Reading is one of the tasks that you might struggle to help your bilingual child with. In many ways, it presents parents with challenges that don’t necessarily come with simply speaking a language with your child. It can be especially challenging when finding the right balance between a majority and minority language.

But it’s important not to overthink things too much. You’ll pick things up as you go along; you’ll find out what works and what doesn’t by simply trying things out. And if you’re not at all sure where to start, we’re going to talk today about some of the things that you can do and focus on as you start helping your bilingual child with their reading skills.

We’re going to talk about that more today, so if you want to make sure you’re approaching this whole learning process in the best way possible, make the most of the tips and ideas we’re about to share below. Each of them will serve you well in one way or another.

Speak Letter Sounds in Both Languages

When you’re first helping your child to get familiar with the letter sounds, focus on speaking them in both languages. You want them to make that connection and to understand the letter as it sounds. When they’re younger, and they’re learning more about their minority language, you want them to focus on how words sound and how they’re pronounced as this is more important than the written side of the language. Speaking and understanding words are all about the sound, so help them become familiar with that through reading together.

As You Read, Discuss Grammar and Sentence Structure

As you read together with your child, you should take breaks at regular intervals to discuss things that you come across in the text you’re reading. For example, reading can help them to understand grammar better in their minority language and to get a better grasp on how sentences are structured. Of course, they’ll hear this when listening to you and others speaking in that language, but seeing it in writing on the page has a really positive impact too. So be sure to take the time to discuss those things.

Read Aloud to Aid Pronunciation Skills

Pronunciation is something you’ll want to focus on as we discussed above. You want them to become familiar with hearing and speaking in their target language, and that’s something that comes through practice and repetition. And it’s precisely why reading aloud is so helpful. A good idea is to read a book aloud together. Maybe you read one page aloud and they do the next. That way, they’re hearing the correct sounds and pronunciations from you and then getting the chance to try it themselves.

Repeating the Same Books Can Help Them

It can even be helpful to read the same book multiple times. That might sound boring, but when you’re starting to help your child to become as familiar as possible with the language, repetition and repeated interactions with the same words and phrases help to cement them in their mind. Whenever anyone is learning a language, repeated interactions are what help them to stick. If they only see something once, it properly won’t stay stored in their mind for a very long time. So it might make sense to read through a book a few times before moving onto the next.

A boy with red curly hair is sat on the grass, smiling and holding an open book — Credit: Pixabay.

Read Books Written By Native Speakers

If you want to make sure that your child is getting the most authentic version of a language possible, it makes sense to read books that were written by a native speaker of that language. In most cases, translations are fine and most quality publishers won’t put out books that contain obvious mistakes. But there’s still nothing quite like the language as written by someone who’s native to it. So that should be one of your main focuses when first choosing books to read together.

Find Helpful Tasks They Can Work on Independently

It’s also helpful for your child to start reading independently when they're old enough to do so. There are lots of options and reading worksheets that they can work on by themselves that’ll ultimately help them get to where they want to be with their reading levels. And it encourages them to take a more proactive approach to their education and reading as opposed to relying on you to help them through the process at each stage. That’s something that’ll only become more and more important as they get older.

Read One Book in Both Languages

Although we previously talked about it being useful to read books written by native speakers, it can also be helpful to read translations. This is specifically the case when want to do some reading in two languages. You could select a book and read two versions of it; one in their majority language and the other in their minority language. That way, they’re seeing how the sentences, words, and grammar are different between the two books, even though the core content is still the same. It helps them to make direct comparisons and understand crossovers in the language, as well as points of divergence.

Side view of a boy reading a book — Credit: Pixabay.

Try Translating as You Read

It can also help if you try to translate some of the words and sentences together as you read the book. That way, they’re getting the opportunity to practice their translation skills and make that vital connection between the two languages they speak. It’s definitely something to think about if you want to advance their language skills as they get a little older. Though this is probably not something that you want to focus on too much when they’re younger and still picking up the basics.

Balance the Amount of Reading in Each Language

It’s important to make sure that there’s some kind of balance between the two languages you’re focusing on. You probably don’t want to focus all on one language and not at all on the other. But it all depends on the skills of your child in each language, what their aims are, and lots of other factors. Every bilingual child will have their own journey, so you’ll have to find the path forward that works best for them.

Progress at Their Pace

Progressing at the right pace is definitely something that you want to think about here too. You don’t want things to progress too quickly because that makes it harder for them to retain what they’re learning. And you don’t want to rush them because this is something that you want to seem natural and normal, and not something that they feel pressured to do and get better at. If you can help them develop a real love of languages, that’ll be best for them going forward.

Keep Things Fun

Finally, you should remember to keep things fun. There are lots of fun ways to pick up language skills and to read. You can make it playful for younger children by role-playing the characters in a book and using funny voices. Anything that helps to keep them interested and engaged will be helpful for them in the long run.

Be sure to make the most of the ideas above if you want to make sure you can achieve the best outcomes possible when it comes to helping your bilingual child progress their reading skills. The more work you put in early on, the better the outcomes will ultimately be.

Disclosure: This is a collaborative post.