Product Description

Illustrated throughout with the real life experiences of fifty families around the world, this second edition of this bestselling book is for anyone - parents, teachers and language professionals alike - who need advice on how children can get the most from a bilingual situation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #82898 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Review
'This book is a valuable read which raises fascinating issues based on real life experiences; useful for parents promoting their children's ability to become fully conversant in the two main languages of their heritage and also to anyone studying children's linguistic development and emergent bilingualism.' - Avril Brock, Bradford College

Praise for first edition:
'A well-written and comprehensible guidebook ... offers readers the basic concepts of bilingualism and practical suggestions for the problems that naturally arise in everyday life.' - International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism

'Every family with two languages should have this book.' - The Bilingual Family Newsletter

'This outstanding collection of the key articles in the field is an essential guide for incoming students and a wonderful resource for bilingualism scholars.' - Annotated Bibliography for English Studies

'A book like this is decades overdue. ... Growing Up with Two Languages is an excellent guide for working through day-to-day issues of bilingual parenting and long-term strategies for dealing with such fundamental issues as children's cultural identity and social comfort.' - Naomi S. Baron, American University, Washington

In ^Growing up With Two Languages Una Cunningham-Andersson and Staffan Andersson provide a highly accessible account of the stages of language development, describe and evaluate the various systems and strategies that can be adopted and look at the problems that can occur when a child is exposed to two language and cultures.

The book is illustrated throughout with the real life experiences of fifty families around the world and concludes with clear practical advice on how to support and document a child's bilingual development and how to make the most of the internet.

'Every family with two languages should have this book!' - Stephen Ryan, The Bilingual Family Newsletter

'It's wonderful that this excellent resource for multilingual families has been updated. The original edition sits on a shelf at home with other well-worn companions of my early childrearing days, and I find it somehow comforting to know that the authors' children have - like my own sons - grown older, giving their parents not only new insights, but a renewed conviction that the multilingual path they chose for their family was the right one.' - Marina Zvetina, Board member, ImF - Interest Group for Multilingual Families in Germany

'Every family with two languages should have this book!' - Stephen Ryan, The Bilingual Family Newsletter

From the Back Cover

This best-selling guide is written by a couple with first-hand experience of bringing-up their children with two languages. It is illustrated by glimpses of bilingual life through interviews with fifty families from around the world. The trials and rewards of life with two languages and cultures are discussed in detail, followed by practical advice on how to support the child's linguistic development.

Features of this second edition include:

* new and updated Internet resources
* information on the specific problems facing teenagers, and guidance on how to resolve them
* new research into language acquisition
* new and updated first-hand advice and examples throughout.

About the Author
Una Cunningham-Andersson is a Senior Lecturer in English language and linguistics at Dalarna University in Falun, Sweden.
Staffan Andersson teaches computing. They are raising their four children to speak English and Swedish in Sweden.

Customer Reviews

A good introduction to the topic of biligualism
Good points: easy to read with many useful suggestions. Very up to date with a number of useful web site addresses.

Bad points: possibly a bit too simplistic and very general. More focused on families where English is the minority language.

I found 'The Biligual Family'by Harding and Riley more useful but it is more academic and has slightly different goals from this book.

good, but didn't meet my needs
This is a really good book if you're an English speaker, living in a country where English isn't spoken at all. There are lots of really interesting case studies and examples of how families cope with bilingualism.
However, it didn't meet my needs - we are a family living in Wales, where one parent speaks English as a first language, and the other speaks Welsh as a first language. Our situation may not be commonplace, but I didn't find the help I was looking for in this book.
I found Colin Baker's book 'A Parent's and Teacher's guide to bilingualism' met our needs more fully.
Some really good resources and web-site addresses though.

A good book to buy
This book is very good. I needed something that could give me examples of growing up children with two languages. The only thing that I had found before where negative answers. Here the authours talks about their experience and also about possibilities of different ways both in negative and positive matters. There are also lots of comments from another bilingual families. Their family is Swedish/English living in Sweden, where people understand English, instead mine is Icelandic/Italian one living in Italy. Where people actually say that are you bothering using Icelandic. I didn't find lots of hints for us which have a minor languages just spooken by one person without dialogues except the kids.