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HaBilNet is proud to announce the Second HaBilNet Colloquium (HaBilNet2) that it is organizing in Frankfurt, Germany, in May 2022. The colloquium theme is "Supporting well-being as it relates to growing up and living in a language contact setting". HaBilNet2 follows in the footsteps of the First HaBilNet Colloquium that took place in Belgium in May 2018. HaBilNet1 included practitioners working with bilingual populations as well as bilingualism researchers. HaBilNet2 aims to strengthen this collaboration even more, and wants to bring together insights as they are gained through working with bilingual populations in a variety of settings and from both research and day-to-day life perspectives.
Building on HaBilNet1's successful format HaBilNet2 aims to offer support and networking opportunities to junior and early career scholars through mentoring sessions with senior scholars, an exclusive junior/early career scholar Happy Hour (including non alcoholic choices, of course!), and poster sessions focused mainly on work by junior and early career scholars. In addition there are plenary sessions consisting of panels in which pre-set topics are discussed in interaction with the audience, and a special session on Harmonious Bilingualism. The small scale of this strictly in-person colloquium (we are expecting 54 invited participants) allows for intense contacts amongst more junior and more senior scholars, and amongst practitioners and researchers.
We are looking forward to welcoming people from 19 countries around the globe, including Canada, South Africa, and Singapore.

Sharon Armon-Lotem is well known for her tireless work on developmental language disorders in bilingual preschoolers and on the role of the input in early second language acquisition. In this engaged interview recorded at the occasion of the First HaBilNet colloquium in Belgium in May 2018, colloquium co-organizer and HaBilNet Member Lourdes Ortega asks her about her work and how she sees the role of age and exposure in early bilingualism. Dr. Ortega's question about what Dr. Armon-Lotem encourages in her staff allows the latter to stress that it is important to "understand about language", to understand the nature of children, and to have empathy for children. She stresses that parents are "an important part of the bilingual ecosystem" and a real asset for researchers because "parents know so much about their children". Dr. Ortega also asks about what would be Dr. Armon-Lotem's "dream study". Watch the video to find out!

Bilingual Success Stories Around the World: Parents Raising Multilingual Kids Share Their Experiences and Encouragement is a real-life roadmap to greater success and joy for any parent raising bilingual or multilingual children. Written by Adam Beck, in the same empowering spirit as his influential first book Maximize Your Child's Bilingual Ability, this practical, worldly-wise guide features the success stories of a wide range of families and details the kinds of attitudes and actions that can enable your family to enjoy the same sort of rewarding success. The focus of this book is on the actual practice of raising children to acquire active ability in more than one language, conveyed through the revealing experiences of parents who are now succeeding admirably at their bilingual or multilingual aim. Read this book for ideas and inspiration to help you realize your own family's joyful success story!

Bilingual Success Stories Around the World is 252 reader-friendly pages and is available worldwide, in both paperback and Kindle e-book, at Amazon, the global Amazon sites, and other booksellers.

Grandparents can be of great support to young bilingual children, even if they cannot be physically present. This article gives some very useful tips on how to effectively communicate with very young children through digital means. Parents need to lend a helping hand, of course, but the benefits for language learning and human closeness will make up for this extra "work"!

HaBilNet Supporting Member He Sun has been conferred the NIE Excellence in Research Award in 2020. This award accords the highest recognition within Singapore's National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, to individuals or teams who have made outstanding contributions in extending the frontiers of research and knowledge. Big congratulations to Dr. He Sun for this well deserved recognition!