Family Language Learning is a practical guide designed to support, advise and encourage any parents who are hoping to raise their children bilingually. It is unique in that it focuses on parents who are not native speakers of a foreign language. It gives parents the tools they need to cultivate and nurture their own language skills while giving their children an opportunity to learn another language. The book combines cutting-edge research on language exposure with honest and often humorous stories from personal interviews with families speaking a foreign language at home. By dispelling long-held myths about how language is learned, it provides hope to parents who want to give their children bilingual childhoods, but feel they don’t know where to start with learning a foreign language. Family Language Learning is a delight! It demystifies language learning through a mixture of family experiences, good common sense, and clearly reported second language acquisition research. In addition to supporting parents who want to bring up their children bilingually, it offers excellent language learning advice to anyone who wants to improve their own proficiency in a new language. -- Elaine K. Horwitz, Director, Graduate Program in Foreign Language Education, The University of Texas Christine Jernigan strikes the right tone with her readers and keeps it straightforward, sharing a wealth of well-researched information in a lighthearted way. Family Language Learning is loaded with practical tips which add up to a complete game plan before you know it. An easy, enjoyable read that will make you feel like picking up a language and sharing it with your child. -- Stéphanie Pellet, Wake Forest University, USA A very inspiring testimonial which will undoubtedly help those trying to raise bilingual children and also parents who have not considered that possibility due to lack of information. -- José Célio da Silva, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil and Managing Director, CELIL Imm Christine Jernigan instructs foreign language teachers at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC and is a language coach for parents who want to raise bilingual children. She holds a PhD in foreign language education, and her main research interests include motivation, expectation and authenticity in the language classroom. She has contributed to the book Raising Children Bilingually in the US and to The Bilingual Family Newsletter. Her own children speak English and Portuguese. Visit her YouTube channel for videos on several of the chapter topics: www.youtube.com/user/getbilingual . . Family Language Learning Learn Another Language, Raise Bilingual Children By Christine Jernigan Multilingual Matters Copyright © 2015 Christine Jernigan All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-78309-279-6 Contents Acknowledgements, Preface, Introduction, How to Use This Book, 1 There is a Free Lunch! Bilingual Benefits the Easy Way, 2 Forget the Unicorn: Why 'Non-Native' is Just Fine, 3 Start Small, Start Now: Choosing a Language and Moving Forward, 4 Be Your Favorite Teacher: Learn What You Want, When You Want It, 5 Many Methods: Flexible Approaches to Fit Your Lifestyle, 6 Marketing Strategies: Finding New Ways to Increase Motivation, 7 Talk Talk Talk: Strategies for When to Talk and What to Talk About, 8 The Play's the Thing: Fun and Simple Resources, 9 Right to Read: Growing Kids' Independence Through Books, 10 Delight to Write: Sharing Ways to Create and Tell, 11 Take Off! Finding Ways to Actually Go There, 12 Meeting Challenges: Skillfully Riding the Ups and Downs, Parting Words, References, About the Author, Index, CHAPTER 1 There is a Free Lunch! Bilingual Benefits the Easy Way To have another language is to possess a second soul. Charlemagne (quoted in Kaplan, 2010) You probably already know some of the benefits of bilingualism. In your enthusiasm, you might even be tempted to skip ahead to Chapter 2. This chapter, though, describes research that might surprise you. And it'll keep you motivated. What Are You Doing? I'm going to take a guess and say you probably have very good reasons for your choices in life. But when it comes to raising children, it can be difficult to describe those reasons, especially when your mother-in-law asks for details. So we'll list the top five reasons why language exposure is good for children and adults. This will help you explain your language plan to curious strangers, friends and extended family. Free Lunch Steven Pinker, cognitive psychologist and author of The Language Instinct, says of bilingualism, 'One free lunch in the world is to learn another language in early childhood' (Pinker, 1995: 22). We'll use this idea of a 'free lunch' as an acronym for the benefits of a second language: L Language advantages. Even in the first language! U Understanding others. Others who speak the L2, and others who are different in other ways. N New ways of th