For immigrant families, starting life in a new place may come with the worry of youngsters losing their home language - but a University of Alberta research initiative is helping children preserve that important cultural tie.
In partnership with immigrant communities in Edmonton, the Multilingual Language Program, based in the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, aims to nurture the younger generation's interest in their first languages and cultures, says professor Andrea MacLeod.
"There is a high rate of language loss between generations in newcomer families," says MacLeod, who created the program. "Our research, and the conversations we have with communities, show that both parents and youth express concern and challenges when it comes to maintaining their home language," she notes.
"Young adults talk about the benefits of still being able to speak their first language, and those who have experienced language loss talk about the barriers they experience of not being able to use it with their families."
Based in the Multilingual Families Lab led by MacLeod, the program is connecting with parents and children through the Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative, an Edmonton-based organization that supports newcomers.
Focused on youngsters aged three to nine, the language program holds eight-week group sessions where families gather to share storytelling, music, food and crafts to help kids connect with and stay fluent in their mother tongue.
"We aim to make using their home language interactive and fun. By supporting children at an early age, we're hoping to give them this positive identity about their languages and cultures, and to help them understand that they can bring it with them as they transition into school and into their older years," MacLeod says. "It helps them feel more confident and excited about using their language."
It's also vital to helping youths maintain their family ties by "making conversations smoother with their parents and their aunts, uncles or grandparents, who may have come to English much later in their life, or don't live locally," she adds. "And there are ways of expressing yourself in your home language that are really connected to your culture."
The program is helping answer important research questions about the barriers and opportunities for home language learning within families, MacLeod notes. "We want to identify effective strategies that families and community organizations can use to support home language use and transmission."
Along with interviewing parents, the lab's research team, whose members conduct their work multilingually, asks the children for their perspectives, MacLeod notes. "We learn about the children's own experiences of being bilingual and bicultural."
The youngsters seem to thrive in the program, she notes.
"They're definitely enjoying coming to the groups. I think one of the things they appreciate is those connections to peers, because these children don't necessarily go to school together, so it's a way to connect and see other kids that are from families like theirs, and to be able to use their language in a playful environment. What we've seen is that during the first one or two sessions, the kids tend to be a little more reticent to try to say something in their language, and then by the end, we see all kids taking part and kind of nudging each other to give it a try."
And because the language program is developed with community partners, it provides an immediate, flexible framework for their use, MacLeod says.
"At the end of our time together, they get to walk away with the program adapted to their community in a way that makes sense to them." Some of the strategies, like storytelling and crafts, are used in parenting groups, for example.
They're also used in workshops MacLeod leads for service providers who support newcomer families and their children, including social workers, teachers and organizations such as the ABC Head Start Society.
"This gives them strategies for how to bring in other languages in mainstream settings."
By collaborating with diverse partners - including Chinese, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Franco-African, Spanish, Syrian, Ukrainian and Vietnamese communities - the language program supports Canada's commitment to multiculturalism, MacLeod adds.
"It often rests only on the shoulders of parents to be able to transmit their language, and to really live up to one of the tenets of our system, we should be supporting those efforts beyond the home."
