In this blog we will dis­cuss 10 ways to sup­port dual lan­guage learn­ers’ home lan­guage in child­care. A home lan­guage is the lan­guage most spo­ken by the fam­i­ly mem­bers in a child’s home. The lan­guage spo­ken in a child’s home is the first lan­guage that they are exposed to. Even before birth, a child is exposed to and becomes accus­tomed to some of the sounds and rhythms in their home language!

Sup­port­ing DLLs’ con­tin­ued devel­op­ment and main­te­nance of home lan­guage pro­fi­cien­cy in your child care pro­gram is an essen­tial part of nur­tur­ing their lan­guage devel­op­ment. Fur­ther­more, cre­at­ing a learn­ing envi­ron­ment that wel­comes and cel­e­brates all lan­guages and cul­tures enrich­es the edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties for all of the chil­dren in your group. 

Who are Dual Language Learners? 

Dual lan­guage learn­ers (DLLs) are chil­dren under the age of five who are learn­ing two lan­guages. Cat­e­gories of DLLs include simul­ta­ne­ous DLLs and sequen­tial DLLs.

Simul­ta­ne­ous DLLs are learn­ing two lan­guages at the same time. This includes chil­dren who are exposed to two lan­guages from birth or before age three. They typ­i­cal­ly have par­ents or fam­i­ly mem­bers who speak both lan­guages at home. They may also hear one lan­guage at home and attend a pro­gram that pri­mar­i­ly uses anoth­er language. 

Sequen­tial DLLs are chil­dren who are learn­ing a sec­ond lan­guage after they have start­ed speak­ing in their home lan­guage. Chil­dren acquir­ing lan­guages sequen­tial­ly learn anoth­er lan­guage while con­tin­u­ing the devel­op­ment of their first language. 

Nev­er­the­less, both simul­ta­ne­ous and sequen­tial DLLs have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to become bilin­gual when they are pro­vid­ed appro­pri­ate encour­age­ment to con­tin­ue using their home languages. 

Why Is It Important to Support Dual Language Learners’ in Childcare? 

It is of utmost impor­tance for Eng­lish speak­ing child care pro­grams to encour­age DLLs to devel­op pro­fi­cien­cy  in their home lan­guages as well as the pro­gram language. 

DLLs’ mas­tery of their home lan­guages helps facil­i­tate and strength­en their rela­tion­ships with fam­i­ly mem­bers who only speak those lan­guages. Home lan­guages also pro­vide a strong link to each family’s cul­ture. Pre­serv­ing and nur­tur­ing these lan­guages with­in your child care pro­gram fos­ters a sense of pride and belong­ing among DLLs. Addi­tion­al­ly, it shows val­ue to every child’s unique cul­tur­al background. 

Apart from this, DLLs’ mas­tery of their home lan­guages has also been shown to con­tribute to their school readi­ness and school suc­cess. Research shows that bilin­gual chil­dren show enhanced exec­u­tive func­tion­ing skills, atten­tion con­trol, and prob­lem-solv­ing abil­i­ties. Ulti­mate­ly, inte­grat­ing home lan­guages into child care pro­grams sets dual lan­guage learn­ers up for future aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess. 

Encour­ag­ing the use of home lan­guages in Eng­lish speak­ing child care pro­grams also helps cre­ate wel­com­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al envi­ron­ments in which chil­dren can learn to respect their peers and val­ue diver­si­ty.  More­over, expo­sure to mul­ti­ple lan­guages from a young age pro­motes cul­tur­al aware­ness and empa­thy. 

10 Ways to Support Dual Language Learners’ Home Language in Childcare

The fol­low­ing list includes 10 ways you can encour­age the use of children’s home lan­guages in your program: 

1. Hire bilin­gual staff, when­ev­er possible. 
2. Learn key phras­es from each child’s home lan­guage, and incor­po­rate use of those phras­es into dai­ly class­room rou­tines. 
3. Include both the pro­gram lan­guage and the children’s home lan­guages on your shelf labels, pic­ture sched­ules, and oth­er visu­al sup­ports. Pro­vide copies to each fam­i­ly for them to review at home. 
4. Pro­vide newslet­ters and oth­er cor­re­spon­dence for the par­ents in their home lan­guage when­ev­er possible.
5. If nec­es­sary, use an inter­preter for par­ent con­fer­ences to facil­i­tate par­ent involve­ment in your program. 
6. Encour­age fam­i­lies to con­tin­ue expos­ing their chil­dren to their home language. 
7. Invite fam­i­lies to vis­it and share songs, sto­ries, and tra­di­tions with the chil­dren. Add these songs to your back­ground music playlists used for nap time and play time! 
8. When com­mu­ni­cat­ing with chil­dren, use ges­tures and objects to help illus­trate the mean­ing of new words. 
9. Respond respect­ful­ly and con­sis­tent­ly to children’s attempts to com­mu­ni­cate, even if they mis­use words or code switch. 
10. Pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for chil­dren to engage in con­ver­sa­tions with peers that speak their home lan­guage, as well as peers who speak the pro­gram language. 

View NAEYC’s tip sheet for more ideas! The Head­start Ear­ly Child­hood Learn­ing & Knowl­edge Cen­ter web­site also pro­vides tips and strate­gies to help rein­force the use of home languages. 

Last but not least, try Head Start’s Ready DLL “Survival Vocabulary” app 

Of course, it is ide­al for you to com­mu­ni­cate direct­ly with DLLs’ par­ents to learn key phras­es in their home lan­guage, if pos­si­ble. Par­ents may be will­ing to share com­mon­ly used words and phras­es from their home rou­tine, and may pro­vide you guid­ance on how to appro­pri­ate­ly pro­nounce each phrase. How­ev­er, if you would like to study fur­ther on your own, Head Start’s Ready DLL app includes flash­cards that can be help­ful if you are try­ing to learn “sur­vival vocab­u­lary” in Span­ish, Ara­bic, Man­darin, Hait­ian, Russ­ian, Somail, or Viet­namese. The “sur­vival” words includ­ed in the app are: 

Yes No Help Hel­lo Good­bye More

My name is What is this Thank you Rest Play Eat

Hun­gry Drink Thirsty Bot­tle Hurt Stop

Bath­room Milk Wash hands Sit down Clean up

The app also includes many sug­ges­tions that can help you build and main­tain a cul­tur­al­ly diverse learn­ing environment. 

Want to learn more about how to sup­port dual lan­guage learn­ers in your child care program? 

Take our course Lan­guage Devel­op­ment: Mile­stones, The­o­ries, and Dual Lan­guage Learn­ers.  

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