Commentary: Raising bilingual children is challenging but immensely rewarding
SINGAPORE: Parents in Singapore often report significant stress when raising children to speak their mother natural language.
In spite of their best efforts, fifty-fifty at a very immature age, children can just refuse to speak in the female parent tongue. This tin cause family strain and even disharmony around bilingualism.
Even though parents value the ideals of bilingualism, in practice, raising multilingual children can be challenging.
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This is non limited to Singapore. Annick de Houwer, a linguistics professor in Frg, has written extensively of "harmonious bilingualism".
Noting parents might feel shame when their children resist speaking their female parent natural language, or that children's resistance towards the female parent tongue can cause internal family conflict, Professor de Houwer is a strong and powerful advocate for cultivating positive attitudes towards bilingualism within the family.
Simply for many parents in Singapore, mother natural language learning has go the stuff of classrooms deeply intertwined with bookish success. As a result, children too can associate the female parent tongue primarily with homework, exams, and rote learning, causing stress.
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GENUINELY Hard TO Raise BILINGUAL CHILDREN
Raising bilingual children is genuinely hard. Unfortunately, information technology often becomes harder every bit children get older.
All over the world, there is evidence that children gravitate towards the language of their peers and larger community as they mature.
For many in Singapore, that language is English. As our children abound, they feel a potent desire to socially conform to their environment.
For example, children offset speaking like their peers in terms of accent and colloquialism, shedding the dwelling accent in favour of the accent used amongst their friends.
In a similar manner, speaking the language that prevails in the larger community tin can become a powerful force. For many students, English language is also the language of popular culture and entertainment choices, which gives it a great deal of social appeal.
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Even children who take potent female parent natural language proficiency in early childhood, after a few years of primary school in English, tin get ascendant users of English over the mother natural language.
Children'south views of their female parent tongue tin turn from positive to negative within a few brusque years. For this reason, igniting children's motivation to speak their mother tongue tin be a meaning challenge.
CULTIVATING POSTIVITY AROUND Mother TONGUE
So, what can we do? First, we can innovate our children to environments where the use of the female parent tongue is relevant and useful to children in their own optics.
In my experience equally a bilingualism researcher and as a parent of bilingual children, I have noticed that every bit adults, we often cite specific reasons for why nosotros want our children to know their mother natural language that are of import to us as parents.
We often think about how helpful their female parent tongue will exist in their adult lives, for their academic test scores and after success, and other existent-world factors that don't always entreatment to children.
Instead, thinking almost reasons that might resonate with a child may exist more than effective. What opportunities volition children feel they will miss out on if they practice non know their female parent natural language? Are those opportunities of personal value to the child?
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Studies have shown that children who see the linguistic communication as relevant to their personal goals learn information technology more readily and with greater motivation than those for whom female parent tongue utilize is limited to the classroom.
A special connection with a warm and caring female parent tongue teacher, an affinity for songs or games associated with i's culture and language, or a special bond with a grandparent who speaks the mother tongue tin engage children in their heritage language.
Information technology'due south worth remembering that for each child, the touchpoint with the mother tongue is different. Equally with virtually things, young children's preferences can be highly idiosyncratic.
Learning about what makes your own child tick with regards to the mother tongue and building off that connexion with the language can assistance a child break through motivational barriers.
PERSISTENCE IS KEY
One of the most common complaints I hear from parents is that their child has stopped talking to them in the female parent natural language and merely wants to communicate in English language.
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This is very common: Many children go through a phase where they resist or altogether refuse responding in the female parent natural language, fifty-fifty if they tin can understand what is being said.
When faced with these challenges, it is piece of cake to default back to English. Just persistence is key.
Without creating negativity and tension, families should continue to speak in their mother natural language to children to provide continued exposure and gradually build children's willingness to appoint in conversation.
In full general, children who speak (and not just understand) the female parent natural language fare meliorate with bilingualism than those who only understand. Parents should encourage and motivate children to use the mother tongue, all the while accepting that this may exist a long and gradual procedure.
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To help with female parent tongue learning, bilingualism researchers have often argued for setting upwards individualised goals.
Is your main goal for your child to get a high PSLE score, for your kid to somewhen live in the country where the mother natural language is dominant, to keep contact with extended family unit, for your children to pass the language onto their children, or some combination of factors?
Recognising and acknowledging these goals tin can help families to straight their efforts and resource to the kind of bilingualism they aspire to. In thinking of means to realise these goals, developing strategies to foster the child'south personal interest is very beneficial to female parent tongue learning.
BUILDING A PERSONAL Connection WITH Female parent TONGUE
Finally, it can cause stress for some bilingual families when their children aspire to drop the mother tongue at the first opportunity – peculiarly if it has been a source of intense academic stress or if the kid feels disinclined towards learning additional languages.
I often poll my students on their relationship with their mother natural language. Those for whom the mother tongue serves every bit a social or family connector often express more fondness and motivation for the mother tongue than those whose mother tongue experience has been purely bookish.
Edifice a personal connection with the mother natural language, outside of the classroom, can become a long fashion towards encouraging its utilize.
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Even for parents whose children have dropped the mother tongue, they can have some comfort in research that suggests children who learnt a second language earlier in life detect it easier to pick information technology back up as adults, fifty-fifty when they take petty or no memory of it. Languages encountered early in life hold a special and dedicated place in our heed and aren't piece of cake to erase.
At that place is no doubtfulness that raising multilingual children tin can be challenging for many families. Information technology is most certainly a marathon, not a sprint.
But the rewards can exist immense. Knowing our female parent tongue can bring bang-up joy and fulfillment, every bit well as valuable connections to our extended family, personal history, and civilisation.
Leher Singh is Acquaintance Professor and Director of Research at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore.
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/mother-tongue-parent-child-teach-school-bilingual-language-learn-248656
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