News

This colloquium brings together perspectives on family language policies from different parts of the world and from different disciplines. Check out its virtual format here (featuring Annick De Houwer, Michelle Mingyue Gu, Simona Montanari, Janice Nakamura, and Nikolay Slavkov).

Multilingual families face a language management dilemma when attempting to cultivate and support trilingualism in monolingual societies. The maintenance and development of heritage languages (HLs) for trilingual children is daunting compared to bilingual families. However, there are ways to prevent and overcome language maintenance challenges and raise trilingual children in monolingual societies.

This article is part of a series by HaBilNet, the Harmonious Bilingualism Network. It considers research results about young children's bilingual language development and discusses how these results can be applied in early childhood education and care so that all children may benefit from harmonious bilingual development.

Bilingualism is one of four major themes that the Association for Binational Families and Partnerships deals with. In this inspiring interview, Maria Ringler speaks from the Association's headquarters about supporting multilingual families, an exciting reading project for day care centers, and about her experiences with political lobbying for bilingual education.

HaBilNet offers a consultation service to families who have questions or doubts about their bilingual journey or just need someone with expertise in this field to talk things through. If you wonder what a consultation might look like, get to know the team and read some feedback we've received in this blog post.

HaBilNet相談室では、ご両親などご家族の方々が、具体的な質問について話し合ったり、現在のご自身のバイリンガルの状況を共有したりすることができます。この記事では、相談室に最もよく寄せられる3つの質問と、それに対するHaBilNetコンサルタントの中村ジェニスとアニック・デハゥワーによるアドバイスを紹介します。

Like so many other parents world wide, you are probably stuck at home with your children during the current COVID-19 crisis. It is a difficult time for everyone. Check out this blog article to learn how this may be also be a time of opportunity for your bilingual family.

This article is part of a series by HaBilNet, the Harmonious Bilingualism Network. It considers research results about young children's bilingual language development and discusses how these results can be applied in early childhood education and care so that all children may benefit from harmonious bilingual development.

In education, language competencies are undoubtedly key. However, multilingualism is repeatedly and erroneously cited as a risk factor for educational achievement.
In a "Fact check", Dr. Till Woerfel therefore attempted to compare established international research with current scientific findings from German-speaking countries in order to answer the most frequently and controversially discussed questions on this topic.

This blog article aims to address the mental well-being of bilinguals who suffer from a lack of space for using their first language(s). It discusses how a storytelling approach to language maintenance can be beneficial for improving mental well-being and draws on data collected during the research project. The main focus of this blog article is on the procedures used in the project.