A Parents' and Teachers' Guide to Bilingualism (Parents' and Teachers' Guides, 9) Paperback – September 26, 2007

Excellent advice from the first to the last page. I especially appreciated the insight that you can't expect bilinguals to be double monolinguals and that just because there are various degrees of bilingualism, that doesn't mean that any one level is inferior - they all simply suit different needs.Bilinguals are usually also bicultural, biliterate, and sometimes binational. There is a lot to be said for it and Baker's book will help you countervail monolingual bias.Children love to learn from the day they are born. And there is no reason to let anyone talk you out of speaking two languages even to babies.

The book contains a lot of information about various aspects of raising bilingual children. However, like pretty much everything I've read about bilingualism, this book suffers from not being objective. It seems that all existing material about bilingualism has an agenda to push: bilingualism is good. This bias made the book annoying to me. Now, don't get me wrong: I am a big supporter of multilingualism. I enjoy learning languages myself and I am doing my best to raise my daughter to be trilingual. I strongly believe that knowing more languages makes your life richer in many ways. But it is irritating to read all those books and articles that brush aside obvious problems that come with multilingualism in the effort to promote it. I started the review by saying that l like this book overall and this is for one reason: it made me think more concretely about what a measure of success in being multilingual is (more about it below).THE BIASThe basic premise that I have a problem with is repeated throughout the book. Here's one example [from section E26]: "Languages don't exist in balance: the higher the one, the lower the other". This is obviously not true at many levels. Let's first consider pure language competence in the sense of how large one's vocabulary is. We learn language from many sources but for simplicity, let's focus on reading books. There's a finite number of books I can read in a given period of time. Say, I can read 100 books in some amount of time. If I read all 100 in one language, I will acquire a better vocabulary in this language than if I read 50 books in this language and 50 in another. I think that the basic disagreement between me and the author of the book is that he is happy if an individual acquires just a basic command of language you need in your everyday life: to connect with your community, have a conversation with a stranger etc. What we're losing is the extra difference between a person with average competency in a language and someone who truly mastered it. I don't think that the trade-off is always obvious.And what's more, using language is not just about the vocabulary size. Using the language means living the culture of this language. So the vocabulary size is just one of the aspects where there will be a gap between a multilingual who knows a given language as one of a few languages and a monolingual who knows the culture related to that language in a more comprehensive way. The monolingual will have read more books, listened to more songs, watched more movies, used more web sites, talked to more friends, played more games etc in a given language than a person who lived the life of that language only part-time. Whether this is better or worse is a matter of your point of view and your values. I happen to think that even if I know fewer artifacts of a given culture, the fact that I can look at the culture both from the inside and from a perspective of another culture makes me understand this culture better. But do I expect that everyone will share my point of view? No. I realize that some people will think that knowing a single culture inside out is better than having direct experience with many cultures. And the fact that this book and everything else I've read about bilingualism doesn't give the same respect to this alternate point of view that monolingualism can be superior in some ways is what made me cringe when I was reading this book.THE INSIGHTAll this brings me to what I think is the most valuable thing I took out of the book. What does it mean to be multilingual? Who are you comparing to and what are you comparing? Do you expect that in every of the languages a multilingual speaks, their command of that language will be as good as of a monolingual person? This is not reasonable. Is is even desirable? No one will give you the answer. You have to decide what the answer for you is.[...]

This gives great insights into the issues!

The author clearly knows his stuff, but is guilty of making a book out of the following contents- Favour using your native language with the child if you speak other languages weakly- One parent one language, avoid mixing two languages in the same context- It's mostly not true that bi- and multilingual children get "confused"- If your children have problems, it's probably not bilingualism's fault- Use common sense- Aren't my analogies beautiful?- Use some more common senseNow copy and paste this 2000 times and there you have the book.

After reading an excerpt via the "look inside" feature Amazon offers, I decided to give this book a try. As a parent debating whether to send her child to a dual language program (yes, there are different bilingual programs..read to find out!), this book answered many if not all of my questions. I liked the Q & A format, and found it easy to read (especially when time is limited with two young children). There isn't a lot of information out there about the effects of bilingual education on language majority children, and this is one book I found that addressed this. I was particularly concerned about my child's reading development (or lack of) if first taught in a language other than our own. The book did address this issue, and I've never found another that does! All parents want their child to succeed, so it is important for a book for parents to address issues such as this.It's true the book is repetitive in some areas, but I believe this is due to the format. A reader might look up an answer to one question, but not bother to read the book straight through.A few criticisms: It is a little slanted towards European language development. However, it appears that this is the author's area of expertise. I also would have liked to have citations to references. "Research shows..." is not enough information for me! Where did Mr. Baker get this information? I'm comforted that he does seem to be an expert in this field, as he has written textbooks on bilingual theory, but still...parents want references too!For a parent who wants to know more about bilingual education and how it will affect their child's development, this is a good read. Overall, I found the advice sound and useful.

Cannot recommend enough this book for every multicultural family. This copy was bought for bilingual friend with new baby.

The information is very interesting und helps differently assorted families make their choices, the only defect the book has is that it goes on and on for pages with information that could, really, be contained and much more readily understood in half a page or so.I've found myself distracted by other thoughts several times as I kept on reading the same message over several paragraphs, when it had reached me loud and clear after the first one already.Time is unfortunately a rare commodity nowadays, so I don't really appreciate a book that cannot be to the point.The advice, I repeat, is valuable and the structure of the book permits to jump to the relevant passages easily. Different parts are also effectively cross-referenced, so that you are led to other relevant aspects related to the one you are momentarily reading about.In summary: 4 stars for the content, 1 less for readability. You might find it harsh that I subtract 2 stars, the reason is that I could have been through with the book by now, while i'm only halfway through, which means I am still missing out on half of the insights which I could have learned and applied by now. It's really a pity.

This is a good reference book for people who are approaching family bilingualism for the first time and need thinking material. The book provides answers to many questions one may have on what bilingualism is, how to support it, advantages and disadvantages of it, education, etc. The manual structure is very user friendly as it organised in a crossed reference question-answer way, so it is easy to jump from topic to topic according to each one's interests.However, do not expect a step-by-step guide on how to raise bilingual children, which I think does not exist as each family is unique. This is more a useful introduction to the topic.

Booky

Save yourself time reading this book and just read the question and answer above again.This book is split into 5 sections which all approach the same question above, "will teaching my child to be bilingual have a negative affect on him some how?" and the answer given over and over again in different, long-winded ways is "No, bilingualism is actually beneficial to a child's development".There are no techniques for actually teaching your child or dealing with developmental problems which may arise, no inspiring ways to get you child involved in language learning. No yardsticks by which to measure your child's development.Complete waste of time and and money.