To develop bilingualism, the language spoken in the family must be supported and valued!

Many roads lead to bilingualism. Of course, the best known path is for children who grow up in families where one parent speaks one language and the other parent speaks another language. Or a family where both parents speak a language other than the language of the environment.

But it is also possible to become bilingual at school, i.e. to grow up with one language at home (e.g. Arabic or Turkish), and then the child goes to nursery school at the age of 3 and learns in French. This is another way of becoming bilingual through what is called “bilingual education” or monolingual education in one language at school and the parents continuing to speak their language at home.

Obviously, bilingualism in the family will require a certain investment on the part of the parents since we still live in a society where one language is dominant over the other.

So the non-dominant language or the language of the family needs a lot of support or a lot of language input, in other words, you have to talk to the child a lot, you have to read to the child. Many parents have strategies, such as “one person – one language” or “one place – one language”.

However, it is important to know that developing bilingualism within the family requires a great deal of investment on the part of parents. It requires some form of commitment, reading books to children, for example, and placing them in an environment where they will hear a lot of the language that is not the dominant language of the environment.

Thanks to Christine Hélot, professeur des universités à Strasbourg, ESPE Alsace