Includes 100 creative activities and strategies for the home and community! More and more people-hundreds of millions around the world-are living in bilingual homes. In the U.S. alone, more than 54 million people over the age of 5 speak a language other than English at home. Yet once children enter school, the pull toward one language becomes stronger and maintaining the bilingual advantage requires a serious family commitment - a bilingual choice. The good news is it's worth it. Research shows that bilingual children are known to have more social, cultural and economic opportunities as they grow to adulthood and that learning a second language from birth can even result in protection against Alzheimer's later in life. Bilingual By Choice provides families with specific activities, games and insights that will show them how to not only teach their kids more than one language but also to help their kids retain and develop those language skills. For parents, educators, immigrants and expatriates, Bilingual by Choice deals directly with the obstacles to sustaining a second language, including unsupportive relatives, issues at school, frequent relocations and discrimination, countering each one with the author's firsthand experience with both sides of the growing-up-bilingual journey, as a child and as a parent. Commit to the choice, and help your children become bilingual - for life.

If you would like your children to experience the benefits of becoming bilingual, but you aren’t sure how to teach them a second language, then Raising a Bilingual Child is the perfect step-by-step guide for you. Raising a Bilingual Child provides parents with information, encouragement, and practical advice for creating a positive bilingual environment. It offers both an overview of why parents should raise their children to speak more than one language and detailed steps parents can take to integrate two languages into their child’s daily routine. Raising a Bilingual Child also includes inspirational first-hand accounts from parents. It dispels the myth that bilingualism may hinder a child’s academic performance and explains that learning languages at a young age can actually enhance a child’s overall intellectual development.

For most immigrant parents in America today, raising bilingual children is not a choice or a decision, but rather a way of life. Yet teaching children their parents’ native language often comes second to ensuring they are proficient in English so they can thrive in school and later reach leadership positions in the workplace. In addition, the task of teaching two (or more) languages can be overwhelming, leaving many of us wondering where to start. Raising Bilingual Children is here to help with easy, practical steps for children of every age and stage in life. Author and parenting expert Mari Bellas provides answers to questions such as: What do I do when my five-year-old doesn’t want to speak Spanish at home? My husband doesn’t speak Korean, so how do we find common ground to raise our kids with two languages? My child is two years old and not speaking in either of the two languages we speak at home—should I be concerned? Whether your native language is Spanish, Filipino, Korean, Chinese, or French, it is natural to want our children to communicate in the language we were born with. Raising Bilingual Children is the ultimate guidebook for busy parents looking for advice and direction about the everyday challenges and joys of raising a bilingual child.

The ability to speak two or more languages is a common human experience, whether for children born into bilingual families, young people enrolled in foreign language classes, or mature and older adults learning and using more than one language to meet life's needs and desires. This Handbook offers a developmentally oriented and socially contextualized survey of research into individual bilingualism, comprising the learning, use and, as the case may be, unlearning of two or more spoken and signed languages and language varieties. A wide range of topics is covered, from ideologies, policy, the law, and economics, to exposure and input, language education, measurement of bilingual abilities, attrition and forgetting, and giftedness in bilinguals. Also explored are cross- and intra-disciplinary connections with psychology, clinical linguistics, second language acquisition, education, cognitive science, neurolinguistics, contact linguistics, and sign language research.

In this accessible guide to bilingualism in the family and the classroom, Colin Baker delivers a realistic picture of the joys and difficulties of raising bilingual children. This revised edition includes more information on bilingualism in the digital age, and incorporates the latest research in areas such as neonatal language experience, multilingualism and language mixing.

The best time to learn a second language is as a child. During childhood, the brain is more receptive to language learning than at any other time in life. Aware that a second language can enrich their child's understanding of other cultures and bring future job opportunities in a world drawn ever closer by globalization, many parents today are motivated to raise their children bilingual. This book helps parents in both monolingual and multilingual families determine and achieve their bilingual goals for their child, whether those goals are understanding others, the ability to speak a second language, reading and/or writing in two languages, or some combination of all of these. The authors explain how the brain learns more than one language, explode common myths, address frequently asked questions, and reveal an array of resources available to families. Packed with insightful anecdotes and powerful strategies, this is a one-of-a-kind guidebook for those seeking to provide their children with a uniquely valuable experience.

Code Choice in the Language Classroom argues that the foreign language classroom is and should be regarded as a multilingual community of practice rather than as a perpetually deficient imitator of an exclusive second-language environment. From a sociocultural and ecological perspective, Levine guides the reader through a theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical treatment of the important roles of the first language, and of code-switching practices, in the language classroom. Intended for SLA researchers, language teachers, language program directors, and graduate students of foreign languages and literatures, the book develops a framework for thinking about all aspects of code choice in the language classroom and offers concrete proposals for designing and carrying out instruction in a multilingual classroom community of practice.