ELL Family Support
International School Bangkok typically holds two Mother Tongue Matters workshops a year. The workshop addresses all families with children aged from birth to age 8 that have more than one language. By attending this workshop, families have an opportunity to learn more about best practices for their child, share information regarding mother tongue relevance, clarify confusions, ask questions, and meet other families that experience these same issues. These workshops are typically held in August and May of each school year (Please contact Heather Vlach: heatherv@isb.ac.th for specific dates).
During personal family consultations, many parents have expressed feelings of concern regarding practices they had already implemented, or confusion about what steps to take to best support their child.
To better support families in creating clear goals in language learning, it may be beneficial to use a Language Action Plan as a guide for reflecting on potential goals and expectations for multilingual children in an international school environment. Developing a deeper understanding, and having clear ideas about what we want for our children linguistically is the first step in getting started on the journey toward a happy, healthy, and educationally sounds path in language learning and success.
One of the key components of the Language Action Plan is creating a Family Language Strategy Plan. The Family Language Strategy Plan is a guide with ideas of how to handle mother tongue language at home when the school environment offers English as the academic language. It also provides plans and examples for families with more than one language in their household. The most important aspect of implementing a family language plan is remaining consistent and firm with it.
A critical element to remember when implementing a family language plan, is that everyone who will be affected will need to be a part of the decision-making process and execution of the plan. Additionally, it is imperative to know that this is rarely a smooth transition with overnight success. Creating a family language plan into a habit takes time, consistency, and perseverance, and will not become routine without these key components. It is important to remind families that when implementing a plan, experiences of hardships and power struggles with children (And adults in the family) may become apparent as a result of the linguistic changes. It is very normal to feel concerned, out of control, and to question the reliability and validity, while also feeling the desire to give up. But the valuable point to remember is the myriad of benefits to be gained for everyone involved, and the research that stands behind supporting children in balancing languages. It will pay off!! As educators and administrators, we also need to embrace parent concerns and encourage their questions.
In today’s diverse world, by empowering children with their native language as well as additional languages, we are inviting multiple intellectual resources into our schools and global society while shaping unique, dynamic identities of the future. The mother tongue DOES matter!
Hello! My name is Heather Vlach. I am a Linguistically Diverse Educator at the early childhood level. My position at International School Bangkok entails supporting all linguistic levels of young children transitioning into the English language.
My passion and specialty area is family consultation regarding the relevance and value of the mother tongue, as well creating and supporting the implementation of a family language plan for instituting a healthy balance of multiple languages inside and outside the home and school environments.
