Two Indonesian Mothers’ Journey in Nurturing Children’s Bilingual Development: From Practices to Aspects of Reflection

Elis Homsini Maolida, Eri Kurniawan, Safrina Noorman, Lulu Laela Amalia

Abstract


This study presents the reflections of two Indonesian mothers, who also work as EFL teachers, on their experiences of fostering their children's bilingual development. It employed a narrative inquiry approach, gathering the participants' stories through oral and multimodal narratives. The mothers shared their stories during a semi-structured interview and through photos and videos. The findings reveal that the participating mothers introduced English to their children at an early age by engaging them in natural English interactions and activities such as story reading interaction before bed, hands on activities, role playing, interacting in games, and daily communication. The findings also indicate that in nurturing children’s bilingualism, the mothers’ choices of practices involved five aspects of reflection: their philosophy, belief, theory, practice and sociocultural aspect. This study highlights that the process of nurturing children’s bilingual development is not a linear process, it involves a more complex relation of various factors that influence parents’ decision in (dis)continuing certain language policy.


Keywords


Aspects of reflection Children bilingualism; EFL teachers; Indonesian mothers; Language policy.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21043/jetli.v7i1.24945

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