« Parents should do one thing above all: talk to their child a lot»
Mr Daum, many children gain a new language experience in kindergarten by learning High German. The question of whether teachers should speak this instead of dialect is a controversial one. What do you think?
Children should feel comfortable in kindergarten. They will do so if the teacher feels the same way. If the teacher feels most comfortable with Swiss German, they should speak dialect. It is certainly not wrong to sensitise the children to High German, perhaps by choosing it as the language of instruction once a week. But I don't think it's a good idea to tell teachers what to do. And: children who speak dialect also come into contact with High German outside of kindergarten, be it through songs, television, audio books or being read to.
If the teacher feels most comfortable with Swiss German, they should speak it.
Many children not only speak a dialect at home, but also a second or third language. How does multilingualism shape their development?
Worldwide, a large proportion of children grow up multilingual, so this constellation is the rule rather than the exception. Multilingual children differ from their monolingual peers in that they speak more than one language and that the second or third languages they grow up with are associated with different ways of thinking, actions and traditions, a plus in cultural diversity. There is hardly a universal answer to the question of how multilingualism shapes development - it is not possible to draw conclusions from one multilingual child to others.
However, their research shows that multilingualism has an impact on children's communicative skills.
Yes, we have conducted several studies on this with small children who grow up monolingual, i.e. with a dialect, bilingual - with Swiss German and a non-German language - or so-called bidialectal, i.e. in the constellation of High German and Swiss German. The findings all point in the same direction: the bilingual children reacted more sensitively to communication situations.
What does that mean?
For example, the children were asked to put four red shoes on a stuffed elephant. The experimenter pretended to be looking for the fourth shoe, although she was holding it in her hand, clearly visible to the children. When the children pointed out that the shoe was in her hand, the experimenter pretended not to have understood her and pointed to a coloured picture.
We found that bilingual children are more responsive to the needs of their counterparts.
We were interested in whether the children took the opportunity to correct the misunderstanding, for example by drawing the experimenter's attention to the shoe again. It turned out that bilingual children did this more often than those who grew up monolingual or with Swiss German and High German.
What is your explanation for this?
Bilingual children are more often confronted with challenging communication situations than monolingual children. For example, they have slightly less vocabulary available per language than monolingual children have in their mother tongue repertoire. They therefore use inappropriate words more often or switch to their second language depending on the situation.
This can lead to more linguistic misunderstandings that need to be corrected. In addition, bilingual children have to constantly adapt depending on which family member they are speaking to. All of this obviously sensitises their communicative skills. We also found that bilingual children were more responsive to the needs of their counterparts.
How did this manifest itself?
We confronted the children with two protagonists who were solving a riddle - a ladybird who wanted help and a grasshopper who said he didn't want any help. We realised that the monolingual children made no distinction between the ladybird and the grasshopper: They helped both in similar ways.
The bilingual ones, on the other hand, adapted their behaviour. They were more likely to comply with the grasshopper's request not to tell him the solution. There are also research results that show that bilingual children perform slightly better than their monolingual peers when it comes to empathising with the other person.
Does multilingualism also influence cognitive abilities?
After the turn of the millennium, studies suggested that multilingual children and adults have an advantage in the area of executive functions. Executive functions include working memory and self-regulation, i.e. the ability to control our attention and regulate our emotions.
Multilingualism harbours no risk for development. This theory has long been disproved.
Researchers attribute the positive effect to the fact that multilingual children always have to «suppress» one of their languages and actively concentrate on the other, depending on who they are speaking to. And they have to be able to recall their second or third language depending on the situation.
The theory that this trains impulse control, working memory and attention control sounds plausible. However, recent research shows that the potential of multilingualism in this respect is much lower than previously assumed.
For what reason?
The research methods are stricter today. For example, greater attention is paid to the extent to which factors such as socio-economic status or the parents' level of education distort the results. If such variables are taken into account, these advantages are only found to a very small extent, if at all.
It used to be said that multilingualism delayed development.
This assumption was based on intelligence tests carried out in the USA and Wales, for example, with immigrants and monolingual natives. The immigrants performed worse across the board - because the tests were in English and they had a poor understanding of the tasks or the immigrants often had a lower socio-economic status than the natives.
