Maintaining one language while learning another: Moroccan children in Belgium

Dekeyser, Graziela; Stevens, Gillian

doi:10.1080/01434632.2018.1493115

Cited by 17 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 42 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It serves as a link between two fields of study: language policies and bilingual language outcomes of children (Karpava 2022). Subsequently, FLP is considered necessary for heritage language development (Caldas 2012;Dekeyser and Stevens 2019;Romanowski 2021;Spolsky 2004Spolsky , 2012.…”

Section: Family Language Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Age Variables in Family Language Policy

Rose,

Armon-Lotem,

Altman

2024

Languages

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Family language policy (FLP) provides a critical framework to explain the planning of language use in the home. It constitutes a dynamic construct that sheds light on variations in the language acquisition of bilingual children, potentially explaining the shifts that may occur in language dominance and preference. The environment and life experiences are thought to shape FLP, yet little is known about the function of age. This study examines the association of FLP with children’s chronological age and the age they become bilingual. Data were collected via questionnaires from parents and their bilingual children (n = 82) aged 5.08–14.08 (M = 8.98, SD = 3.27) speaking English (heritage language) and Hebrew (societal language). Correlations and logistic regressions indicate a relationship between FLP and dimensions of age. Findings reveal that age may have repercussions for parent language beliefs, patterns of language use within the home, and the adoption of language promotion strategies. Younger children and children with a later age of onset of bilingualism are associated with families who lean towards a pro-heritage language FLP. Considering dimensions of age enhances our understanding of FLP and may offer a greater insight into how languages are supported in the bilingual home.

show abstract

Section: Family Language Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Age Variables in Family Language Policy

Rose,

Armon-Lotem,

Altman

2024

Languages

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…FLP studies contribute to the field of research on child language acquisition by elucidating the important role that FLP plays in predicting children's bilingual development (De Houwer, 1999;Dekeyser & Stevens, 2019;Eversteijn, 2011;Kang, 2015;Schwartz, 2008). For example, in a study of 70 second-generation Russian-Jewish immigrant children in Israel, Schwartz (2008) examined how parents' language ideology, management and practices (obtained from a parental survey) influenced the children's L1 (Russian) vocabulary and literacy knowledge.…”

Section: Child Language Acquisitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Using a similar design, Dekeyser & Stevens (2019) found that the heritage language (HL) proficiency of more than 300 children (10-12 years old) with a Moroccan HL in Belgium was strongly affected by whether or not their parents used and valued HL, whether the mother was proficient in the HL and by opportunities to use it outside of the household. The children's proficiency in Dutch was affected by their mother's proficiency in the language and by the languages used by other children in the household.…”

Section: Child Language Acquisitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Establishing and Maintaining a Multilingual Family Language Policy

Curdt‐Christiansen¹,

Sun²

2022

The Cambridge Handbook of Childhood Multilingualism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As an increasingly established research field, Family Language Policy (FLP) provides a very useful lens to view how bi/multilingual home language-use patterns are influenced by socio-political ideologies and economic factors at macro level and by family members' language ideology at micro level. This chapter starts with an introduction to FLP and outlines the development phases of the field. It then provides a discussion of the major research contributions to the field. Following that, it provides a synthesis of the extant research on how FLP is established and maintained in a range of countries and contexts, focusing particularly on multilingual families. The synthesis focuses on internal factors, such as emotion, identity and cultural practices, and child agency in the negotiation of a family language policy. Lastly, insight gleaned from the more diverse range of social contexts are taken into consideration when making implications for parents, educators, and policy makers and a call for future research.

show abstract

“…Investigating Russian parents’ language choices and their motivation for transmitting heritage language to their children in Cyprus, Ireland, Israel and Sweden, Otwinowska et al ( 2021 ) showed through multiple regression analyses that the transmission of Russian depended on parental efforts to actively use Russian at home and provide opportunities to communicate in the heritage language. Using a FLP framework, Dekeyser and Stevens ( 2019 ) similarly examined how the children’s family background, the parents and siblings’ language practices, attitudes, and management affect the Moroccan children’s levels of proficiency in heritage language as well as Dutch in Belgium. The analysis of the data drawn from 300 children confirmed that children’s proficiency in Dutch depended on the amount of the time they lived in Belgium, the use of Dutch among siblings, their mothers’ proficiency in Dutch, and children’s perceptions of parents’ perspectives towards the importance of learning Dutch.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, their proficiency in their heritage language was related to the parents’, particularly mothers’, proficiency and use of heritage language. Dekeyser and Stevens ( 2019 ) also suggested that children’s HL proficiency would be boosted through language management strategies such as broadening the opportunities for children to act as language brokers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Family language policy in retrospect: Narratives of success and failure in an Indian–Iranian transnational family

Mirvahedi

Hosseini

2023

Lang Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this study, we investigate family language policy in a transnational family through a collaborative autoethnography. Following the theoretical underpinnings of family language policy (Spolsky in J Multiling Multicult Dev 31:3–11, 2012), we present parental language beliefs, management, and practices in retrospect to shine a light on the long-term impact of the family’s language policy on their daughter’s linguistic development in heritage languages (i.e., Persian and Hindi) and English. The components of the family language policy in this cross-cultural transnational family are sketched in the second author’s narratives of her experiences of multilingual childrearing and heritage language maintenance. We engage with, and critique, recent family language scholarship that apply postmodernist lens to examine families’ translingual use of languages at home to get by their daily life, showing how having failed to set boundaries between the home/heritage languages and English over the past nine years has resulted in their child’s predominant proficiency in English. We argue that such failure has its roots in parents’ own past lived, and future imagined, experiences, as well as language ideologies that are polycentric and scaled, the consequences of which concern emotional, linguistic, cultural and social frictions across generations. Drawing on the narratives of success and failure in the family, we call for critical adoption of translingual frameworks in examining family language policy paying careful attention to the long-term impact of such practices at home on children’s linguistic development.

show abstract

Maintaining one language while learning another: Moroccan children in Belgium

Cited by 17 publications

References 42 publications

The Role of Age Variables in Family Language Policy

The Role of Age Variables in Family Language Policy

Establishing and Maintaining a Multilingual Family Language Policy

Family language policy in retrospect: Narratives of success and failure in an Indian–Iranian transnational family

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About