MRM - MARCS Research Meeting - 09 March 2021

Join us at the next MRM with Professor Paola Escudero Neyra, Gloria Pino Escobar and Eline Smit for their presentation

The meeting will be held on Bankstown campus room 3.G.55

The meeting will also take place via Zoom ID 839 6390 0819. Password marcs

11am - MARCS Research Meeting

You are invited to an MRM presentation by Professor Paola Escudero, Gloria Pino Escobar and Eline Smit

Title: Nurturing Australia's little multilingual minds: A home and foreign language extension program for early childhood

Abstract:

Research has shown the many benefits of children’s home language maintenance, including higher academic performance and enhanced social cognition. However, the reality of many multilingual families is little or no support for their home language outside of their homes, with many families seeing their children’s shift to English (or the majority language) from early childhood. In this talk, we introduce our Little Multilingual Minds (LMM) program, which aims at supporting and extending home language maintenance and foreign language learning during the early, formative years, using evidence-based principles, structure and guidelines. It operates in close partnership with established early childhood settings, such as daycare centres, preschools, playgroups, or primary schools.

Our tailor-made approach implies in-depth knowledge of the setting’s language use and children’s cognitive and linguistic skills. Here, we focus on this pre-LMM assessment for our first partner, a bilingual preschool in Sydney. We report on our probabilistic measure of language use in the setting and our evaluation of children’s abilities. After this diagnostic assessment, we suggest our tailormade approach for home-language support and extension at this specific setting. We conclude by a) mentioning our potential new partners, and b) highlighting how our research improves multilingual families’ lives in Australia and overseas, fostering diversity, inclusion, cultural awareness, and the celebration of different identities.

This will be presented both on Zoom (via our meeting ID above) and in 3.G.55 as part of the back to campus plan

The zoom ID is: 839 6390 0819

Link to zoom https://uws.zoom.us/j/83963900819?pwd=bDl5cVVkQWV2d1g4R2xaRFBtYTJiQT09