Academic support measures for allophone children

In children acquiring a second language, there are characteristics that could lead to a referral for speech-language pathology and that are not typically expected:

• A family history of language disorder or learning disorder;
• Difficulty acquiring language at a normal rate or even with adult assistance;
• Communication difficulties within the family;
• Difficulty interacting with peers from the same culture/origin;
• Persistent language difficulties in BOTH languages, for example:
  • Difficulty pronouncing the same sounds in both languages;
  • Difficulty acquiring new vocabulary words in both languages;
  • Persistent difficulty structuring sentences in both languages (note: each language can influence the other; the child may typically produce language influence errors like an English speaker who says "the red car" and places the adjective before the noun, as they would in English);
  • Difficulty telling stories in both languages;
  • And more.

As a general rule, it is important to trust parents, and always refer if there is parental concern. In my clinical and parental experience, a parent's instinct is always well-founded!

But what if you have questions about the child and their language? What ways could a professional help in the meantime?

Support measures for allophone children

There are many possible support measures, strategies that are truly effective. One or more of the following strategies can be offered as needed:

• Offer more time to process information
• Repeat instructions
• Validate that the student has understood the instruction by asking them to repeat/rephrase it
• Use gestures
• Provide models of what is expected from the child
• Encourage the child to respond using all means: gestures, isolated words, other languages
• Allow the possibility to respond in the native language and then provide the model again in the second language (this way, you validate the child's understanding)
• Offer visual aids (images, organizational diagrams, narrative structure, etc.)
• Highlight critical information
• Explicitly teach academic vocabulary
• Make connections between new information to learn and prior knowledge

All these strategies are valid and should be implemented one by one, systematically. It's not about trying everything at once, but rather, adapting to the student.

In a school context, these measures could be part of an individualized intervention plan overseen by a specialized education professional.

If you would like more support regarding your interventions with these children, I have developed a pre-recorded training just for you. You can read all the details here.

More general strategies to value the native language

Finally, there are more general strategies to value the native language that I often recommend to families, and that you too can recommend for sustainable bilingualism and a love for all these languages:

• For some families, it is possible to travel to the parents' native country
• Celebrate family origins by cooking traditional meals
• Celebrate traditional holidays and continue family customs related to language/culture
• Listen to music in the home language
• Sing songs or nursery rhymes with your child in the home language
• Visit multicultural grocery stores to find foods from "back home"
• Read books in the home language
• Try to find podcasts for children, radio shows for children, or even high-quality shows in the home language
• Surround yourself with families/friends of the same culture/ethnicity

Hoping that these tips will be as useful to you as they are to the families you work with!