S4 Ep.9 Learning a Second Language: Choice or Circumstance with Prof. Johanne Paradis

Season 4 has been all about bilingualism, multilingualism and various crosslinguistic pedagogical approaches. In this episode, I had the privilege of interviewing Johanne Paradis, Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Adjunct Professor in Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Alberta. Johanne has published more than 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters on bilingual children and is first author of Dual Language Development and Disorders, 3rd Edition, Brookes Publishing (2021). Throughout this episode, we talk mostly about immigrant or refugee children learning English-as-a-second language. We also touch on language disorders in bilingual children. Johanne provides many tips and advice for teachers, educators and speech-language pathologists. Here are a few examples:
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Advice for teachers/SLPs/educators

• Encouraging the use of the Heritage Language at home;
• Making bilingualism the foundation for everything;      
• Finding ways to support the Heritage language even if you don’t speak it;
• Building a team approach (parents, older children, community members, people from the school, etc.) to intervention with children who speak a language that is different from the language that the adult speaks .
  

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As well as advice for parents who mainly speak a heritage language in the home.

Advice for parents

• Speak the heritage language at home;
• Redirect your child to the heritage language;
• Recast what they say in English in the Heritage language;
• Expand what your child says in the heritage language by adding a few more words;
• Maximize exposure to different speakers of the heritage language;
• Create diversity of experience in the heritage language;
• Read books, tell stories and/or listen to music in the heritage language;
• If you text with your children, text in the heritage language.

Johanne also talks about her website where you can find resources and useful information:
Child English Second Language (CHESL) Centre: https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/chesl/home 

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Parlé Podcast · S4 Ep.9 Learning a Second Language: Choice or Circumstance? with Johanne Paradis