Book Review - The Bilingual Family - A Handbook for Parents

The Bilingual Family is subtitled A Handbook for Parents, but to reach as many parents as possible it should be read by ESL teachers, too. While teaching English to immigrant parents of small children, I based several lessons on what I had learned from this book. Many of my students were unsure what bilingualism would do to their families. Should they let their children wait to start school before they learned English? If they encouraged the kids to learn English, would they (the parents) end up with no one to talk to in their native language? What if the children picked up the parents' accent and mistakes? With this book, I was able to help them feel a little more sure of themselves.

In the first section, the authors (professional linguists, one British, one French) look briefly at bilingualism in general and the process by which bilingual children's language skills typically develop. As they say, "Most children mix [the two languages] very early on and then gradually get things sorted out." Possibly the most useful part of this section is the description of the three phases children go through while doing this. A parent who's afraid her child is never going to speak any recognizable language, only a mixture of two, needs to hear that this is only a stage on the journey. The first section ends with a questionnaire to get parents thinking about bilingualism in their family.

The second section consists of 16 case studies, which remind the reader that each family is unique. One family got into the book after an author heard them on a ferry between England and Denmark. The children were talking to their parents in both English and Danish, seemingly at random. It turned out the family spoke English at home in England and Danish while visiting the mother's family in Denmark. As the ship was in-between, either language would do.

The third section is an alphabetical list of topics from Accent to Writing, and suggestions for dealing with them if there are problems – like swearing or a refusal by the child to speak his parent's language. My class had some good discussions on several of these topics.

Finally, this book is very positive about bilingualism. If students absorb what it says, they will realize they have a chance to give their children a great gift.

The Bilingual Family: A Handbook for Parents, by Edith Harding and Philip Riley, is published by Cambridge University Press (1986, ISBN 0 521 31194 1).