Language Use Strategies for Bilingual Families

When you speak more than one language at home or when you live in a country where your mother tongue is a minority or a foreign language, your child is experiencing simultaneous bilingualism. This means that their language skills are developing at the same time (but not necessarily at the same rate).

Depending on your situation there are certain strategies that you can use to support your child. I, personally, believe that you need to have a rough plan about which strategy to use and when to ensure:

• Consistency
• Flexibility
• Quality language input
• A certain kind of balance between the languages

Consistency here doesn’t mean that you can’t change strategies along the way temporarily or permanently. Quite the opposite, your family language plan might need to be revised when your circumstances change read more about this here about Family Language Planning. By consistency I mean that you should learn about what strategies are available to you and use them to best fit your goals.

Some strategies might be more appropriate to your situation than others. Generally speaking there are three main approaches that promote simultaneous bilingualism:

• One Parent One Language (OPOL):

  for families where the parents have two different mother tongues

• Minority Language at Home (MLaH):

  for families where the parents speak the same language but this language is not the majority language spoken in the society (e.g. Swedish if the family lives in Sweden)

• Domains of use:

  for families who would like to all use all their languages regardless of their proficiency level

One Parent One Language Approach

This is the most well-known approach recommended for bilingual families. In theory, it sounds really simple and straightforward. In practice, however, it can cause challenges in scenarios like the following ones:

• One parent speaks the majority language and the other speaks the minority language of the society (Remember, minority language here means for example French when a family lives in Sweden)

  While during the early years it is relatively easy to maintain both languages, with the start of schooling this can change drastically. From the school age onwards there will be an imbalance between the amount of input from the majority language over the minority language. In my experience, the situation is quite different in case the minority language is English.

• One parent speaks the other parent’s language, but the other one doesn’t

  Even though the parents try their best to be consistent with the OPOL approach, the children soon realize that it’s enough to use one language to communicate. Hence, the other language is not necessary. This is especially true, if the language that both parents speak is the majority language. Once the children start using only one language, they become passive bilinguals at the most.

• Both parents speak both languages (well)

  The challenge in this situation is to remain consistent. Contrary to the myth related to OPOL, parents do not confuse their children by switching languages. Consistency in this case helps the parents to make sure that they provide enough quality language input.

• The parents use a third language to communicate with each other (e.g. a German speaking parent and a French speaking parent speak English to each other)

  The “side-effect” of this situation is that the children will pick up the third language, which can further complicate the situation.

• One parent’s language has a high status and the other one has a low status in the community (e.g. one parent speaks Swedish and the other speaks Persian while living in Sweden)

  As children grow, the opinions of peers and the outside society will play a bigger and bigger part in their lives. It impacts the way they look at their languages. This can make it difficult for the minority language parent to keep the motivation going. Especially, if this parent works a lot or often has to travel (or both). Sometimes you might wonder if it is worth all the hard work in the end. It is important to remember that a language is also a way to connect and express emotions. At least, because of this it is worth the challenge.

To sum it up, One Parent One Language is an approach that can be used, but it is far from being clear cut or simple. When applying it, keep flexibility in mind. This is a great approach in certain situations, but realistically speaking, it doesn’t guarantee success on its own. The key is to have a solid foundation to build on.

Minority Language at Home (MLaH)

This is an approach families with the same home language use naturally. However, it can also work with families where one parent speaks a minority language and the other one the majority language. For example an Estonian couple living in the Netherlands will most probably speak Estonian at home and Dutch or English everywhere else.

This approach, however, can be an option for a family where the parents speak two different home languages. Of course, the parent who speaks the majority language (e.g. Swedish living in Sweden) should be able to speak the minority language (e.g. Estonian). In this case the family makes a mutual agreement that Estonian will be their family language.

The downside of this approach is that the children will mostly learn the majority language (in our previous example Swedish) in a preschool or school setting and the social interactions related to that. While this can come relatively easy for some children, it might be challenging for others.

This is why it is really important to have continuous discussions about how the approach is working. It is equally important to think of support systems outside of school and home. Extended family members, friends, parent groups can be of great support when it comes to language, too.

Domains of use

This approach is the least well-known of the three, but it can be really successful. The idea is that each language is linked to a time or a topic instead of them being connected to a person. This strategy clearly requires all family members to be on board. They will need to be willing to speak all the languages regardless of their proficiency level. Careful planning is also needed when using this approach to work successfully.

Here are some suggestions on how this approach can work in practice:

By time

• Certain days of the week language x is used, the other days language y is used
• Bedtime stories are read in language x

By place

• School language is used at school, home language is used at home
• In certain rooms of the house language x is used

By topic

• Board games are played in language y
• School topics are discussed in the school language

Of course, these are just a few ideas. Feel free to adjust it to your needs. This approach is really powerful in sending a message about:

• Collaboration
• Valuing each other’s languages
• Empathy towards speaking a second language one hasn’t necessarily mastered yet
• All languages are equal

Obviously the above mentioned three approaches don’t have to be used in isolation. On the contrary, I encourage you to combine these approaches or even elements of them to best support your family’s needs.