Writing Development in Simultaneous and Successive Bilingual Learners Writing is one of the most demanding skills children acquire because it requires thinking, language knowledge, motor skills, and cultural awareness to work together. For multilingual learners, this complexity increases further, as writing develops across languages with different structures, scripts, and conventions. Joan Sedita’s Writing Rope offers
When families live abroad and raise their children with multiple languages, their experience rarely follow a linear path. Parents often tell me “My child spoke only German at home, but after starting school in France, suddelny French took over”, or “After a summer with grandparents, my children’s Italian became much stronger again, but then it faded once school resumed”.
Neurodivergence is a widely discussed topic today, and efforts are underway to adapt social and educational environments – traditionally designed for neurotypical children – to be more inclusive. One of the key goals of inclusive education is to adjust tasks and activities so that neurodivergent children can fully participate. However, embracing neurodiversity goes beyond accommodation; it means accepting, celebrating, and supporting neurodivergent children as they are. Their differences are part of natural human variation and do not need to be fixed or changed.
Multilingualism is often celebrated or emphasized as a gift or a superpower. Such descriptions emphasize the advantages of using multiple languages, they can also mislead people to falsely assume and expect it to be easy.
Bilingualism has long been a subject of linguistic and cognitive inquiry, evolving from strict early definitions to more fluid and inclusive conceptualizations. It has been reflecting different research paradigms, cultural contexts and social attitudes toward language use.
Many multilingual children experience a paradox: some may chat fluently in a new language but struggle academically, whilst others may grasp complex academic concepts yet find casual conversations about everyday topics difficult.
This is where four essential concepts – BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills), CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency), CUP (Common Underlying Proficiency), and CALS (Core Academic Language Skills) – help us understand multilingual development and learning success.
Parents who want to raise their children with more than one (or two) languages, often look for ways to make this work. A first step to find answers is to ask the right questions: What language should your child speak? With whom? When? For what reason? Furthermore: Who else in your community speaks your language that
Multilinguals are not all the same. The way we acquire and organize languages varies significantly, depending on our contexts and learning experiences. Understanding the distinctions between compound, coordinate, and subordinate multilingualism helps us better support language development in multilingual families and educational settings.
In this post you can find a list of strategies that support multilingual students in the most effective way
When raising children with multiple languages our vision is for them to become proficient in more than one language.