November 10, 2022
by Mary Pat
Comments Off on 5 Ways To Support Home Languages in Early Childhood Interactions
Welcome to the second post in the series about how early childhood educators can support multilingual children’s language development, especially the home languages. Remember how Zheng and colleagues in Australia looked at the research to find what works? Last time, … Continue reading
September 10, 2021
by Mary Pat
Comments Off on Eight things to do when you’re worried that your child is struggling to read
And we’re back! Phyllis Jordan, my speech and language therapy colleague and friend have 8 tips for you if you’re worried about your child learning to read. In our first post, we shared 14 ways for helping your child learn … Continue reading
August 26, 2021
by Mary Pat
Comments Off on 14 Ways To Help Your Child Learn To Read
It’s that time of year again when school starts and we stumble through the first few days of getting back into a routine. Do you remember learning to read? I have a vague recollection of books about a boy and … Continue reading
April 21, 2021
by Mary Pat
Comments Off on Learning to Read and Write in Two Or More Languages
This is a massive topic! There’s so much debate about methods and strategies and timing for learning to read and write. I’m not going to try and cover everything in this post or we’d be here forever! I’m just going … Continue reading
March 18, 2021
by Mary Pat
Comments Off on Does the speech & language therapist need to speak all of your languages?
So your multilingual child is going to see a speech and language therapist (SLT) and you’re wondering if the SLT needs to be multilingual too. The short answer here is no. What the SLT needs to be is culturally competent. … Continue reading
January 20, 2021
by Mary Pat
Comments Off on Do Twins Have A Secret Language?
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
Comments Off on 8 Things To Remember If Your Multilingual Child Needs Speech & Language Therapy
#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