Raising Multilingual Children: Foreign Language Acquisition and Children Review

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Raising Multilingual Children: Foreign Language Acquisition and Children ReviewI am a parent raising my child bilingually (in a non-native language) as well as an applied linguist doing research in the area of bilingualism by reading various academic as well as more practical books about bilingualism. I picked up this new book, excited about its seemingly up-to-date information (because of the recent publication date). I was a bit put off by the cooking metaphor carried throughout the book, which seemed a little cutesy, but kept reading excitedly. Before reading this book I had just read a short but very well-done book called "The Bilingual Experience" by Eveline De Jong. I kept comparing this book to that, and it definitely came up short.
The first thing that took me aback was that Tokuhama-Espinosa brags throughout the book how informed she is about various fields of study, such as neuropsychology and linguistics, and that this 'expert' knowledge only took her a year of research to obtain. When I read her summary of work done with phoneme perception in children (p. 20-21) my fear that her grasp of the field would be too superficial was confirmed. This is research I have reviewed in depth, and while Tokuhama-Espinosa did an adequate job of giving a short summary suitable for the layperson, she not only fails but misleads in her *interpretation* of the data. The authors of these studies are careful not to go beyond the results of their data, which is to say that children have a certain period where they can distinguish between any phonemes (meaningful sounds of the language) in any of the world's languages, to a point where, when presented with some difficult sound pairs in various languages, can only distinguish between those phonemes which are found in their native language. Tokuhama-Espinosa, on the other hand, interprets this data to mean that children between zero to nine months have a 'window of opportunity' (her term) to learn a foreign language. According to the author, this is the only time when children can learn to speak a second language without an accent. Such an interpretation is most certainly wrong, since some studies with immigrant children to the US have found that children below 6 years of age when they began learning a second language have been judged to have accent-free speaking ability. The authors of the studies do not make this interpretation of their data, and Tokuhama-Espinosa is misleading her reader to do so.
Next, Tokuhama-Espinosa says there is a special and second window of opportunity from ages 4-7. This seems to imply that if you haven't exposed your child to a second language by 9 months, you might as well not even start until they are 4 years old. Again, this is rubbish! The younger the better for native-like control of a language, and I've never heard of any science which would confirms the author's division of ages here.
The author also glosses over the difficulties of raising children multilingually, and as a previous reviewer says, seems to imagine that everyone has access to international schools and parents who speak another language natively. She seems to have thought of few 'recipes' for raising multilingual children. ...Raising Multilingual Children: Foreign Language Acquisition and Children Overview
Raising Multilingual Children: Foreign Language Acquisition and Children elucidates how children learn foreign languages and when they can do so with the best results. The most recent studies in linguistics, neurology, education, and psychology are evaluated and the findings are presented in a recipe format. Parents and teachers are encouraged to bake their own and evaluate the multilingual children in their lives with the use of tools which include a family language profile and family language goals worksheet. Beginning with the Ingredients of Timing, (or the Windows of Opportunity,) and Aptitude, the book goes on to include the Baking Instructions of Motivation, Strategy, and Consistency. This isfollowed by Kitchen Design, or the role of the language learning environment which includes the child's Opportunity to use the languages being learned, the Linguistic Relationship between the child's languages, and the possible influence of Siblings.



Plumbing and Electricity round out the ten key factors in raising multilingual children by discussing the possible role of Gender and Hand-Use, and our understanding of the multilingual brain at present. Chef and Chef's Assistants addresses the vital roles of teachers and schools in a child's foreign language development. A Mess in the Kitchen discusses problem situations related to foreign language learning, and offers a variety of resources to address such issues.


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