January 20, 2021
by Mary Pat
163 Comments
Sorry it’s taken me so long to finish this three part series on language in twins. Snowed under while working from home and utterly exhausted before Christmas put a stop to my gallop! Back in action now and ready to … Continue reading
September 28, 2020
by Mary Pat
Comments Off on Language Development in Multilingual Twins
My last post which you can read here is all about language development in monolingual twins. There isn’t a lot of recent research on that topic and there’s even less out there when it comes to multilingual twins. I kept … Continue reading
August 20, 2020
by Mary Pat
Comments Off on Are twins slower to talk?
This is the first of a three part series about speech and language development in twins. Myself and Ute Limacher-Riebold of Ute’s Intenational Lounge are putting our heads together to look at the research and real-life experiences. Be sure … Continue reading
May 6, 2020
by Mary Pat
Comments Off on How To Encourage Your Child To Use Your Home Language
So in your family you need two languages; one is a home language and one is the community language. You speak your home language (German) with your child and your partner speaks English with them- the community language. You and … Continue reading
April 16, 2020
by Mary Pat
2 Comments
#1 multilingual children have two separate language systems from early on and they don’t get confused. Yes the languages influence each other but that’s not a sign of confusion. In fact, it’s a sign of separateness. You can only mix … Continue reading
March 25, 2020
by Mary Pat
Comments Off on How To Teach Your Child A Word in Any Language
So we know that vocabulary is very important for learning to read and especially for understanding what you read. Children learn a lot of words! Some estimates say that school-aged children learn around 3000 new words a year while children … Continue reading
January 16, 2020
by Mary Pat
Comments Off on Learning English at school: how long does it take?
How long should it take for your child to learn English once they start school? If you and your partner speak home languages and your child begins to learn English when they go to school, you might be worried … Continue reading
December 16, 2019
by Mary Pat
Comments Off on How to do Dialogic Reading with your child in any language
In my last post, you found out about dialogic book reading and how to use books as props for conversations with your multilingual child in whatever language you need. (You can read about the 11 Principles of Dialogic Reading here. There … Continue reading
November 22, 2019
by Mary Pat
Comments Off on How To Read Together To Build Your Child’s Language Effectively
You can Another proven way to support your child’s language development (whether they have a language problem or not) is dialogic book reading. I’m going to cover how to do it in two blog posts as it’s too much to … Continue reading
October 23, 2019
by Mary Pat
1 Comment
You speak two languages at home. One of them is a home language like Polish which both you and your partner speak. The other one is a community language like English. You feel most comfortable speaking with your children in … Continue reading