Children who are born in the 21st Century, will grow up as global citizens. The world has become smaller, children have more knowledge of the world around them. Communication with people from other cultures with other languages is much easier than ever before. The awareness about a multilingual upbringing and education is greater than in the 20th Century. Multilingual speaking children are ‘normal,’ due to the increased immigration and more ‘mixed-cultural’ marriages. Monolingual people are becoming rare exceptions. In the next sections strategies on how to raise a child multilingual, the importance of the minority language and the conditions for a continuous multilingual development are described.
4.3.1 Multilingual language acquisition strategies
Different researchers show the benefits/ advantages and disadvantages of multilingualism and there have been studies about the best method to raise a multilingual and multicultural child. One of the recommendations nowadays is: start as early as possible to educate a child multilingual. But there are different approaches that allows the child to develop the consciousness of two or more language systems more quickly than others. Which strategy is
the best one to raise a child multilingual? And what are the best strategies to continue to be a multilingual person? What are the conditions to become a permanent multilingual adult?
Grosjean (2010) presents five strategies that parents can follow to promote bilingual children:
one parent - one language strategy; home - outside the home strategy; one - language-first strategy; language - time strategy; free - alternation strategy.
The best known (and also commonly used in pre-schools) is the first strategy "one parent- one language." Each of the parents speaks a different language to the child (for example, the father Dutch and the mother Frisian). Based on this strategy, common practice in day-care centres includes that the practitioners accommodate which language they will speak to the children (for example, one caretaker speaks Breton and the other one speaks French). The child is able to discern the two languages and to make the necessary separations faster and more efficiently. Grosjean (2010) thinks it’s a fine strategy in the very first months of language development, when children are primarily with their parents. But as soon as the children go out into the outside world this strategy can become a problem. The minority language will eventually have less and less input, children hear and use the majority language much more. Children don’t want to be an outsider, when they speak the minority language in a majority language environment.
The second strategy is also well known, the “home-outside the home” strategy. The child speaks one language (the minority language) at home and a majority language outside. The child learns and practices the community language at school while the parent's native language is learnt at home. The majority language will take care of itself outside the home through day care, school, friends, other family members, peers and watching television. In mixed families however, one of the inconveniences of this strategy, according Grosjean (2011), is the fact that one of the parents will probably have to speak his or her second (or third) language to the child so that everyone speaks just one language in the home.
The third strategy Grosjean (2010) describes is the “one-language- first” strategy. Usually the first language is the minority language. Parents make sure that every contact the child has, with other caretakers, family members, playmates, television, and so on, has to take place in the minority language. Once that language is well accomplished parents allow the other (usually the majority) language to be acquired. The acquisition of the majority language, the community language, happens usually very fast. This strategy is successful when the family is surrounded by a well-organized and quite large minority language community so that the child is given all the language input he or she needs.
Some immersion methods shows some overlap with the “one-language- first” strategy. Immersion programs may be categorized according to age and extent of immersion. Cummins (2000) describes different immersion programs used for instruction by classroom- teachers.
The “language-time” strategy is the fourth. Languages are spoken by a particular timetable. For example, in the morning the minority language and in the afternoon the majority language. Another example is to speak the one language during the first part of the week and the other language in the second part. According Grosjean (2010) this strategy is not very successful in the family setting, the consistency is an issue. However, this strategy is used in immersion and dual-language educational programs and it is successful in that kind of environment. For example, the trilingual primary education system in the Province of Fryslân.94 The Network of Trilingual Schools includes 42 (out of 500) primary schools in Fryslân. The three languages (Frisian, English and Dutch) are taught as subjects and are used as a medium of instruction. Frisian and Dutch are offered as a double immersion method, and English is offered a half hour per week to 4 year old pupils. In the city of Vaasa (Finland), there are pre- and primary schools with more than two languages, some Swedish immersion programme comprises four different languages in primary education (grades 1-6, from 7 years old). Finnish is the students’ first language (mother tongue), whereas Swedish is used as the main immersion language. English and optional German are introduced as additional languages at primary level. 95 In Wales there are some pilots with pupils educated in Key Stage 2 (pupils aged 10-11 years) where half an hour a week devoted is to a third language (French, German, Spanish).96 According to the publications about the teaching of in Breton, there are no official trilingual primary schools in Brittany. However, some of the catholic Breton bilingual schools use the Programme Multilingue Breton; Breton and French are used as a medium of instruction, and they offer English as subject since the age of 3. In a few day care centers, some practitioners (from 3 month to 3 years old) introduce English as a short activity around rhymes and little games one time each week.
However, in Fryslân, Finland and Brittany some primary school teachers offer more and more frequently a foreign language, usually English, to their pupils. When children attend secondary school, mostly at age 12, they have been in contact with three languages; the minority language (Frisian, Swedish, Breton), the majority language (Dutch, Finnish, French) and the international language (English).
The last strategy is the “free-alternation” strategy. Parents use two languages interchangeably, letting such factors as person, situation and the time. It is far the most natural strategy but its success rate suffers from the fact that the majority language becomes dominant as the child spends more time outside the home. (Grosjean, 2010).
4.3.2 Importance of strengthening of the minority language
Monolingual children are fluent in their home language at the age of four or five. Cummins (2000: 34) stresses the fact that immigrant students (children aged 12 years or older) require at least five years (and frequently much longer) to catch up to their majority language peers in academic-related language skills. The problem is that many students become discouraged and fall behind or drop out. (Grosjean, 2010: 234).
94
Primary school in Fryslân starts at age 4.
95 Björklund S. et. al… (2011) Trilingual Primary Education in Europe. Some developments with regard to the provisions of trilingual primary
education in minority language communities of the European Union. Leeuwarden/Ljouwert: Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning
Children, with the minority language as home language, attending pre-school provisions where early immersion programs are offered in the majority (mostly State language) will not develop into balanced multilingual students. The status of the minority language is low and the development of the home language can be interrupted (Campos & Rosenberg 1995, Duquette 1992). Cummins describes that those pre-school programs, that minority language speakers teach in the minority language, ultimately lead to better results in the majority language, than programs when a part is taught in the minority language. The level of development of children’s mother tongue is a strong predictor of their second language development Good minority pre-school programs may eventually lead to a better command of the majority language (Campos & Rosenberg, 1995; Cummins 2000).
Research shows that the langauge attitude of adults effects the language attitude of children. López (2005) claims that children follow their parents’ attitude and that a positive parental attitude positively affects the language learning progress. The sudy of McGrath & Repetti (2000) shows that there is a relationship between parental expectations and the actual academic achievements of their children. These two statements also apply for regional & minority languages.