The book deals with how language acquisition and learning may take place in the classroom and at home. Monolingualism, bilingualism and multilingualism are viewed through the perspective of language acquisition studies, classroom research findings, Polish, European, international legislation and statistical reports on language learning/teaching.

Does your family or community speak more than one language? Do you wonder how to help your children successfully learn or keep those languages? Do you want your children to have the gift of bilingualism and aren’t sure where to start – or how to keep going? Every multilingual family has unique language needs. Bilingual Families is a guide for you and your family. It combines academic research with practical advice to cover the essential elements in successful bilingual and multilingual development. Use this book to: Learn about language goals – and how to set them Create a 'living' family language plan that develops and grows with your family Learn how to talk about multilingualism with your children and other key people in your children's life, like teachers and relatives Recognise when you might need further support An indispensable guide for your family’s language journey.

A book on those who know and use two or more languages: Who are they? How do they do it?

"There is an urgent need at the heart of linguistic theorising to take account of bi- and multilingual perspectives. In the field of language planning, issues of bilingualism are often perceived through monolingual filters and resolved by monolingual responses. In this volume issues of monolingualism, multilingualism and identity are addressed directly in detailed studies of Canada and Spain." "John Edwards and Charlotte Hoffmann are both well-known authorities on bilingualism and problems associated with language in multilingual societies. In this book they provide state of the art articles on Spain and Canada. Their insights are useful in a period of evolution in both these countries." "After each of the articles, which were presented in a seminar series, there is a transcript of the debate which followed. The invited audiences are all scholars working on the area or in allied fields."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This book addresses the topics of language acquisition among monolingual and bilingual populations. It makes use of real classroom strategies along with the use of numerous case studies per chapter, which will be helpful to classroom teachers as well as speech-language pathologists and special education teachers.

The Psycholinguistics of Bilingualism presents a comprehensive introduction to the foundations of bilingualism, covering language processing, language acquisition, cognition and the bilingual brain. This thorough introduction to the psycholinguistics of bilingualism is accessible to non-specialists with little previous exposure to the field Introduces students to the methodological approaches currently employed in the field, including observation, experimentation, verbal and computational modelling, and brain imaging Examines spoken and written language processing, simultaneous and successive language acquisition, bilingual memory and cognitive effects, and neurolinguistic and neuro-computational models of the bilingual brain Written in an accessible style by two of the field’s leading researchers, together with contributions from internationally-renowned scholars Featuring chapter-by-chapter research questions, this is an essential resource for those seeking insights into the bilingual mind and our current knowledge of the cognitive basis of bilingualism

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.