Multilingual Parenting: Some Experiences

Azalia: fostering multilingualism by teachers and parents. Azalia, a refugee from Belarus, offers suggestions on how teachers and parents can foster multilingualism.

Azalia: advice for parents. Azalia, a refugee from Belarus, offers advice for parents with migrant experience on how to deal with their children’s school and learning a new language.

Azalia on school support.  Azalia, a refugee from Belarus, addresses the question of how schools can support children with migrant experiences and their families.

Personal and family situation.
This is an interview with a mother. In the first part, she introduces herself and her family, how they came to Germany and which language(s) they speak.

Experiences in the nursery and at school.
Trang talks about her experiences with her son’s school and nursery, which language(s) her son speaks and learns and about her worries regarding all the different languages her son is exposed to. She also talks about the support the school offers for multilingual children like her son.

Ideas on multilingual parenting.
In the last part of the interview, Trang talks about how she supports her son’s multilingual upbringing using literature, whether she uses languages separately or whether she mixes them and tips she has for other parents who want to do the same.

Personal and family situation.
This is another video with a mother, Marcella, who introduces herself and her family in this video. She talks about when they came to Germany and which languages they are using at home and in their daily lives.

Experiences in the nursery.
In the second part of the interview, Marcella talks about her daughter’s experiences in the nursery and about its language policies. She also talks about the support she would like to receive from the nursery.

Marcella – Ideas on multilingual parenting.
Marcella talks about the strategies she uses at home to foster her daughter’s multilingualism, about the importance of a multilingual upbringing and she provides some tips to other parents who want to raise their children multilingual.

Interview with Joanna (Part II).
In this video, Joanna talks about her own views on multilingualism and how she wants to raise her son in the future, with regards to all the languages he is surrounded by.

Interview with Joanna (Part III).
Joanna is talking about which language(s) she and her husband use with their son at home, and what they are doing to support him in using and further learning his first language.

Interview with Joanna (Part IV).
In the last part of the interview, Joanna talks about her experiences with different languages at her son’s daycare as well as her experiences with talking another language than German in public. 

Experiences in the nursery and at school.
This is an interview with a mother (Olena) and her son (Gleb). They moved to Germany when Gleb was 2.5 years old, adding another language to his repertoire. In the first part of the interview, they talk about their experiences with the nursery and school system in Germany and the language policies they encountered.

Ideas on multilingual parenting.
In this video, Olena talks about which strategies and activities she uses with her son at home to foster his multilingual upbringing. 

The importance of the L1 in multilingual development.
Olena talks about how she switched from speaking Russian (which she considers her first language) to speaking Ukrainian (which she learned at a later point in life) to her son since the war started. She also provides some insight and tips for other parents who want to raise their children multilingual.