Metalinguistic Awareness: Potential Problems and Solutions
Another challenge that Luca, as a monolingual child, might face is an additional language in her environment when she has not yet reached a secure level with her first language. So her language skills have not developed to the extent of active usage. Let's say Luca’s care-givers decided for their young daughter to start in an English speaking kindergarten in order to learn a second language while Luca’s first language is not yet established.
“ Educators can encourage the care-givers to speak their first or native language to their child. By doing so, they can support their child’s natural language development in both languages.
By offering continued support of both languages, for the first language at home and for the newly introduced language at kindergarten, you will help foster a natural language development and metalinguistic awareness in the child.”