COMMENTS: radwa saied ismaiel moh

The authors’ style is, to a great extent Informal. It is written by Bilingual parents &(and) addressed to Bilingual parents as well. It addresses the bilingual families in a very friendly manner. Actually, what the authors aim at is to help, inform,& reassure parents by making available to them the experiences of a number of other families. The authors, also, define the word ‘family’ as “the social unit formed by any parent(s) plus children”. Moreover, the authors admit that their style is informal ,saying that “we have no particular theoretical or psychological axe to grind: this is not a set of dogmatic, hard & fast rules, but rather a practical discussion of some of the basic issues that we hope will help parents in their own particular situation”. Thus, it is ,indeed, a parent-to-parent discussion ,not a harsh or formal rules for the bilingual parents to follow in the process of bringing up their children bilingually. what gives the book a sort of credibility is that “The Bilingual Family” presents sixteen case studies of bilingual families which illustrate a wide range of different & various ‘solutions’ for the problems facing bilingual parents everywhere. The book, also, provides an alphabetical reference guide which provides answers to the most frequently asked questions about bilingualism. The authors, also, interviewed bilinguals & they found that nearly all of them valued & enjoyed their bilingualism & they have found in it a source of interest & enrichment.The authors use informal & conversational language. They use simple & easy words so as to make their ideas clearer & easily convey their message to the reader. For example: they use a simple definition of language learning, saying that “learning a language is not simply a matter of repetition, in fact repetition seems to play only a small & relatively superficial part in the learning process…moreover, if learning a language were merely a matter of repetition, how could we ever produce a sentence we had never heard before?”Furthermore, the authors give examples from the speech of the bilingual children themselves so as to make the idea clearer & understandable to the audience. For example they say, “when a child produces an incorrect but true utterance such as ‘mummy spoon’ the mother usually does not correct the child but agrees with him, for instance by saying: ‘yes dear, what a good boy you are’”. By this the authors simply clarify that correcting & being corrected does not have a great influence on the language learning process of the bilingual child.Actually, the book is well-organized & easy to read. It is also very much applicable to the readers & suitable to(check preposition) the audience; as it is an advice(do we say AN ADVICE?) from parents who have been through the process all themselves. Reading the book is recommended by the authors for all the bilingual families all over the world, as well.Also, the authors emphasize that although they are both professional linguists, this book is “the direct, personal & daily experience of bilingualism in our own families”. They, also, says, “We simply tried to formulate what our first-hand experience, over many years, has taught us”.

VERY GOOD. But PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEase do not use & instead of 'and'.