March 25, 2020
by Mary Pat
Comments Off on How To Teach Your Child A Word in Any Language

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
215 Comments

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

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

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
236 Comments

The surprising way to support your child’s second language development

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

September 5, 2019
by Mary Pat
180 Comments

The truth about multilingual children’s vocabularies

The truth is- it’s complicated! But there are some things we can say for definite and I’ve put those in bold. Vocabulary means the words your child knows and uses; kind of like their mental dictionary. The size of multilingual … Continue reading

July 4, 2019
by Mary Pat
143 Comments

Three crucial things to remember about language development in bilingual children.

Dr Kathyrn Kohnert, a speech & language therapist and researcher in the US wrote a very interesting article in 2010 for speech & language therapists. Her aim was to explore how to best provide speech & language therapy for bilingual … Continue reading

April 26, 2019
by Mary Pat
312 Comments

What to expect from a speech and language therapy assessment

So you’re a parent of a bilingual little girl who has just turned three. She doesn’t use very many words but she is interested in interacting and seems to understand a lot. You’d like to know her language level. You’d … Continue reading

March 12, 2019
by Mary Pat
191 Comments

6 Reasons Why Dropping A Language Is A Bad Idea

So you’re a multilingual family, you’re worried about your child’s speech and language development, and a health care professional has told you to focus on one language only. Here are 6 reasons why that advice is wrong. #1 It shows … Continue reading