for remote populations, but also for the international bilingual community.
TinyEYE is now working in Europe, based in the Netherlands. At this time, they can offer online therapy in Dutch, English and French, and are working on translating the materials into other languages. The breadth and depth of the therapy options available through the platform are impressive, as is the tracking system which allows parents, teachers and therapists to collaborate through the platform. An extra bonus is that it is great fun for kids, so getting them to participate should be easy.
If you are a bilingual family having difficulty finding a qualified speech therapist local to you who can work in one of these languages, it’s worth a visit to TinyEYE to see if they can help you. TinyEYE also works with schools, so if your child’s school needs access to therapists working in other languages, this could also be useful for them.
I’ve been working with bilingual families for many years, and this development is one of the most positive I’ve seen in terms of helping families access resources for their children. And that will only improve, as TinyEYE increases the number of languages available in their system.
NB This is not a paid advertisement – I’m writing about TinyEYE because I think it is a great resource for families.

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24/10/2012 · 2:21 pm

In Defense of the Bilingual Child

These three phrases, and the knowledge that goes behind them, could be the most important tools parents have when advocating for their bilingual child:

1) “His/her language development is on-target for bilingual acquisition. Would you like me to give you some resources to read about this topic?”

- This phrase demonstrates that you are not susceptible to fear-based tactics, and that you are following your child’s language development closely. In addition, it shows that you have knowledge about the topic, and have actual information behind your statements. And it shows that you are happy to be helpful and share the information with them.

2) “Research demonstrates that bilingualism has many benefits for children. Would you like me to give you some resources to read about this topic?”

- “Research demonstrates” is a powerful phrase when going up against health and education professionals. If you know what research says about bilingualism, and aren’t afraid to tell them, they will most likely defer to you rather than persist in trying to advise you. And of course, you helpfully offer to share the information with them, in case they are really interested in learning something.

3) “No, we are not worried. We have a family language plan for our children, based on the latest research. Would you like me to give you some resources to read about this topic?”

- This demonstrates that you are playing an active role in your child’s language journey, and the word “plan” shows that you are serious about what you are doing. When you throw “research” in there, it helps give you gravitas…. and of course, ever helpful, offer to share your information with them.

Now, this post may be (slightly) tongue-in-cheek, but my point is very serious. If you are choosing to raise a bilingual child in a place where this is not the norm, you need to be prepared to advocate for your child. Doctors, nurses, day care workers, teachers and other professionals you interact with may not support your choice, and may give poor or inaccurate advice about the process. Your best weapons are knowledge and conviction. Knowledge about bilingual language acquisition, knowledge that your family’s approach is a valid one, and the conviction to stand up for your child will be needed, at some point along the journey. The only question is, will you inform yourself now, or wait until you are challenged?

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08/10/2012 · 9:48 am

The Importance of Monolingual Situations for Bilingualism

I know, it sounds like a contradiction – how is monolingualism important for bilingualism? Well, one of the most pressing concerns that many bilingual or multilingual families face is how to get the children to use the minority language. Many parents I work with report that their child “understands everything I say in Spanish (or Italian, or Polish, or whichever language is the least used), but they never speak to me in Spanish!”. This is especially true of younger siblings, and school-aged children. And this is where monolingual situations are important.

If you are the minority language parent, and you also speak/understand the majority language (and even sometimes if you don’t), chances are that you have this problem. Children can be thrifty with their linguistic energies, and prefer to use the language that works with the most people. Personally, I’m not a fan of pretending not to understand when my kids speak to me in a different language than the one I want (but I know of people who use this tactic successfully). So, if you don’t want to say “I don’t understand” to get them to use the minority language, how can you encourage your children to actually use it?

“Monolingual situations” – this is what your children need. This means they need to spend time with people who speak the minority language, only (these people can pretend not to speak the majority language!). Your children need activities that only happen in the minority language. They need to be put in situations where they have no choice, if they want to communicate, but to use the minority language.

So, how do you set about finding these elusive minority language situations? The easiest way is to find other speakers of your language, and have “language play dates”, where everyone understands that the priority is to encourage the children to see the usefulness of the language, and experience a communicative need that can not be satisfied without using the minority language. This requires some discipline on the part of the parents, to ensure that they don’t “slip” into the majority language, and it may take some time for the children to adapt to the linguistic tone of the group.

