Home language maintenance: Connecting children, families and classrooms
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Convenors: Sharynne McLeod1 and Paola Escudero2
Presenters: Van H. Tran1, Kate Margetson1, Gloria Pino Escobar2, Sarah Verdon1, Chloé Diskin-Holdaway3, Paola Escudero2, Sharynne McLeod1
1 VietSpeech, Charles Sturt University, Australia
2 Little Multilingual Minds, The MARCS Institute for Brain Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Australia
3Little Multilingual Minds, School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne, Australia
During this practical workshop, participants will have the opportunity to learn from two innovative teams of researchers who have developed fun, evidence-based programs for supporting children’s home language maintenance at home and school.
The VietSpeech SuperSpeech program was developed to support families (preschool children, parents, grandparents, etc.) at home. The 8-week online bilingual Vietnamese-English program included: (a) Word Superpower activities addressing target words and sentences; (b) Speech Superpower activities addressing consonants, tones, and syllable structures; and (c) Home Language Maintenance Information for parents. The VietSpeech SuperSpeech program was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant.
Little Multilingual Minds (LMM)
LMM is a research-based multilingual education program for children that supports and extends home language (HL) maintenance and foreign language (L2) learning during the early, formative years, using evidence-based principles, structure and guidelines. LMM, within research-partnership collaborations with education providers, delivers education in any Language Other than English by harnessing recent world-wide research and findings from our own research on early childhood education and primary education. LMM currently delivers in Spanish, Vietnamese, Mandarin and very soon in French.
The workshop will commence with an overview of home language maintenance throughout life and factors impacting home language maintenance. Next each team (VietSpeech and LMM) will outline their vision, target group, challenges and solutions, principles and theoretical frameworks, structure and weekly session delivery, themes, session plans and example activities. Then each team will demonstrate an example of how they have targeted the theme of healthy lifestyles/food and how they have used The Very Hungry Caterpillar to support children’s home language maintenance at home and school. The workshop will conclude with time for participants to work together to consider how these programs can relate to their own experiences and to develop activities for their own situations.
Participants are encouraged to bring along a copy of the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle) in whatever language(s) they have available (although this is not essential).
Reference
Diskin-Holdaway, C., & Escudero, P. (2021). Don’t be afraid to pass your first language, and accent, to your kids. It could be their superpower. The Conversation. Retrieved 19 March 2023, from https://theconversation.com/dont-be-afraid-to-pass-your-first-language-and-accent-to-your-kids-it-could-be-their-superpower-143093
Escudero, P., Diskin-Holdaway, C., Pino Escobar, G., & Hajek, J. (2023). Needs and demands for heritage language support in Australia: results from a nationwide survey. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2023.2189261
Escudero, P., Jones Diaz, C., Hajek, J., Wigglesworth, G., & Smit, E. A. (2020). Probability of heritage language use at a supportive early childhood setting in Australia. Frontiers in Education, 5, 93. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.00093
Escudero, P., Pino Escobar G, Diskin-Holdaway, C. & Hajek, J. (Forthcoming) Nurturing Australia’s Little Multilingual Minds: Program description and evaluation.
McLeod, S., Verdon, S., Tran, V. H., Margetson, K., & Wang, C. (2022). SuperSpeech: Multilingual speech and language maintenance intervention for Vietnamese-Australian children and families via telepractice. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 53(3), 675-697. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_LSHSS-21-00146
Tran, V. H., McLeod, S., Verdon, S., & Wang, C. (2021). Vietnamese-Australian parents: Factors associated with language use and attitudes towards home language maintenance. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2021.1904963
Tran, V. H., Verdon, S., & McLeod, S. (2022). Consistent and persistent: Successful home language maintenance among Vietnamese-Australian families. Journal of Home Language Research, 5(1), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.16993/jhlr.43
Tran, V. H., Verdon, S., McLeod, S., & Wang, C. (2022). Family language policies of Vietnamese–Australian families. Journal of Child Science, 12(01), e67-e78. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0042-1743490
Tran, V. H., Wang, C., McLeod, S., & Verdon, S. (2021). Vietnamese–Australian children’s language proficiency and use. International Journal of Bilingualism, 25(6), 1735-1763. https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069211034587
Workshop details
Maximum number of workshop participants: 50
Duration of the workshop: 3 hours
Registration cost: $50.00
Mode: In-person only
Registration for this workshop is a separate cost to the main conference. Registration for this workshop is independent of attendance of the main conference. A separate registration for this workshop includes the workshop participation and attendance to the ISB14 keynote speech delivered by Professor Sharynne McLeod.
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