Empowering caregivers of young emerging bilingual children with evidence-based strategies for the home
Haley Gomez, Masters of Science Candidate ‘19
Recently, a leader of a bilingual mom group approached me requesting tips from an SLP perspective about how to encourage bilingualism in the home. I found it to be more difficult than I expected to translate the wealth of information I have learned through NYU to clear, concise and applicable tips for these caregivers. It shocked me how difficult it can be to explain the core strategies we use in preschool language intervention in caregiver-centered language. It was helpful for me to delve back into the research and consider it from a caregiver’s perspective. Here I have pulled out my own strategies from my bilingual SLP toolbox, with an explanation for caregivers of bilingual (Spanish-English) children. I used Spanish and English because those are the two languages in which I am fluent; however, these can be applied to any two or more languages used.
Strategy 1: Play (Bloom & Lahey, 1978; Lahey, 1988; Westby, 2010)
According to Bloom & Lahey (1978) and Westby (2010), the highest level of language complexity in preschoolers occurs in the context of naturalistic play. Many SLPs use play therapy to facilitate language development. Play therapy is effective not only because it is interesting and fun to the child, but also because it develops a connection between you and the child. This connection is important because it helps the child become confident, curious and motivated in their language learning, and it helps you to establish language routines.
Tip: Use manipulable objects, such as a playhouse and characters, and sit on the floor with your child. Follow her lead and model words or short phrases that are appropriate for your child’s level in your target language (for me, this is Spanish).
Strategy 2: Routines (and sabotage!)
Routines constitute essentials ‘funds of knowledge’ (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992) that all children draw upon for learning about the world about them. Speaking of routines, this where your canciones infantiles, your nursery rhymes and everyday songs and sayings come in.
Tip: To create opportunities for language growth, use sabotage by messing up a predictable routine (on purpose!) You can do this by pretending to forget the words of one of your frequent songs. For example: “Los pollitos dicen, pío pío pío, cuando tienen hambre, cuando….” Stop—exaggerate your surprised facial expression and pretend like you forgot the words, and wait for your child to finish the line— “tienen frío!”
Strategy 3: Parallel talk
This is a strategy used frequently with preverbal children, but it can also be applied when practicing a home language or a school language with your child.
Tip: While you are playing alongside your child, comment in real time about what they are doing. SLPs use animated voices with lots of emotion and inflection when using this strategy to help the child understand the emotional meaning behind the words while engaged in play: this is useful in developing pragmatic skills while also increasing language complexity.
[English] “Wow, your car is going fast! Go, go, go…oh no! He crashed! He fell down.”
[Spanish] “Wow, tu carro va MUY rápido! Adelante adelante…oh no, chocó! Se cayó.”
Strategy 4: Extension (Roberts & Kaiser, 2011).
This strategy takes a child’s utterance and extends it by adding details to it. I love this strategy because it is child-directed. It takes what the child says independently and enrichens it, validating what the child has said and giving them the words to express new information about it.
Tip: Help the child learn more and more complex language, slowly, within their zone of proximal development. It’s important to validate what the child says and add only one or two extra details to the utterance in order to keep your model within the zone of proximal development. This means that it is just slightly more complex than what the child produces, but still simple enough for them to understand and imitate.
For example, if my son sees a horse and says: “Es un caballo,” I might say: “Sí! Es un caballo. Mira, el caballo corre.”
Strategy 5: Read for vocabulary exposure (Rowe, 2012)
Rowe (2012) found that both quantity and quality of parents’ vocabulary usage with their children significantly impacted the size of their vocabularies a year later. This means that, as a caregiver, it is important to both expose your child to a wide range of vocabulary words (a high quantity) but also to ensure that you choose rich vocabulary words that are slightly more complex than the words your child is using to enrich their vocabulary (quality).
Tip: The best way to do this is through reading a wide variety of books and by talking with your children within a variety of situations and experiences. Check out your local library or online sites for culturally abnd linguistically-responsive books! Here are a few places to find books in Spanish and English:
https://freekidsbooks.org/subject/spanish/
https://usborne.com/browse-books/catalogue/subject/1/L/LS/spanish/
Strategy 6: Recasting
Recasting takes a child’s simple utterance and introduces a different linguistic form by stating the same idea as the child in a different form. This can be used in many ways to help your child expand their grammatical forms in their second language. Tip: You can take the child’s utterance and turn it into a question, turn it into past tense or future tense, or add complexity to it to help them develop more complex language.
Example: If the child says “Bebé quiere comer” I might say “Bebé quiere comer? Qué quiere comer bebé?” to turn his utterance into a question, and then make it a more complex “what” question.
And finally…and to be used with all previous strategies:
Translanguaging (and ask the early childhood educational setting or school of your child to help you). Translanguaging is the process in which a bilingual child achieves more complex language by using tools from all the languages they speak. In order to support translanguaging, it is important to validate what the child says in any or all of the languages to which they are learning (Garcia & Sanchez, 2018)
Tip: Translanguaging is best supported by exposing your child to rich vocabulary and experiences in both languages, when possible. Schools or early childhood settings also have an important role in this process of dual-language or multilingual empowerement. To learn more about translanguaging and how you can support it, visit https://www.cuny-nysieb.org/translanguaging-resources/.
Best of luck, Padres y Tutores! ¡Sí se puede!
References
Bilingual Service Delivery: Key Issues. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.asha.org/PRPSpecificTopic.aspx?folderid=8589935225§ion=Key_Issues
Bloom, L., & Lahey, M. (1978). Language development and language disorders. Macmillan Pub Co.
García, O., & Sánchez, M.T. (2018). Transformando la educación de bilingües emergentes en el estado de Nueva York. Language, Education, and Multilingualism, 1, 138-156.
Golinkoff, R. M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2000). How Babies Talk: The Magic and Mystery of Language in the First Three Years of Life. London, England: Penguin.
The Hanen Centre. (n.d.). Early Helping Children Develop Language for Thinking and Learning Language and Literacy Development Articles. Retrieved from http://www.hanen.org/Helpful-Info/Articles/Helping-Children-Develop-Language-for-Thinking-and.aspx
Lahey, M. (1988). Language Disorders and Language Development. New York, NY: Pearson College Division.
Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31(2), 132-141.
Rowe, M. L. (2012). A Longitudinal Investigation of the Role of Quantity and Quality of Child-Directed Speech in Vocabulary Development. Child Development, 83(5), 1762-1774.
Translanguaging Resources | CUNY-NYSIEB. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.cuny-nysieb.org/translanguaging-resources/