Review: Becoming a Bilingual Family by Stephen Marks
As a parent you want to give your children the best advantages to prepare them for life. This book helps parents develop a foundation for starting their bilingual journey as well as provides a handy Spanish guide for those that are a bit rusty or just starting to learn Spanish themselves.
My most important takeaway from this book is to create a bilingual environment to help your child absorb the second language. You need to purposefully and actively use the other language, even if you are not native, even if you mispronounce words. Also incorporate other opportunities to expose them to the language. If the child is old enough for TV consider some child appropriate programs, listen to audiobooks or music, find a nanny that is native, have playdates with other children that speak that language, travel to countries where they can interact with native speakers or even get a pen pal.
If you are a monolingual parent and want your child to learn Spanish, I would recommend getting a paper copy of this book to serve as a little guide to help you with basic phrases that you can incorporate in your everyday.
Two possible approaches introduced in the book:
One caregiver speaks in one language and the other speaks in the other language and then adjust if school is in one language maybe both caregivers speak the other language at home (which is the approach we have been using)
Or I had not considered this, but might be a better approach for both caregivers practicing their language skills, alternate days in which each caregiver speaks the second language.
The advantages of being bilingual:
Bilinguals earn higher incomes than their monolingual counterparts
Knowing a second language can help you learn additional languages more easily.
Being bilingual helps promote cognitive development in other areas.
You can get the book from your public library or you can get your own copy of the book here.