“Becoming bilingual, whether from birth of soon after, or subsequently in early childhood prior to schooling, entails a complex interaction between what children bring to the learning task, that is, among others, speech segmentation skills, speed of processing, and the linguistic and cultural environments in which they grow up” (Ludovica Serratrice, Becoming Bilingual in Early Childhood, in A. De Houwer and L. Ortega, The Cambridge Handbook of Bilingualism, CUP, 2019, p.35)

Parents, teachers, educators and health practitioners should always consider that quantity and quality of input are strong predictors of children’s early lexical skills, and these are closely related with emerging grammatical skills.

Also, the societal status of the language – its prestige in the community – plays an important role in the development and maintenance of the skills children acquire in these languages.

Please consider this infographic as a general guideline: each child and situation is unique and deserves personalized attention and assessment if necessary.

I invite you to observe but not hover over your child’s language development and to enjoy all the steps!

⇒ You can also explore the 5 stages Additional Language Acquisition.