Your contribution will be very appreciated by the author of Twinlingual.com, Svetlana Eriksson!
Please send your stories and after necessary formatting they can be added as comments to specific pages if you wish to comment on particular extracts of this site, or to the Story Board, the page dedicated to short articles written by parents raising multilingual children, or by children/adults who would like to share what it has been like growing up multilingual, or by those who do not believe in multilingualism at all!
Please, make sure your article contains the answers to the following questions:
- How do you relate to the topic of this research?
- What languages are involved in your own case?
- How would you describe the context in which you have experienced multilingualism?
Any relevant contribution is equally valuable: anecdotes, your approaches to raising multilingual children, questions to the author of Twinlingual.com, your suggestions to the author, your critique, you name it! The author will do her best to comment on every contribution and to respond to every email.
If you are a parent raising multilingual children, or if you are multilingual yourself, and would like to share your story, please, consider answering one of the following questions:
- How do you feel about your/your parents'(caregivers’) decision to raise your children/raise you bilingual/bicultural?
- Can you say that you/your children are bicultural? How does the biculturalism manifest itself?
- What are the motives/goals/aspirations behind raising children bilingual/bicultural? For multilingual respondents: How do you perceive your parents’ motives/goals/aspirations?
- What are your expectations with regards to your children’s heritage language skills? For multilingual respondents: How do you perceive your parents’ expectations?
- What are your perceived (dis)advantages of bilingualism/biculturalism in the context where you live?
- What is your family communication system: What languages are used? With whom? When? How? Why?
- When did the process of raising children bilingual/bicultural begin?
- What are the families’ common materials/resources for raising children bilingual/bicultural?
- What support has been available to you in raising your children bilingual/bicultural (on family, community, and society levels)?
- Do you feel competent to transmit your language and culture to your children? Have you ever felt incompetent? When? Why? What did you do to change that?
- What are the challenges of raising children bilingual/bicultural?/being raised bilingual/bicultural in the context where you live?
- What are the sacrifices one has to make raising children bilingual/bicultural?/being raised bilingual/bicultural (sacrifices which you have made knowingly and willingly and sacrifices which others have required of you)?
- Is there a price to pay?
- What culture/language do you/your children feel most comfortable with, and why?
- What contributes/could contribute to this feeling of comfort?
Thank you very much for your contribution!