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Multilingual Families : Supporting multilingual families – a linguistic treasure for Europe
Start date: Jan 1, 2013,

The “Multilingual Families” project is a project aiming to preserve the languages and cultures of the 47.3 million immigrants living in the European Union (9.4% EU population Eurostat 2010) and the families with parents where more than one language is spoken. These people represent a linguistic treasure for Europe and it must be preserved to enhance the linguistic and multi-cultural diversity in Europe.To preserve this treasure among the second generations, the children of immigrants and linguistically diverse parents, a continuous linguistic resource is crucial. Children who are bilingual are also a strong beacon to their monolingual peers showing that bilingualism or multilingualism can be achieved. In addition, research is showing that bilingual children gain cognitively (Sampath) (Swain & Cummins). The difficulty is to support and inform immigrants or bilingual parents on why and how to raise their children bilingually in an informal setting. The “Multilingual Families” project will provide this support to parents in 3 ways by answering the questions:• Why – should we support children’s learning and continuing use of the family language?; • What – can we do to support them?; • How – do we implement real language support so that they learn the family language and retain it? The rpoject will go further and provide support materials to teachers, immigrant groups. It addresses all stakeholders that work with immigrants and bilingual parents, so that they can disseminate the project resources to immigrant and bilingual parents and support them by answering questions and obtaining materials.Finally, “Multilingual Families” will also create resources for the children, to show them directly why having 2 or more languages is something to be proud of and the value they have in their lives.The resources produced will be in 17 languages so as to allow the widest possible dissemination.

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  •   354 519,00
  • Education and training\Life long learning (2007-2013)\LANGUAGES (KEY ACTIVITY 2)\Multilateral Projects
  • Project on ERASMUS Platform

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