Learning to Read and Write in the Multilingual Family

This book is a guide for parents who wish to raise children with more than one language and literacy. Drawing on interdisciplinary research, as well as the experiences of parents of multilingual children, this book walks parents through the multilingual reading and writing process from infancy to adolescence. It identifies essential literacy skills at each developmental stage and proposes effective strategies that facilitate multiliteracy, in particular, heritage-language literacy development in the home environment. This book can also be used as a reference for teachers who teach in community heritage language schools and in school heritage (or foreign) language programmes.

Xiao-lei Wang is Dean and Full Professor at the Ruth S. Ammon College of Education and Health Sciences at Adelphi University in New York, United States. Her research focuses on multilingual language acquisition, nonverbal communication, and parent-child interaction. She has written numerous books, including three books written for parents of multilingual children.