Multilingual Early Language Transmission (MELT) - Mercator ...

acquisition. Some pre-school staff and parents have hardly any knowledge of multilingualism
and have difficulties recognizing the advantages it presents. By providing information, the
tutors hoped to change some negative attitudes of both practitioners and parents.
Below some challenges faced by bilingual families are described.
Some challenges faced by bilingual families:
- Raising awareness of the benefits of multilingual child raising. (For example, by gathering
information through flyers etc.).
- Equal language input of both languages (50% minority/50% majority)
- Consistency in ‘the one person – one language strategy.’ (For example, mother speaks the
minority language; father the majority language to the child).
- Enough information/materials to provide a language rich environment for the child. (For
example, by telling stories en playing games).
- Positive language approach regarding both languages and encouraging reactions towards
children, when they speak the minority language (For example, giving compliments and
confirmation to the child).
- Positive language attitude regarding both languages, especially the minority language (For
example, equal language status).
Figure 5.1 Challenges faces by bilingual families.
One of the leaders of a day care centre said after a successful information session by the
tutor:
“Parents and educators have learned much about the opportunities of a multilingual
upbringing and what education may bring to children; they will surely share this information
with others!”
During the implementation process the tutors and the practitioners of the 40 participating
pre-school institutions in the four regions experienced that immersion and language
acquisition is most successful if pre-school teachers offered the children a rich and varied
input in the minority language. In general, however, pre-school practitioners need
confidence and guidance to develop the correct skills and expertise to create activities and
an environment that promotes the child’s language development. This is certainly true in
terms of inexperienced pre-school teachers, in addition to pre-school teachers who are
speaking a language other than his/her own mother tongue to the child.
Practitioners mentioned the need for concrete examples of language activities. They also
wanted to know what kind of words, phrases and concepts they are expected to transmit to
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