We can find many suggestions about how to support our children to become bilinguals* when they are toddlers, in preschool or primary school. But what happens when they are teenagers and young adults? Can we still support them with their family languages or other languages they’re learning along the way?

If culture was a house,

then language was the key to the front door,

to all the rooms inside

(Khaled Housseini)

Being bilingual and a teenager can be challenging, for both parents and children. Adolescence is a very intense period of physical and mental change, and all seems to revolve around finding an identity and fitting in with a group of friends.

How do teenagers juggle speaking two (or more) languages and belonging to two nationalities or cultures?

In my personal experience, talking two or more languages is not a problem per se during those years. Discovering literature in all the other languages I learned during my childhood and being able to really immerse into the cultures and the mindset of these cultures during holidays was (and still is!) very fascinating and enriching.

If we want our teenagers to stay  bilingual,

they need to know about the cultures

(Ute’s International Lounge)

What I found more challenging was the expectation locals would have. People would expect me to know what peers in that other culture and country would rave about.

My parents made sure that we would visit Germany once or twice per year for an extended period. They wanted to make sure that we could meet peers. Even if only for a few days we had the great opportunity to get to know the culture through peers’ eyes.

I recall that despite very easy beginnings – after all, we all spoke the same language! – we would soon discover that we have different expectations. Locals would expect us to understand their slang, jokes and to know what they were talking about (TV shows, what is “in” etc.).

I quickly realised that I didn’t share the same taste in food, music, literature. I wouldn’t know about the latest movies, spots, sport idols. I wouldn’t know the newest gossips and soon feel alienated and “different”. Knowing that I didn’t have to stay for a long time, made me yet enjoy those moments and appreciate the short but intense friendships.

Nowadays, thanks to internet etc., being in touch with cultures around the world is much easier. – We can all access informations in no time and get a virtual impression of the “other” culture.

Today, I encourage my children to watch news from the different countries we want them to be more familiar with. They know about the idols, they understand the (most of the) jokes and, up to now, do not feel alienated when they spend some days with peers in Germany or Switzerland twice per year. Even if my children are not teenagers yet, I know that peer pressure is very high and being the one who talks German (and Italian) to them, who explains the other culture to them is not going to suffice.

Some tips for parents who want to support their teens bilingualism and biculturalism:

• bear in mind that teenagers rate peers higher than parents!
• foster social networking: chatting via webcams is a great way to keep the other language alive. It is a great alternative to Saturday schools or parents teaching these languages at home!
• be open minded when it comes to slang (and swearwords!). While growing up abroad, bilinguals will use the language in an “artificial context”. Allowing your child to use the slang their monolingual peers use, will help them fit in easier once you visit the country.
• help them find resources to have access to the local slang.
• make sure they know about the habits and values of peers in the other culture.
• travel as often as you can to different places of your family languages and offer them opportunities to meet peers (by enrolling them in some local activities they like).
• if you can’t travel that often and provide full language immersion, look out to other families that speak the same language where you live.
• find penpals for your children – using social media may also be an option, but if you would like your children to improve their written skills in the other language(s), writing in the “old fashioned way” is advisable.

I wrote this post for our International Mother Language Day Campain on Facebook (cfr. #IMLD), where we published links about several topics related to raising the awareness of “mother (and father) languages” since January the 21rst.

(* I use the term of bilingual also for multilinguals.)

You can find some answers in this interview with research psychologists and a language teacher about how kids acquire second, third or fourth languages and how it helps to feel even more strived to bring up multilingual children.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hW_qpta6zb4]

To be honest, I’m feeling a bit bored about all the discussions about what bilingualism is (I think there have been enough publications and discussions about this in the last century…). And we don’t need to hear more reasons why bringing up bilingual or multilingual children is “good” or beneficial for our children and ourselves. We already know this. We should all move on and concentrate on the next steps.

I know for my own experience, that a child can grow up learning 3-4 languages from a very early childhood on (0-5) and not being “confused”.

1) When should a child begin to “learn” or acquire a second/third etc. language?

This question hasn’t been asked in this interview, but Laura-Ann Pettitto (Professor at the University of Toronto) did point out that in early life, when the child is still in the acquiring phase of the first language, he will use the same “brain tissue” for all the languages. Whereas, if children are exposed to languages later in life, different parts of the brain are involved (3:00 sq) because “the part of the brain that is responsible for processing language is on a maturational timetable and we know very clearly what that timetable is, when the periods are most sensitive” (4:00). Interestingly, this is not the case for all the parts of language. Some parts “remain open for life, like vocabulary and there are other parts of language, which are on a maturational timetable. Our brain reaches a stable processing capacity and then stops because it’s acheaved it’s stable state” (4:20). – Now, it’s quite hard to determine when this happens because the different parts of language are affected differently by maturation.

