Lecturer in Japanese and Linguistics, York St John University<\/p>\n
Few would consider mastering more than one language a bad idea. In fact, research points to a number of\u00a0cognitive, economic and academic advantages<\/a>\u00a0in being bilingual.<\/p>\n Parents who speak different languages understand the family home is an important setting to learn both, and seek\u00a0various ways<\/a>\u00a0to help their children thrive bilingually. One of the best-known approaches is the \u201cone-parent-one-language<\/a>\u201d strategy (OPOL). Each parent uses one language when communicating with their child, so their offspring learn both languages simultaneously.<\/p>\n OPOL emphasises\u00a0consistency<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 sticking to one language each \u2013 as key to its approach. But this creates the myth that mixing languages should always be avoided.\u00a0My recent study<\/a>, part of a\u00a0new wave of multilingualism studies<\/a>, would suggest this received wisdom is just that: a myth.<\/p>\n My research looked at Japanese-British families living in the UK with pre and early school-age children who were following a more-or-less strict OPOL language policy. I was particularly interested in examining the impact of OPOL in the family home \u2013 how does this unique language environment affect the way children use languages?<\/p>\n Most of the Japanese mothers who participated in my research were fluent in Japanese and English, while the fathers possessed an elementary grasp of Japanese. This made English the primary language of communication between the parents and outside the home. For this reason, the mothers were careful to carve out additional space for more sustained Japanese language learning with their children. In other words, this dedicated space for communicating in Japanese (the minority language) was time children would spend exclusively with their mother. This seemed to create a connection between \u201cJapanese language\u201d and \u201cmotherhood\u201d in the children\u2019s perception.<\/p>\n https:\/\/theconversation.com\/why-its-okay-for-bilingual-children-to-mix-languages-97448 by\u00a0Chisato Danjo Lecturer in Japanese and Linguistics, York St John University Few would consider mastering more than one language a bad idea. In fact, research points to a number of\u00a0cognitive, economic and academic advantages\u00a0in being bilingual. Parents who speak different languages understand the family home is an important setting to learn both, and seek\u00a0various …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20886,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[57,39,53,15,54,58],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bilingualism","tag-early-years","tag-languages","tag-parents","tag-primary","tag-speech-and-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20886"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/224031\/original\/file-20180620-137750-1ccfm6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip\")
<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"