Taking advantage of staying at home with your children during the COVID-19 crisis

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.

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. Mihaela Gazioglu and Jayoung Choi, scholars and mothers of trilingual children living in the United States, share their stories in this fascinating blog article.

The projects of the Book Pirates aim at enabling children and young people to experience literature creatively and independently. One of their numerous projects is about bilingual picture books written by children and for children.

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.

This past May (2022) HaBilNet organized its second Colloquium in Frankfurt, Germany. The 55 participants from around the world had a great time and found the colloquium truly inspiring. Read all about it in our blog article, divided into two parts: this first one about the colloquium as a whole.

This is Part II of the Blog post about HaBilNet's second Colloquium which was held in May (2022) in Frankfurt, Germany. 55 participants from around the world had a great time and found the colloquium truly inspiring. Here, you can read all about the posters which early career professionals showed at the colloquium.

Congratulations to Sally Rachel Cook and Nishita Grace Isaac for receiving HaBilNet Travel Awards to attend the 2020 Georgetown University Round Table, even though it ended up taking place virtually.

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.

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.

Read an interview with supporting HaBilNet member Dr. He Sun on how bilingual children's socio-emotional wellbeing can be supported in the home and school contexts.