Early exposure is necessary for good syntactic competence, for really good phonological competence, early exposure is ideal (4:44).

Peter Gazzellone, teacher at the Ryerson Community School, presents the Integrated language programm at his school. This programm offers Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish and African heritage programm. “The students get to choose from one of these languages and it’s usually the language that they speak at home” (5:29). The children also learn French (from grade 4) and then from Kindergarden up to grade 8 all the children at school learn another language. – In Europe we have several immersion programm school systems  and know that this programm really benefits the children.

We all know that the task of acquiring a language later in life, when we’ve already acquired our first language (and learned it at school) is a different, much harder task.

2) Can adults learn new languages as “good” as children?

There is a very clear answer: yes, they can. If the adult wants to make it possible and has the time, he will succeed. Ellen Bialystock, Professor at the University of York, points out that “children are given the opportunity to learn languages in a way that supports every part of this very difficult task (…) everyone they interact with interacts with them for the purpose of helping them learn language”. If adults had this opportunity and would “quit [their] job for five years, use a mentor who will speak to [them] at exactly the level [they] need (…) [they] will be very successful” (2:00 ssq). Life, usually doesn’t give us that chance and “the main difference about learning languages as a child and as an adult is life“.

If an adult really wants to learn a language, total immersion and the passion to learn it are the most important premisses to succeed. The suggestion made by Ellen Bialystock is meant for people who want to learn a new language “at home”, who don’t have the opportunity to learn it in loco. But if we have to learn the language because we move to the country, it’s more probable that we will attain a very good fluency in a very short time. If total immersion is not possible, there are many other possibilities to create a monolingual exposure in the language we want to learn in real life or online or via skype etc.

3) How much exposure?

There have been published many articles lately about the quantity of time someone should talk a language – or more than one – per day. Probably the number 20% sounds familiar? The amount of exposure per day or week depends on your goal: do you want your child to be perfectly fluent or would it be enogh for him to understand a conversation?

Laura-Ann Petitto points out that “systematical exposure is more important than  the amount of time  of the exposure.  The human brain doesn’t work on quantity but on quality. Therefor, regular systematic exposure  “with stable users across different contexts which are rich and varied” will help a child to reach fluency. This means that immersion exposure at school only is not enough to become utterly fluent. It has to be enriched by “cultural material, linguistic material, movies etc” also outside the schoolday.

4) Do all children have the same ability?

This is like with everything in life: some are more prone to learn languages, others are better in other sectors. Ellen Bialystock points out that “our minds are prepared to do is make everybody a competent speaker of a language that is in the environment without additional effort” (11.00 ssq.). And to answer the question: “some [children or adults!] will find this fun and exciting and some will find it more effortful”.

5) Will children always have one dominant language?

We all know that there are differences even among multilingual siblings about their language preferences. And Laura-Ann Petitto confirms that “children have preferences for languages and the preferences are set by various things outside of our biology” (12:45 sq). It depends on the language their friends, their family are speaking. Children are also very economic in their language choice ( The concept of economy – a tenet or tendency shared by all living organisms – may be referred to as “the principle of least effort”, which consists in tending towards the minimum amount of effort that is necessary to achieve the maximum result, so that nothing is wasted.” cfr. Alessandra Vicentini, Università di Milano, The Economy Principle in Language. Notes and Observations from Early Modern English Grammars). If the children know that their parents understand all the languages they’re supposed to talk, they will probably prefer one of the dominant languages in their social context (the host country, school etc.), using the “minimum amount of effort to achieve the maximum result”.

The human biology enables us to extract patterns from one and the other language and to compare and fit them, but language acquisition is more about the need to speak this language.

6) Do multilinguals know less vocabulary than monolinguals?

Don’t worry about the vocabulary a child has in one of the languages he is acquiring. Usually, multilingual children are a bit “behind” their monolingual peers, but this doesn’t mean that they’ll never catch up. We know from many studies that a bilingual (or multilingual) child knows at least as many words and probably more and at least as many concepts and probably more as monolinguals. (15:20 ssq). – And we should never forget that these are all averages!

If you look at the distribution of the data, “most children are in the normal part of the curve where it could go either way. The bilingual could have a higher English (or other language) vocabulary than the monolingual” (15:50).

If you take the vocabulary tests that are used to assess vocabulary – and the intersting part is, that they’re usually given out only in one language! –  “and you devide the words up into words they are likely to encounter at home and  words they are likely to encounter at school there is no difference!” (16:20 ssq).

There is definitely no accademic risk or compromise to the main purpose for learning many languages (from an early stage on!).

Two final, very encouraging quotes for every multilingual from Laura-Ann Petitto:

The human vocabulary  stays open to work for life.

The brain is not biologically set to learn only one language.

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