Do's and Don'ts for a Harmonious Multi-literacy Journey

When we are raising a multilingual child, we might at some point wonder whether we also want them to be able to read and write in a home language that is not taught at school. While some of us might have a school or a teacher taking care of the technical part – that is, teaching our children to read and write in those home languages – others will want to take on this responsibility themselves. Whichever way children learn to read and write in each of their languages, there are a few things we as parents can do that will make the multi-literacy journey either frustrating or empowering. Let's discover the do's and don'ts that will help create a harmonious multi-literacy journey for our children (and for us!)

In this article, please note that I take as a basis families that are passing on one single language other than the school language to their children. All the advice and examples also apply to families passing on more than one language other than the school language to their children. I call this/these other language(s) "the home language".

Speaking vs reading and writing in the home language

As parents, we have our reasons as to why we want our children to be able to read and write in our home language. It might be because literacy will help them develop their vocabulary, or maybe because it will be an asset for their future studies or professional career, etc. But why would our children want to learn to read and write in a language that is "only" used at home?
For a harmonious multi-literacy journey, it is important to see the situation through our children's eyes. For them, what is important is not the potential future benefits, but what the language brings into their lives, now. This is why a useful question to ask ourselves is "Why would my child want to learn to read and write in my language?". Seeing the situation from our children's perspective helps us be supportive and come up with solutions that motivate children to embark on their multi-literacy journey and to stay with it.
Speaking a home language enables children to connect with the family, have more friends, feel like an insider when visiting their parents' country/ies of origin, etc. On the other hand, being able to read and write in a home language does not impact our children as much and as positively and directly as speaking does. Yes, they can read and enjoy more books, but the school and local library alone can give them access to a much wider selection of books than we could offer them in the home language. Yes, when visiting our country/ies of origin, with reading skills in the language used there, children could be more independent and understand their surroundings better, but especially if they are young, they are surely always with a family member or friend who can read and explain everything to them, so there is no real need for children to read themselves.
Objectively, one has to admit that young children will not consider reading and writing in the home language as necessary or useful, now. It is therefore important to present these skills as appealing and fun to develop now – which brings us back to the question "Why would my child want to read/write in our home language?".
So what can help to make reading and writing in the home language appealing now?

Do read aloud regularly…and promote play

When our children cannot read, reading books aloud with them helps bring stories to life. This helps children appreciate stories they couldn't access otherwise. Reading aloud also shows the benefits of being able to read.
Here are a few tips that make reading aloud with our children fruitful and enjoyable:

• Make reading aloud a daily habit

  We live in a busy world, and a daily reading habit allows parents and children to spend some quality time together. Reading together daily, or regularly, also helps children enjoy reading. By being exposed to the written form of their language, children can become curious and express the desire to learn to read.
  If our children want to learn to read in the home language, the multi-literacy journey will start a lot more smoothly than if it is imposed. The reading-aloud habit should continue even after our children are able to read the home language.

• Focus on developing a love of reading in any language

  The aim of having a daily reading habit is not only to help our children access books when they cannot yet read. Daily reading also helps develop a love of reading. Indeed, before thinking of having our children read in the home language, we need to help them develop a love of reading in general.

• "Ahoy! Me hearties!": Take the opportunity to enrich children's vocabulary

  Books are an incredible resource for enriching our children's vocabulary. They bring new words and expressions that children would not otherwise encounter in their daily lives. We do not really have the chance to meet pirates every day!
  Also, books showing more common situations and objects can help increase the frequency with which children see, hear about, read about and talk about things and situations they encounter in their daily lives. Reading from such books therefore consolidates our children's knowledge of the vocabulary in the languages we are passing onto them.

• Read with/to children even if they can read

  Once children can fluently read in the school language, they may start reading more in that language. However, keep in mind that reading is not just about deciphering words. To fully appreciate a story, you need to understand the words and the connections between them. By reading together with children, we can explain new words and expressions encountered in the text, and therefore help children expand their vocabulary.
  At an emotional level, reading together with our children has noticeable benefits. Reading together is quality time that strengthens our bonds with our children.

• Show the benefits of being multi-literate

  When our children want to read a book, they think about the type of story, and/or how they want to feel. They might therefore choose any book, regardless of the language in which it is written. This might not be an issue when they are little: the numerous images can make the story clear enough so we can tell the story rather than read it.
  However, when children start to be interested in books containing longer texts and fewer images, we cannot just tell the story. We therefore have to restrict the options to the languages we are able to read. If we can read in more than one language, it is a good idea to let our children choose out of all those languages.
  The more languages we can read, the more books our children can choose from. By reading in more than one language, we also model to our children the benefits of being multilingual and multi-literate.

• Learning to read in the home language: Go at your child's pace

  At school, our children have to follow the pace set by the curriculum and the teacher. Whether they are interested in learning to read and write in the school language or not, they start at the same time as their classmates. In the home language, we are free (!). We can therefore wait for our children to express a desire to learn to read in the home language. This might be before, at the same time, or after they start learning to read and write in the school language.
  If we start when our children are curious about it, they will be grateful for our input. On the other hand, if we start when it suits us, regardless of our children's interest, the learning experience can become a chore.

