Language Strategies for Trilingual Families: Parents' Perspectives (Parents' and Teachers' Guides) by Dr. Andreas Braun & Prof. Tony Cline

Author:Dr. Andreas Braun & Prof. Tony Cline [Braun, Dr. Andreas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783091171
Publisher: Channel View Publications
Published: 2014-02-02T23:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

We have described four main factors that appeared to influence the use of languages at home within Group 2 families. One or both parents in each family spoke two native languages, which could include the community language. It emerged that many parents who spoke two native languages used only one of them with their children, partly because it was difficult to use the OPOL method when they had to decide which language to use with their children. It seems that this decision was affected by the parents’ relative proficiency in each language rather than by their sense of cultural affiliation.

The parents also reported that there was often a shift away from trilingual practices when the children began to attend school or nursery. In particular, bilingual parents tended to drop one of their native languages when their children started formal education, ceding precedence to the local community language, which they could also speak. In other cases, the parents used only the local community language because they did not think that their minority languages would be useful for their children. Some parents chose to send their children to multilingual or supplementary schools, but they were rare and/or expensive and usually only supported the major European languages, most commonly English. In general, the maintenance of minority languages was not supported by the educational systems in England or Germany, where the overwhelming emphasis was on the local community language. So, most of the children were immersed in the community language in the classroom, playground and neighbourhood, and this situation made it harder for their parents to use their additional native languages with them effectively at home.

We also examined the language preferences of other relatives, especially grandparents. We found that most families Group 2 had at least one set of grandparents who were bilingual. Most of these grandparents also spoke the language of the community where the children lived. This was one of the factors that led bilingual parents to discontinue one of their additional native languages: because the grandparents did not need the children to speak their original native languages, they did not give the parents strong support in their efforts to use or maintain both of their languages at home. This was also true for other relatives, who often spoke the community language and therefore did not support the families’ trilingualism.

Finally, most bilingual parents Group 2 did not explicitly link their different cultural traditions with their use of languages with their children. Although they did want to pass on parts of their native cultural traditions and values to their children, such as religious beliefs and ceremonies, food or parenting methods, these values did not usually include all the associated languages. Thus, for most of the bilingual parents, their cultural background outside the country where they were now living did not influence their choice of languages to use with their children. Those decisions were more strongly influenced by practical considerations, such as their proficiency in their additional native languages and their perception of the status and usefulness of those languages.

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