Bilingual Children

This practical and reassuring guide will enable readers to make informed decisions about how to raise their child bilingually.

Are you raising your child bilingually, or planning to do so in the future, but are unsure how to proceed? Using a question-and-answer format, this practical and reassuring guide will enable readers to make informed decisions about how to raise their child with two or more languages. To grow up bilingually is a necessity or an opportunity for more children today than ever before. However, parents are frequently uncertain about what to do, or even fear that they may be putting their child's development at risk. Disentangling fact from myth, it shows that a child can acquire more than one 'first' language simultaneously and that one language need not have negative effects on the other. Each chapter is devoted to a question typically asked by parents in counselling sessions, followed by a concise answer, summaries of the evidence and practical tips.

Autorentext

Jürgen M. Meisel is Professor emeritus and former Chair of the Research Center on Bilingualism at the Universität Hamburg, as well as Adjunct Professor and Distinguished Fellow, Faculty of Arts, University of Calgary. He has been engaged in parent counselling for more than thirty-five years. He is a founding editor of the journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition and author of seven books and numerous articles.

Zusammenfassung
An increasing number of families live in environments requiring a bilingual education for their children. This book addresses the major issues of concern for parents about child bilingualism, separating the fact from the fiction.

Inhalt

1. Bilingualism in early childhood - disentangling myths and facts; 2. How infants become native speakers; 3. Two languages in one mind - differentiating linguistic systems; 4. Keeping languages apart: mixing, interference and interaction of languages; 5. Language dominance, strong and weak languages; 6. Trilingual and more - the role of input; 7. The age question; 8. Benefits and advantages of child bilingualism; References; Index.