Family involvement in second language learning. The Bilfam project.

This chapter describes a study which investigated the learning of a second language to children aged two to six by parents in their homes. It was carried out in three European countries – Romania, Slovakia,Italy – within the European funded project Bilfam – Let’s become a bilingual family! Field research findings, which used online tutoring to inform and coach families and questionnaires and blogs to collect data, have shown that parents provided with the necessary tools and strategies, can be successfully involved in their child’s foreign language learning. Both benefit from the experience: also parents feel encouraged to improve their language learning by teaching their children. We believe that family foreign language learning might create a positive attitude towards multilingualism, developing better contextual conditions for multilingual education.