This work grew from our community-based program to support the home and school languages of children who are refugees. These 3 case studies provide an important perspective on the oral language abilities of three young children who were born in Syria and moved to Canada with their families as refugees. We spoke to parents about their children’s first language development, gathered perspectives from their teachers about their learning of French, the language of schooling, and observed their language abilities in action in both Arabic and French. We found that the home language was vulnerable to delays and weaknesses and that learning the language of school was a drawn-out process. We also found that parents were highly invested in their children’s success but communication with the school was not always easy. To foster resilience, we need to find ways to build bridges with parents to support children’s language in both the language of home and school.
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Multilingual Families Lab Familles Multilingues 