• Show the usefulness of home language literacy skills

  How can we help children see reading and writing skills as useful, even if they are not visiting the country where our home language is spoken? As I explain below, games enable a positive association with the home language, but there are many activities we can incorporate in our daily lives to achieve the same goal.

  • find books in your home language that your children love, so they can read in this language for pleasure.
  • give reading and writing in the home language a goal. For example, through reading recipes in their home language children can cook a dish or bake a delicious cake. Exchanging text messages with family members abroad can also make writing in the home language purposeful.

  The more children can read and write in their home language with a real purpose, the more useful it becomes in their eyes, and therefore the more worthy of learning as well.

• Use the power of play to develop home language literacy skills

  Once children express an interest in learning to read and write in the home language, set up a routine that relies on PLAY.
  Our children are having fun now. It is extremely powerful to guide our children towards reading in the home language while playing. They can see reading and writing in the home language as relevant to them and useful if it allows them to play. For example, in the variation of the Memory Game as described in The Parents' Guide to Raising Multi-literate Children, reading the words on the cards helps children see if they found a word-image pair of cards or not. In the activity #45 Create your own menu children can order the food they want to eat as long as they write the food items on the order sheet. (Discover the details of these activities in the free extract that you can download here).
  When children have fun, they remember things better, and learn new words and structures.
  It can be difficult to keep a routine going. When our children know that they are going to have fun, we can be sure that they will remind us, and keep us on track too.

• Focus both on reading and writing

  Children develop their reading and writing skills as a result of the fun they are having. Especially at the beginning of the learning process, when children are learning to decode letters and words, it is important to spend time on writing as well. Reading (decoding) and writing (encoding) work hand in hand to consolidate learning.

Don't make reading and writing look like schoolwork

We want our children to be able to read and write in our language and we know that developing these skills is a learning process. However, especially when we are not teachers, we might end up relying on memories of how we learnt to read in school and try to reproduce the activities we remember…

• Don't reproduce a school-like experience with your children: we don't have to teach sitting at a desk

  School is a place for study, and studying is often done while sitting at a desk. Our children are generally OK with this, as everyone around them does it.
  However, the norm is very different at home: Our children play with us (and they love that!). It is therefore normal that if we ask them to sit down and do some work, they push back and are reluctant.

• Don't confuse "reading practice" and "reading for pleasure"

  When our children are starting to be able to read in our language, it might be tempting to change what was a pleasant reading routine, such as reading with our children as part of the bedtime routine, into an opportunity for practicing and developing children's reading skills. Practicing reading might then take the form of asking our children to read part of a text under our supervision. However, let's keep in mind that if our children have to put in significant effort to read, it might end up tarnishing the normal bed-time reading routine. Indeed, the effort needed might transform the pleasant moment spent with us into an exercise that looks more like work than pleasure.
  It is a good idea to practice reading with our children, but not if it replaces a cuddly moment with us.
  If we really cannot find any other moment to practice reading, we could for example start the regular reading routine by some reading practice. Then we can finish by reading the rest of the story (or another one) to our children. That way we can keep some time for reading for pleasure.

• Don't only read in the home language

  Even if we want to expose our children to our home language as much as possible, we should avoid restricting the books we read with our children only to those written in the home language – or the other languages we are passing on to them (if we can fluently read in other languages).
  Let's imagine that our children want to be read an adventure story. We have five books in this genre in the school language, and five others in the home language. If we ask "What kind of story should we read tonight?" children have ten books to choose from. However, if we ask "Which [insert home language] book should we read?" they only have five books to choose from.

• Don't leave reading and writing to the classroom

  In the rare case that children learn to read and write in the home language at school, it is crucial to give them the opportunity to also interact with it outside this academic environment, in order to give them the feeling that it is not "just a school subject".

A word of caution: The school language is not the enemy

Multilingual children often hear the school language much more frequently than the home language. This is one reason it can often feel like a battle to expose our children to our home language and to motivate them to use it. Having this negative vision of the situation will inevitably lead us to be confrontational and force our language onto our children.
Instead, let's remember that we are raising multilingual children. We therefore want to appreciate and value all their languages, including the school language.
To shift our mindset in a positive way is to start with the question from the beginning of this article: "Why would my child want to read/write in our home language?". Querying this helps us start from our children's point of view, and helps us find ways to intrinsically motivate them. 

In conclusion

Children's multi-literacy journey does not begin the day we start teaching our children the first letter. To allow them to embark on a harmonious multi-literacy journey, it is important to create an environment that will intrinsically motivate children to learn to read and write in their home language.
The easiest and most fruitful habit in this respect is to read aloud to/with our children on a daily basis.
Once a child sees all the things that being able to read and write in all their languages can bring into their lives, they will want to embark on this learning journey. But to make sure they stay motivated, we need to make children's learning experience rewarding now, and not just a promise of a reward in the future.
Let's make their multi-literacy journey a fun, empowering, and harmonious one!

Note from HaBilNet:
Find other blog articles about literacy for bilingual/multilingual children on our website here (supporting multi-literacy in preschool), here (bilingual books), and here (more tips for parents). Several of the science projects HaBilNet is funding also relate to literacy.