Celebrating multilingualism

The majority of children all over the world grow up using more than one language. ‘Bilingual’ or ‘multilingual’ mean that a person uses more than one language in their everyday lives. It does not mean that a person has the same skills in all his or her languages.

Advantages

• Using two or more languages gives a child different ways of thinking
• It develops self confidence and confidence in learning
• It increases pride in identity and culture
• A child who uses home language well is more likely to develop good English
• Using home language is important for maintaining family relationships
• It is the easiest way to express emotions
• Many employers look for people who can speak, read and write other languages.

For these reasons, families should be encouraged to develop and maintain their home language. Our bilingualism leaflet can be distributed to parents and carers to reinforce this message.