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Free Report: The Power of Reading in Raising a Bilingual Child

If you missed my last post, How Many Books Do You Have In Your Home?, I recommend a look. Not only does it share some interesting research that shows a strong relationship between the number of books in the home and a child’s language development, the comments that have come from readers provide additional food for thought.

This post (you may be relieved to hear) won’t be nearly as long. In fact, today let me simply offer a friendly PDF file—a “report” on reading—which provides a pretty good summary (with links to further material) of my thoughts on this important subject. Though this information has appeared in one form or another on my blog—and has been shared with other sites in a version similar to this—I thought it might help to put out a handy PDF file, too.

To open the file and save it to your computer, just click on the button below.

The Power of Reading in Raising a Bilingual Child

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6 Responses

  1. Thanks for this Adam! I’m having a hard time with my daughter trying to motivate her to read in either of her languages so hoping your advice can give me further ideas. I feel like I’m running up against a brick wall!! I’m even considering concentrating on the majority language for a while so she doesn’t get behind in school! 🙁

    1. Tracey, I don’t know all the details of your situation, but as a general rule, the more you use the majority language with your daughter, the more her need to use the minority language with you may be undercut. So if you feel additional support for the majority language is necessary, it might be better if that support came from someone other than you.

      Again, when it comes to her literacy development and interest in books, I advise taking a longer view of this process and patiently continuing with the sort of playful and proactive efforts I suggested, day by day. What you want to avoid, of course, is becoming overly concerned or frustrated, as this could lead to unproductive, even counterproductive, actions while diminishing the fun and joy you both feel for the experience. Perhaps the message of this post would be helpful to hear.

  2. Hi Adam! Thanks for your great advice. I don’t use the majority language with her at all and she usually does reading in her majority language with her father. I am trying to take things easier with reading and not to push her too much and I’ve also put those magic message boards in the bathroom and started leaving her messages as you suggested and she is finding this quite amusing even though she needs help reading them!

    1. Good, Tracey! Keep up those playful efforts from a variety of angles and I expect her reading ability, and interest in literacy, will grow well over the months and years ahead. No worries are needed!

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Welcome to Bilingual Monkeys!

Adam
I’m Adam Beck, the founder of this blog and The Bilingual Zoo, a lively worldwide forum for parents raising bilingual or multilingual kids. I’m also the author of the popular books Maximize Your Child’s Bilingual Ability and Bilingual Success Stories Around the World. I’ve been an educator and writer in this field for 25 years as well as the parent of two bilingual children, now 19 and 16. I hope my work can help empower the success of your bilingual journey.

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