Language Strategies for Bilingual Families: The One-Parent - One-Language Approach (Parents' and Teachers' Guides)

As a language graduate and mother to two potentially bilingual children, I was very interested to read about the best strategies for achieving bilingualism. However, this book was so littered with horrendous spelling and grammar errors that I couldn't bring myself to read past the first chapter. This was a shame, as I am sure the content would have been both useful and informative. Surely a book written about language should contain a reasonable level of language itself. A poor standard of English will make the reader doubt the quality of the content. Please let me know when you have invested in a good proof reader and I will buy the next edition!

I found this to be one of the better books on bringing up bilingual children and the one parent one language strategy seems to be working for our family (5,4,18m). I also liked the bilingual parents handbook (harding and riley) and raising multilingual children.

The One Parent - One Language Approach is well defended by this book but I found it counter to my own excellent experience of both parents using both languages in conversation with myself and my sister. The point about attempting to be a bilingual family is to follow an approach best suited to the whole family situation. This book is trying to pursuade you of a single method. I would recommend instead that you read The Bilingual Family by Edith Harding-Esch and Philip Riley which offers questions to the parents about how they can create a bilingual family and find right approach for them. "The Bilingual Family" is not as prescriptive in its approach and I welcome that. I have colleagues who are married to persons from other countries, and I have recommended that they read "The Bilingual Family" rather than "Language Strategies for Bilingual Families: The One-Parent - One-Language Approach."