Bilingual infants vary in when, how, and how often they hear each of their languages. Variables such as the particular languages of exposure, the community context, the onset of exposure, the amount of exposure, and socioeconomic status are crucial for describing any bilingual infant sample. Parent report is an effective approach for gathering data about infants’ language experience. However, its quality is highly dependent on how information is elicited. This paper introduces a Multilingual Approach to Parent Language Estimates (MAPLE). MAPLE promotes best practices for using structured interviews to reliably elicit information from parents on bilingual infants’ language background, with an emphasis on the challenging task of quantifying infants’ relative exposure to each language. We discuss sensitive issues that must be navigated in this process, including diversity in family characteristics and cultural values. Finally, we identify six systematic effects that can impact parent report, and strategies for minimizing their influence.

Aims and objectives: Many children grow up in bilingual families; however, little is known about how these families use their two languages in their home reading practices. The goal of this study was to examine the effect of language proficiency on the shared storybook reading practices of bilingual families. Methodology: We gathered questionnaire data about home reading activities in French–English bilingual families with 5-year-old children ( n = 66) who had different proficiency levels in each language. Data and analyses: We compared home reading environment, parent reading practices, and child learning and interest in books across the families’ dominant and non-dominant languages using a series of 2-way mixed analyses of variance. Findings: Families gave more emphasis to reading practices in the family’s dominant language: they owned more books, read more often, spent more time, and started reading to the child at an earlier age in the dominant than in the non-dominant language. Dominance also affected parent reading behaviors: parents reported more often translating words and switching from their non-dominant to their dominant language. Parents reported that children enjoyed being read to and readily learned new words in both languages, but ratings were higher for the dominant language. Effects of dominance were strongest in families with less balanced language dominance. Originality: This study compares bilingual families’ home reading practices in both of their languages, providing a clearer picture of how families navigate early dual-language literacy in a bilingual community where both languages are spoken in everyday life and have similar sociolinguistic status. Significance: Results suggest that even in bilingual communities, family home reading practices may exacerbate uneven development across children’s two languages. These findings highlight the importance of identifying strategies to support enriched home reading practices in bilingual families’ non-dominant language.

Bilingual infants vary in when, how, and how often they hear each of their languages. Variables such as the particular languages of exposure, the community context, the onset of exposure, the amount of exposure, and socioeconomic status are crucial for describing any bilingual infant sample. Parent report is an effective approach for gathering data about infants’ language experience, however, its quality is highly dependent on how information is elicited. This paper introduces a Multilingual Approach to Parent Language Estimates (MAPLE). MAPLE promotes best practices for using structured interviews to reliably elicit information from parents on bilingual infants’ language background, with an emphasis on the challenging task of quantifying infants’ relative exposure to each language. We discuss sensitive issues that must be navigated in this process, including diversity in family characteristics and cultural values. Finally, we identify six systematic effects that can impact parent report, and strategies for minimizing their influence.

The data, materials, and code that support the findings of this study are available at osf.io/yf8gx/?view_only=ab44925b9b904de7b8bbe11724909286.

Reading stories to children provides opportunities for word learning. Bilingual children encounter new words in each of their languages during shared storybook reading, but the way in which they encounter them can vary. We compared learning from two types of bilingual book materials: typical single-language books (i.e., two copies of the same book, each in a different language), and bilingual books (i.e., one copy of the book, with text in both languages on each page). Five-year-old French-English bilinguals (n = 67) who were either proficient or second-language learners were randomly assigned to hear an original story from a balanced bilingual experimenter in one of the two book formats. Children’s learning of French and English labels for five novel objects embedded in the story was assessed via a pointing task. Children were successful at learning words in both languages, and performance was not affected by either book format nor by children's language proficiency. Children neither favoured nor avoided learning translation equivalents (i.e., cross-language synonyms) in either format. These results suggest that children are flexible word learners and that shared bilingual book reading — regardless of book format — is an effective way to teach bilingual children new words in two languages.