The Primary English Encyclopedia: The Heart of the Curriculum, Third Edition
See also bilingualism, cultural diversity, multiculturalism, multilingualism
Dual-language books or resources have a text written in English and another language. As well as helping bilingual young learners, having dual-language texts in the classroom increases the awareness of monolingual children of different languages and cultures.
The quality of dual-language texts is as important as in any other book. The story must meet criteria of exciting plot, good characterisation, convincing setting and successful illustrations. Format is also important and the two languages should have equal status.
The main problem with dual-language books is that we may find it difficult to judge the quality of the translation.
In their article in the 1999 edition of A Multicultural Guide to Children’s Books Viv Edwards and Chris Routh observe that there have been few recent additional titles to dual-language book lists. This seems to be because of high origination costs and relatively small print runs. However, there has been a trend to take good quality picture books in English and to publish dual-language versions. Magi Publishing, for example, has dual-language versions of established picture books like for example Amazing Grace, The Whales’ Song, Owl Babies and Badger’s Parting Gifts (Magi website – www.littletiger.okukbooks.com). Other good publishers and suppliers of dual-language books include Milet (www.milet.com) and Mantra (www.mantralingua.com).
As well as initiatives from publishers, projects involving parents, teachers and children have contributed to multicultural resources. For example, the Multilingual Word Processing Project based at the University of Reading has exploited the new technologies to produce learning materials in a range of languages. The Fabula Project is a European funded project to promote literacy in ‘languages of lesser diffusion’ in the European community. The Fabula multimedia software which has been produced by teachers, children, software designers and researchers has the potential to be used with any language with a roman script. It enables the creation of bilingual storybooks by inserting text and scanned illustrations into simple templates. There are also features like speech bubbles, sound effects and language links to explore the texts and glossaries.
Specialist book shop – Heffers Children’s Book Shop, 20 Trinity St, Cambridge CB3 3NG.
Stones, Rosemary (ed.) (1999) A Multicultural Guide to Children’s Books 0–16+ London and Reading: Books for Keeps with The Language and Information Centre, Reading, see the chapter on ‘Multilingual resources for children’.
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