WHAT ARE THE 10 SUCCESS FACTORS?
As the name suggests, the 10 Success Factors determine the success of your child’s journey to becoming bilingual or multilingual. You will see that as parents, we are in control of these 10 factors that can give us enormous power. Once you know these 10 factors, it’s up to you to put them into practice for your children or consciously ignore them while accepting the consequences.
Success Factor #1: A Clear Goal and Strategy
Parents who know exactly what languages they want their children to speak are more likely to raise bilingual children than those who simply know they want bilingual children with shifting ideas about which languages to choose. Therefore, it is important to clarify your reasons, that is, what is important to you in each language of your child (for example, English so my son can talk to his grandparents, Spanish so he can talk to his friends at school and German because that is my husband’s language). mother tongue). It is equally critical to choose a language strategy and then stick with it throughout your child’s language journey. There are several strategies to choose from. The most common are: OPOL “one person-one-language”, LC “language by context” or ML@H “majority language at home”.
Success Factor #2: Timing
You’ve probably heard the basic rule before: the sooner you start exposing your children to languages, the better. Do you also know why? There are 4 main advantages:
• the earlier you start, the better your child’s pronunciation in that language
• young children are not yet ashamed of making mistakes and just talk
• the simple vocabulary fits with the topics generally covered in the age group
• early language learning does not link it with reading and writing
Success Factor #3: Regular Exposure Time
For each language you want your child to learn, you need to provide regular and repeated exposure to the language for a couple of years, usually 2-4 years. For the first languages we do it naturally, simply by speaking to our children. For other languages, we must make an effort to provide this exposure. The amount of effort, however, will vary depending on your language goals.
If you want your child to gain basic skills in a language, you will need to provide at least two exposures per week of at least 30 minutes each. If you want your child to become fluent, you must provide at least 60 minutes of quality exposure per day. Research recommends exposure for a third of your child’s waking day.
As a result, your child may hear 3 different languages in different proportions, for example 50%/30%/20% during an average day or week. These proportions will change all the time and that is normal. Don’t expect the process to be linear. At times, she will feel that language A is progressing very well and that she should try harder to provide information for language B. A few months later, she may feel the opposite. When the astronauts traveled to the moon they were off course 90% of the time, but they constantly corrected their course and achieved their goal. Let that be your inspiration!
Success Factor #4: Quality of Exposure
To put it right off the bat, it won’t be enough to put your child in front of a foreign language television program for an hour a day and expect them to become bilingual. The quality of the exposure is key here and that means:
– create interactive language experiences (ideally two or more people talking)
– have a language input in the correct quality/pronunciation (ideally native speakers)
– use a variety of language sources in different contexts (e.g. media, people, experiences…)
In Dubai, where I taught this program for 4 years, I have often had families who expected their children to learn English from maids, who only spoke broken English.
Children will see the adults and older peers in their lives as role models and that goes for language too. Whatever language you display as parents (or caregivers, older siblings, etc.), your children will speak the same way.
So when you choose the language course, the caretaker, the language CD, make sure that the quality is what you want for your children. And experiment with the wide variety of language materials available. You will find many ideas in the resource link at the end of the article.
Success Factor #5: Child Motivation
You may not know it, but you have tremendous control over your child’s motivation to learn languages. There are two broad categories of motivation: a) intrinsic motivation (when the child does something of his own free will) and b) extrinsic motivation (when the child does something because he receives an incentive or avoids external punishment).
While you can easily imagine how you can use extrinsic motivation to influence your child’s behavior, the best way is to work on building intrinsic motivation. Here are some examples of when a child is intrinsically motivated to learn a language:
• when he/she just needs it to get by or be part of the peer group (for example, in a new daycare center)
• when you like or even love the teacher (the reverse is also true)
• when you like to spend time in the countryside/with people who speak this language
• when you love someone from that country
As parents, you can set a good example by showing respect for the country and an interest in the language you want your child to learn, perhaps even learn it yourself, and share your enthusiasm with your child. You can create opportunities for your child to like the destination country and its people by traveling there and having a good time, connecting with people from that country and helping your child find peers, signing them up for their favorite activities (be it soccer or pottery) in the desired language. For younger children you can help by speaking well and positively about family members or people from that country. And of course, show lots of patience and give lots of praise for even small progress or just good effort.
Success Factor #6: Perseverance in Parenting
Bilingualism is not a term or semester project like an art or pottery class. Once you have made up your mind and aligned yourself with your partner/extended family, you will be engaged for a couple of years and your ability to stay connected to your distant goal, your ability to persevere and adapt even in new and changing circumstances will be decisive for success. language of their children. . One of the best ways is to find a group of like-minded people.
Success Factor #7: Strategy Consistency
Once you’ve chosen a strategy, it’s important to stick with it throughout your child’s language journey. The safety of her little son and her relationship with him/her depend on it. The language you choose is more than a means of communication. It is your emotional bond with your child. The literature on bilingualism recommends not changing the strategy once chosen, unless your child is old enough to accept it explicitly.
Success Factor #8: Fun with exposure
This is one of my favorite success factors because making language learning fun not only makes it work for your children, but also makes it so enjoyable for us parents. Who does not like to see our children smile? Using games and songs is one of the best ways to make language learning fun. Language learning requires a lot of repetition and games and songs provide an opportunity for natural repetition without having to stubbornly repeat the same sentences. They also create situations to use real language instead of made-up sentences in textbooks or artificial situations in role-plays. Thus, games and songs create interactive confidence in a fun way.
Success Factor #9: Plan for Continuity
Some of us are expatriates and our lives take us from one country to another with new circumstances that turn what seemed simple into more of a challenge. In short, for many of us life is constantly changing. As parents, we must really commit to our children’s bilingualism and think about the future. It takes approximately 2 years of continuous and regular exposure to a language for your child to become established or comfortable in a language. Where could you be in 2 years? How will you ensure the continuity of your child’s language development and goals? Keep these questions in mind when deciding how many languages you want your child to learn.
Fortunately, once you’ve established your goal and strategy, all you need to change in a new situation is your language plan and its execution.
Success Factor #10: Siblings
Siblings can be a great help or a hindrance to your younger children’s bilingualism, depending on how well your older child’s language journey has gone. If you’ve done it right, the older sibling will provide additional language exposure for their younger sibling and get more verbal exchange in the desired language, but if you missed the boat with the former, this can backfire on the second/third as well and the tip . the language is balanced in the wrong direction.
Finally, I mentioned an eleventh factor: your child’s aptitude for languages. This is a genetic factor and the only one over which you have no influence or control. Some kids are just better at languages than others. However, all the other 10 factors are within your sphere of influence. So use them!
To create your family-friendly language success plan for your child, I recommend the “Make Your Child Multilingual!” available at http://www.amazon.com/Make Your Child Multilingual, which has been shown to work for hundreds of families before. In 10 easy steps, this workbook guides and trains you to end up with a powerful personal success plan tailored to your family’s needs.
