Original research article
Acta Albaruthenica

Educational activity of multilingual parents in teaching children the mother tongue and foreign languages (based on the examples of Belarusian and English language teaching)

2024, Issue 24

Hanna Halavina

0000-0003-0789-5022

University of Bialystok

DOI

10.31338/2720-698Xaa.24.5

Publication date

13.02.2025

Submission date

12.06.2024

Acceptance date

30.08.2024

Publishing model

open access

License type

CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL

Field

Humanities

Discipline

literary studies, linguistics

Language of publication

Belarusian

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PDF 274 KB

Article

Number of views:169

Number of downloads:93

Crossref citations:0

Altmetric score:0

Abstract

The article draws attention to the topic which correlates both with linguistics and pedagogy – family language education. The issue drew author’s attention upon notice that in spite of growing interest in family practicing so called intended bilingualism1 scientiϐic literature still needs more research and information on this topic. The process of learning a new language while keeping child’s family tongue remains loaded with bias and socially-political burden. The topic is especially acute for parents speaking an endangered language who face a dilem ma: either to stick to their traditional language and culture or opt for a more widely spread options. As the research shows, the language choice becomes not only a choice of the communication tool, but also cultural and identical one. So it happens in Belarusian families which decide either to preserve Belarusian language by teaching it to their children or to choose English as the guarantee for western-oriented career success. The subject of this study is the educational activities and motifs of parents (Belarusian citizens within the Republic of Belarus or in other European countries as the ϐirst generation of immigrants) aimed at regular and organized teaching their children Belarusian/English language. The research has been conducted in the form of the in-depth interviews with seven Belarusians coming from the generation of millennials (1981–1995) and bringing up 3–12 years old children. The interviews involved questions about parents’ educational activity aimed at teaching children the languages and the pros and cons of child bilingualism from the parents’ point of view. Five parents have been using Belarusian language for family communication and children teaching and two – English, though they all are ϐluent in Russian (and sometimes other lan guages). The research has been conducted as a preliminary study within the doctoral thesis. The research main assumptions: a). family education can not only be organized, intended and motif-driven, but it also may play the leading role in child language skills development; b). teaching activities, used by parents may be of high interest for professional language teachers, especially those working with emergent bilingual children. The study results have shown that during the process of teaching a language, the teaching activities chosen by parents were similar for both English and Belarusian. It means that researching and organizing these activities could be useful for creating a common approach to learning a language from the youngest age. The research could also help teachers in educating bilingual children, speaking Belarusian or any other language as the language of family communication.

Keywords:

family education,intentional bilingualism,parents’ motivation,early child development,Belarusian language,English language

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