Mother Tongue and Learning in Migrant Households

Abstract

The extent to which the children in migrant households acquire proficiency in the new language of their destination and in their heritage language strongly conditions their well-being and their success in the country’s educational institutions. In this paper, i will exhibit how language practices by Moroccans (globally the North African) parents, attitudes towards the heritage language and French anguage, affect children’s development and the children’s success in the country’s educational. I will discuss how immigrant families are losing their heritage languages faster simply due to limited opportunities to read their own languages. And finally, i will show how my mother tongue books can help parents to explain nartural phenomena, to discover sciences, to learn civic acts or to express ideas and emotions to their children. All those skills are lost when a child have not access to books in their mother tongue.

Keywords:Immigrant integration, Second-language acquisition, School reform, Darija, Moroccan language, North African language.

DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/97-02

Publication date:March 31^st 2023