Bilingual children: Active language learners as language brokers

Abstract

All children are active language learners, including those learning more than one language. Growing up bilingual offers children particular cognitive strengths and helpful patterns of interaction, along with some cognitive, perceptual, and academic challenges, particularly for children in families of low socioeconomic status. Many immigrants in the USA face language and cultural barriers in gaining access to resources. To overcome those barriers, families often engage in "language brokering," in which children act as interpreters and translators between parents and US society. Parent-child interaction during language brokering resembles "dialogic reading" prompts and questioning strategies that have been successfully used to support vocabulary development among young children. This chapter outlines bilingual children's active engagement with language in challenging cognitive and social situations, and describes promising innovations to promote bilingual language learning.