Week 11 Summary

Summary of the journal article “Raising Bilingual Children: A Qualitative Study of

Parental Attitudes, Beliefs, and Intended Behaviors”

A qualitative study conducted by Lee,Shetgiri,Barina,Tillitski and Flores(2015)

explored parental priorities in bringing up bilingual Spanish / English children. The study
establishes factors affecting the parents’ choices and the methods used to encourage
bilingualism. Focus groups were launched with Spanish-primary-language parents of children
aged 3 to 7 years. These group members were audiotaped and recorded. Three reviewers
individually evaluated recordings for concepts using margin coding and grounded theory;
disputes were addressed by the majority view. Thirteen Spanish-First Language Parents took
part in two research groups. The findings suggest that parents want their children to be
bilingual. Parents also asserted that the advantages of bilingualism included better long term
opportunities and the conservation of heritage and native tongue. Relatives, educational
institutions and prior parental experience has had an impact on parents ' decision making to
raise bilingual children.Parents want their children to study English at school and to learn
Spanish at home. Techniques for elevating bilingualism included reading bilingual books and
to have children speak only one language at home and in this case Spanish. Educational
institutions and health professionals were also used as resources for this study.
In this study, parents recognized additional benefits of bilingualism for their kids,
such as a better financial and professional life and interaction benefits.Parents also hoped that
through bilingualism their children would become excellently-rounded individuals and that
bilingualism would help them maintain their heritage culture. Multilingual societies may also
impact parental decisions regarding the transmission or non-transmission of native Spanish
languages (Velázquez, 2009). Parents, furthermore, identified teachers and administrators as
useful resources for teaching their children to be bilingual. Participants asserted that home
should be where the mother tongue should be taught and, ideally, enunciated strictly. Parents
even used a variety of techniques and practices to help them in encouraging bilingualism.
These practices would include bilingual books, publications, and media, such as stereo, tv
programs, and machine-based lessons.
Evaluation
Bilingual children have immense social benefits over their monolingual counterparts. These
benefits are societal, interpersonal skills and personal . Balanced bilinguals are much more
confident in a multi-cultural environment and much more considerate and open-minded
towards other individuals, cultures, and languages. The child develops into an individual who
more readily embraces change, can instinctually respond to the wants of the listener and
appreciates the credibility of being able to freely move in different
environments.Hence,parents should encourage bilingual and mutilingual learning both at
home and school.

Questions
1.How can parents encourage bilingualism?
2.What mistakes do parents make when raising a bilingual child?

References
Lee, M., Shetgiri, R., Barina, A., Tillitski, J., & Flores, G. (2015). Raising Bilingual
Children. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 37(4), 503–521. doi:
10.1177/0739986315602669

Velázquez, I. (2009). Intergenerational Spanish transmission in El Paso, Texas: Parental

perceptions of cost/benefit. Spanish in Context, 9, 69-84.