This led to the conclusion that growing up multilingual was a developmental risk. Science has long since disproved this theory. Multilingualism only harbours one demonstrable disadvantage, if you like.
Namely?
Multilingual children and adults have a slightly smaller vocabulary than monolingual people - but only in the respective language. For example, a kindergarten child who grows up speaking German and French may not know the German word for key, but will know the French word. If both languages are taken into account, the size of the overall vocabulary is the same.
It is important that parents create situations that offer space for dialogue.
What should parents look out for when raising their children multilingually?
Parents should do one thing above all else, regardless of the language: talk to their child a lot. The more words a child hears and the more they can use these words themselves, the more they will have in their active vocabulary later on.
There is a study from the 1990s that analysed the language development of children depending on the socio-economic status of the family. It shows that four-year-old children of well-educated parents have heard over 30 million more words in the course of their development than their peers from less educated families. We also know that not only the quantity but also the quality of parental language plays a role.
What is important here?
Parents should create situations that offer time, space and enjoyment for dialogue and a context in which the child feels recognised. They should not only act as listeners, but should have as many opportunities as possible to use and try out language themselves.
It's tricky when foreign-language parents give up their mother tongue because they believe their child will learn German better that way.
It is important that parents listen carefully, ask questions and repeatedly invite the child to share their thoughts with them. We should do all of this in the language that we feel comfortable with, that is closest to our hearts and most familiar. This is the only way to convey language emotionally and convincingly.
So there is no point in trying to teach your child a language other than their mother tongue?
If you master the language in question in such a way that you feel at home in it, can express yourself in a differentiated way and convey all the subtleties of a mother tongue, there is nothing to be said against it in my view. Let's assume, on the other hand, that a Swiss mother wants to give her child an advantage by speaking English with it: of course the child learns something in the process - the only question is whether it enjoys doing so in such an artificial situation.
The mother is unlikely to do any harm, as the child has other caregivers who can teach him the language of the environment in an authentic and solid way. It is questionable whether this will help. It is trickier when foreign-language parents do without their mother tongue when interacting with their child because they believe it will help them learn German better.
Why is this problematic?
If the parents speak faulty German to the child instead of teaching him or her the fluent mother tongue, the child will not get German or the parents' actual mother tongue «right» at home.
It is better if parents use their mother tongue to create a foundation on which the child can build - in other words, to give them a solid knowledge of a first language that they can later transfer to German as a second language.
Many parents who are raising multilingual children rely on the «One Person, One Language» (OPOL) method. What is it all about?
The idea behind this is: one person, one language. This means that each parent consistently speaks only «their» language with the child. For example, the Swiss mother only speaks dialect and the Argentinian father only Spanish. There is nothing to be said against this method. However, there is no scientific basis for the advantages it is said to have. Many parents are afraid of doing something wrong, for example if they mix languages with their child.
For good reason?
I can give the all-clear: Children can already distinguish between the different languages spoken in the family in the first year of life - and can clearly recognise them even if the Swiss mother switches to Spanish in between or the Argentinian father switches to German, to stick with our example. However, the OPOL approach has no disadvantages either - as a clear strategy, it can help to reduce uncertainty on the part of parents and thus contribute to relaxation.
How can teachers in kindergarten support multilingual children in their development?
There are various ways in which teachers can react when multilingual children switch to their second language because they do not know a German word. Starting with the option of telling the child to please repeat themselves in German, through to simply letting them continue speaking without correcting the language change.
I think it's great when teachers make the children's family language a topic.
I think a middle way makes sense in an educational context. For example, the teacher can repeat in German what the child has said in their second language or, if they don't understand it, ask the child to paraphrase what they mean. I think it's great when teachers make the family languages spoken in the classroom a topic of discussion from time to time.
How, for example?
Perhaps in the form of verses, songs or short story sequences that a child recites in their family language. Especially for children who have no connection to the dialect at home, this is a great opportunity to show them: I don't just speak broken Swiss German, I also have a mother tongue that I speak fluently and in which I feel at home. Or you can write down what greetings are said in the respective family languages, have multilingual children bring a snack from their own culture. It's about making cultural and linguistic diversity visible - and all children benefit from this because it promotes their openness and sensitivity to this diversity.
