The back matter of “The Bilingual Family” consists of two sections: The Bibliography and The Index. Firstly, The Bibliography contains a list of journals and internet sites which are seen by the authors to be of great use for the readers. Then, the authors listed a great number of references and sources used in the book. Actually, the references are very accurate. They are all primary sources. They are listed in alphabetical, logical order. This makes it easy for the readers to read, analyze and refer to them.(This is the norm in references. The authors did not do anything new) Moreover, the authors did not depend, in their references, on a certain period of time but they use references covering various ages and times. This makes the subject of the book chronologically totally covered. Secondly, The Index is, also, accurate and simplified. The authors mention certain terms which they use in their book and which may not be understandable for the readers. The authors determine the pages where these terms are mentioned in the book and define them in section III of the book (The Alphabetical Reference Guide).For example: the word ‘Accent’, which is found in pages 12, 55, 69-70, 137, is accurately defined in section III of the book. Really, this makes the book and the terms in it very accurate for the readers. Thus the authors apparently succeed in conveying the subject for(to) the readers through their valuable and accurate Bibliography, Index and Sources.Actually, “The Bilingual Family” succeeds to convey a certain message to the readers; How to raise their children bilingually and How to use the right methods to do so. The book greatly helped the bilingual families in their bilingual process by introducing complete and sufficient information and bilingual experiences to them. Thus, there is no need to refer to other works on bilingualism to raise bilingual children.“A Parents’ and Teachers’ Guide to Bilingualism” by Colin Baker is a book dealing with the same subject; Bilingualism. By Comparison, the two books are good and successful guides to Bilingualism. “The Bilingual Family” deals with the subject from head to toe. The book tackled Bilingualism from the birth of the child till he becomes a bilingual child. The Authors specifies a whole chapter in the beginning of the book in order to talk about the child and his first language acquisition before beginning to talk about bilingualism in chapter two of the book. This makes the subject clearer for the readers as it is tackled from the beginning till the end. On the other hand, Baker’s book tackles the subject in the form of questions and answers. Baker’s book does not tackle the stages of the bilingual child’s life from his birth. Moreover, “The Bilingual Family” contains sixteen case studies which enhance the reader’s understanding of the bilingual process. On the other hand, Colin Baker’s book contains only questions and answers about Bilingualism without mentioning any case studies of bilingual children and this makes the subject more vague for the readers and lacking concrete evidence.Also, “The Bilingual Family” defines the concept of Bilingualism and the concepts related to it in chapter two of the book (p.22) before beginning to talk about how to bring up bilingual children. On the contrary, “A Parents’ and Teachers’ Guide to Bilingualism” tackles the subject directly without defining it’s concepts to the readers first. Clearly, this makes the subject less understandable for the readers.Furthermore, the two books tackle the same point of the shared culture or the Biculture that the bilingual child should have. “The Bilingual Family” defines Culture as “a way of life of the society in which we grow up, influences our habits, our customs, the way we dress and eat our beliefs and values, our ideas and feelings, our notions of politeness and beauty”. The book, also, mentions that the cultures’ aspects are assimilated unconsciously just by being brought up in a certain society. Also, the authors say that if the people are of a certain culture and they become aware of the people’s other culture, they will have a deep ‘sense of shock’. For example: “Our world can be turned upside down when we learn that ‘they’ eat snails, mint sauce, or sheeps’ eyes”. The book mentions that Bilingualism and Biculturalism do not necessarily coincide. The authors define Biculturalism as :an individual two co-existing cultures. Moreover, the book mentions the fact that many Monolinguals are bicultural. For example: “those Irish, Scots and welsh people who despite having English as their sole language, maintain a cultural identity which they do not share with the English (for example: in terms of the institutions such as the legal and the educational systems and in their tastes and customs)”.Actually, “people whose lives are shared between two communities, exhibit various combinations of two distinct cultures”. Meaning that they feel at ease in any culture of the two cultures.Baker’s book, also, tackles this point of “sharing two cultures”. He asks a question which is “My children can speak two languages. How can I help them to belong to two cultures?” .Baker answers this question for his readers saying that “Merely speaking a language to the child conveys culture to that child…through culture the child learns a whole way of life”. However, the child can speak a language and yet he cannot act this language. For example: those people are said to be speaking Spanish but they do not act Spanish. Baker says that a child should be made, by the help of his parents, to ‘Identify’ himself with a particular language culture. He provides the parents with the ways by which they can make their children belong to a particular language culture. Colin Baker says that parents should make their children meet speakers of their two languages and visit a variety of cultural events. Parents can, also, introduce their children to “the cultures that surround each language”. “Where first-hand experience is not possible, T.V and video tapes allow a second-hand experience”. Baker says that introducing the child to wider ranges of cultures that goes with each language will widen the “horizons of the child…and give the world a view where there are fewer barriers and more bridges”.Thus, the two books tackle, to some extent, the same point but from different perspectives. All in all, “The Bilingual Family” is more successful than” A Parents’ and Teachers’ Guide to Bilingualism” by Colin Baker. This is because the first book tackles the overall bilingual process. It defines all the concepts concerning bilingualism and those concepts related to this broad concept .Actually, this really establishes an authoritative book namely” The Bilingual Family” by Edith Harding-Esch and Philip Riley.
This part is well-written. EXCEPT for the repeated use of the word TACKLE. Use synonyms.
Actually, “The Bilingual Family” is written by two professional linguists: Edith Harding-Esch and Philip Riley. Edith Harding-Esch is French. She is a Senior Research Fellow in Language Education at The University of Cambridge and a former member of Centre de Recherchés Et d’Applications Pédagogiques en langues (CRAPEL) at the University of Nancy. She has various academic researches and studies in the applied linguistics, second language learning ,Bilingual acquisition, Bilingual education, Multilingualism, factors of language change, comparative education, pedagogical cultures and plurilingualism . She published many publications. For example: in the Hong Kong University Press she wrote “The Autonomy and Language learning”. Also, she wrote a book entitled “Beyond Language Teaching: Towards Language Advising”. Edith Harding-Esch’s husband is an English Mathematician and they have two children. The family’s language is French but they only use English at work and studies. They themselves undergo the process of Bilingualism.Philip Riley is an English author and linguist. He taught in Universities in Finland and Malta before setting in France. He, now, works at CRAPEL at the university of Nancy. He has many published books on linguistics and language teaching. He married a Swedish-speaking Finn and they have three children. While the children were young they spoke English and Swedish at home and French at school. Thus, there is a strong connection between the authors’ life experience, philosophy and education on the one hand and writing “The Bilingual Family” on the other hand.
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