Raising Multilingual Children

Julia Festman works at the Pedagogical University Tyrol, Austria. She is the mother of Aya (12) and Noam (8), and they speak German, English and some Hebrew.Gregory J. Poarch works at the University of Münster, Germany. He is the father of Loïc (15) who speaks Dutch, English and German.Jean-Marc Dewaele works at Birkbeck, University of London, UK. He is the father of Livia (20) who speaks English, Dutch, French, some Spanish and some martial art Japanese.

The book is successful in clearly communicating the processes involved in multilingual acquisition to readers who might not have a prior knowledge. It is effectively organized in a way that leads readers to understand why it is important to acquire multiple languages, what to expect during this process, and how to assist children to successful acquisition. The cases of the children provide real-life examples to illustrate and simplify concepts such as code switching, cross-linguistic interference, transfer errors and language awareness, which might be foreign concepts to individuals without a background in the field of linguistics.

• PrefaceChapter 1. Ten Good Reasons for Raising a Child with More Than One Language BEFORE Entering SchoolChapter 2. The Stories of Our Multilingual ChildrenChapter 3. Some Background Information on Learning, Methods and Language Policies, and Suggestions to Ensure Successful Early Multilingual AcquisitionChapter 4. Developing a Good Language Policy for the Multilingual FamilyChapter 5. How to Foster a Multilingual Home and How to Deal With Some Concerns about MultilingualismConclusion