How to Keep Home Languages Learning

  By Sarah Ohi and Yanling Song Bilingualism is trending on a global scale. This is concurrent with the declining use of home languages other than English in western countries like Australia. Yet many parents are keen for their children to maintain their home language, while learning English. These are dual language learners.

Bilingualism in Australia

Australia is culturally and linguistically diverse. A priority for many migrant parents is for their children to learn English. They see that as a way to be accepted as part of the Australian community and have a sense of belonging. Being bilingual is fundamental for children from minority-language homes. It enables them to study and live in Australia where English is the community language. This is particularly important for dual language learners who are challenged with learning both languages at the same time. Bilingual language learning helps typically developing children build a competitive edge and prepare for future success.

Maintaining home languages is essential

Maintaining the home language enables young dual language learners to form genuine connections with their family, their traditions, culture and values. This in turn fosters a sense of wellbeing and belonging. Mastery of home languages enables them to grow into active and promising participants in the global community. In the long term, home language maintenance positively supports bilingual language development.

What’s happening in Australian kindergartens?

Last year in my work as an early childhood teacher in Victoria, eight of 20 children were dual language learners. They either had, or were at risk of developing, language learning difficulties. From my observations and experiences over a four-year period of teaching, it was noticeable that while seasonal workers and new migrant families enrolled their children in English-speaking kindergarten programs, the young emergent bilingual children struggled immensely with learning to communicate in English as their second language. Weakness in language development poses challenges for young dual language learners with or at risk of language learning difficulties to achieve all learning outcomes identified in Early Childhood curriculum, the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) for Australia. The EYLF aims to support children to become confident, creative individuals, successful lifelong learners, and informed members of the community. An ongoing difficulty in early childhood education in Australia is that educators and speech-language pathologists (SLPs) supporting children who are dual language learners, are often not bilingual, or may lack knowledge of the child’s home language. This language gap can pose significant barriers to meaningful interactions with children and their families. This makes it difficult to provide linguistically and culturally responsive support. Therefore, there is a growing need to identify effective language interventions and early literacy strategies that enable educators and SLPs to engage in multilingual families and their children.

A Key to Helping Dual Language Learners Overcome Language Challenges

Current language interventions and early literacy strategies have three comprehensive goals. These are developing receptive language and expressive language, narrative skills, and phonological awareness. These areas are considered essential to children’s social, cognitive, and educational development.

How can we support young dual language learners in early childhood?

To support young dual language learners in Australia we explored existing language interventions by completing a scoping review. Our scoping review provides a map of identified early language interventions for dual language learners during last decade, evidence of cross-language generalizations and cultural considerations in these interventions. The search was conducted across four research databases for studies published from January 2012 to January 2025. Firstly, we searched for studies that reported on children with the most common home languages of families in Australia (Mandarin, Arabic, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Punjabi, Greek, and Italian), alongside the community language (English). We aimed to identify existing intervention practices for early years educators, teachers, SLPs, researchers, and policy makers. However, research on these language pairings were non-existent. Thus, we broadened the search and did not limit language pairings, which refer to the two languages a child is exposed to and learning simultaneously (e.g., home language and the community language). 72% of the selected studies (29) in our scoping review reported Spanish as the participants’ home language. In Australia, about 0.7% of people speak Spanish at home,  it’s actually the 10th most spoken language other than English.

What did we find?

There are three types of language interventions that are effective, mainly for English and Spanish dual language learners.

Child-based language interventions

These interventions are those where the children are direct participants. Vocabulary interventions and narrative interventions are the most prevalent. To illustrate, vocabulary interventions help learners build and practice word knowledge, which encompass cognate-based interventions, Language and Literacy Together, and word-learning interventions. Cognate-based interventions use cognates, which are words that look and sound similar in two languages. Cognate-based interventions demonstrated clear cross-language generalizations. Narrative interventions teach language through stories—helping learners build skills like remembering events, using the right words, and explaining ideas in order. For instance, The Story Champs is a kind of narrative intervention that incorporates cultural considerations, mainly targets story grammar and storytelling skills.

Caregiver-based interventions

These interventions were developed by experts, including SLPs, researchers and educators, and were aimed at empowering caregivers (i.e., parents or guardians) to support their children. Caregiver-based interventions were highly successful in supporting Hispanic families and their children. Four key practices were highlighted:

• • Build genuine relationships by connecting with families through respect, kindness and authentic interest in what matters most to them.

• • Empower caregivers to confidently use language strategies that fit naturally into daily routines.

• • Make learning engaging and accessible by incorporating familiar, low-cost materials such as books, bubbles, blocks, and household items.

• • Honour culture and language by involving families in choosing culturally relevant music, stories, and visuals, and by using everyday language and appropriate dialects.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-based interventions

These are interventions implemented by using digital tools, such as computers, tablets, mobile phones, apps, and social media. ICT-based interventions are very helpful for dual language learners who are over 6 years old. For dual language learners who need to enhance their English language skills, The Enhanced Moved by Reading to Accelerate Comprehension in English, which is conducted in English, is the go-to option.

Why is this scoping review significant?

This scoping review shows that interventions supporting Spanish English dual language learners have led to strong language gains. This highlights the power of culturally responsive approaches. To better support all multilingual learners, we urgently need to address the gap and explore similar interventions for children who speak other common home languages in Australia alongside English.

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This article was originally published on EduResearch Matters. Read the original article.

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