Another technique that has been successful for families with young children is to introduce (in the home) monolingual resources. For example, a game that was bought in France must be played in French, no? (non?), or a puzzle bought in Poland must be puzzled in Polish. If you set up this dynamic in your home when your children are young (and gullible) it can be a useful technique for several years, eventually being replaced by monolingual books (and DVDs, and computer games…). As children get older, you need to find their personal currency – what do they want to do strongly enough that they will do it in the minority language if that is their only choice? For one family I worked with, this was a Pokemon card trading club – if the child wanted to belong to the club and trade cards, he had to do it in French (the minority language). Some careful thinking and planning are required, but the pay-off in terms of linguistic progress for the children can be great, and definitely worth it.

And finally, the best monolingual situation of all is, of course, time spent in a place where the minority language is the majority language. Many families I work with spend all their holidays in the home country of the minority-language parent, some families have two minority language parents and need to split their time between two places. And for some families, travel to the “home country” is not an option. So then, you try to bring your home country to you. A healthy Skype-relationship with family and friends can be helpful, but be aware that it may take your children some time to adapt to this form of communication. Telephone is harder for kids, but if it is your only option, then spend some time developing their “phone skills”. And of course, you can always fall back on TV – it isn’t designed to be interactive, but if the parent sits with the child and asks questions and discusses what is happening (dialogic listening) then you can use this as a language development tool.

It’s not always an easy task, to set up monolingual situations in a multilingual life, but the rewards in terms of language development are worth it, and integrating monolingual situations should be a part of any family language plan.

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26/09/2012 · 10:48 am

How much (insert language here) is enough?

Whether you are an expat family considering a new local language for your children, or a family dealing with multiple languages, the concern about amount of language is the same.
How much of a language, over what time frame, is enough for bilingualism to be successful? Or at the least, how much is enough to make it worthwhile for the parents and the children? There are three factors you need to consider when making the decision about what is “enough”.

The first is the age of the child. Generally speaking, the younger the child, the less you need to worry about “enough”. If you are considering putting your English-speaking 1-year old in a Dutch creche three times a week, for one year, that’s fine. They probably won’t gain enough Dutch to go on to be a Dutch speaker, but it won’t harm them, or their development in English, in any way (linguistically). They may be lucky and have some knock-on effects later in life in terms of other language learning, but they may not.
If you have a 7-year old and are considering school in a new language, “enough” is a much more serious issue. A school-aged child has not only language learning to do, but also content learning to do. During the language learning period (which for older children can be 3-7 years to full cognitive fluency), the child is necessarily either losing out on content learning, or having to work really, really hard to catch up at home. The social aspects of being an older child learning a language in school are also more tricky – some kids are fine with it and some kids really struggle. So, if you have older children, the point at which an immersion experience becomes “worth it” is when there is enough time to master the language, and a long-term prospect to keep it up, and willingness on the part of the child (whenever possible).
If you are a multilingual family and want your children to master more than two languages, you need to plan as much as possible for balanced input. A common number from research is that children need a minimum of 20% total input in each language. This means about 2.5 hours a day of quality input in each language you want them to be able to use. In my experience, this number is on the low side – I find that many children who get only 20% in a language are reluctant to use the language, although they may understand it well.

The second factor to consider is your language goals. If you want your child to be a fluent speaker of a language and be able to read and write, then “enough” is going to be a serious commitment. Most families find that they can manage enough input in two languages to achieve this level in two languages, but the more languages you include the harder it becomes to find the time (and energy!) to provide adequate, good quality input. When looking at your family situation then, you plan for the amount of input that will help your children reach your language goals. If you have a minority language spoken at home and want your children to be able to speak and understand it, you may be able to get away with a couple of hours every day. If you speak a minority language at home but would like your children to be able to go home to your country to university some day, the time and effort needed to develop the language to that level will be much greater (for the parents and the children).

The third factor you need to consider is the individual child. There is a common myth that all children are little sponges and can soak up many languages. To a certain extent, it is true that young children seem to learn language more easily than adults. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t really hard work, and it doesn’t mean that it comes as easily to all children. If your child is very young and used to being communication-challenged, it may not be as hard for them to be put in an environment where they need to learn to communicate in another language. If your child is preschool aged and very shy and has difficulty adapting to new situations, the pay-off for a couple of years in a different language preschool may not be worth the price for the child. This means that each child’s situation must be considered as a part of the decision, and the outcomes may not be the same for all children in a family.

So the short answer is that there is no clear answer to what is “enough”. You must look at the language opportunities, age of children, length of exposure, amount of exposure, language goals and last but not least, the child, to find the answer to your question.

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