Language Attitudes and Language Hierarchy
Beyond these three theories, there are other potential culturally complex reasons young children may code-switch, such as the way they view their family language(s) and the language of their newly adopted country/ culture. They can develop both positive and negative opinions about the languages in their life and potentially place these languages into a hierarchy.
Children develop social awareness of language differences between the ages of three and six and can start to express their preferences for language varieties (Yu-Hsiu Lee, 2018).
Some factors such as political and sociocultural influences cannot be helped by individual adults in a bilingual/multilingual child's life, but educators can make a positive impact on children's language attitudes.
“Practical tips:
Give the child age appropriate ways to also raise strong emotions to elaborate the vocabulary.
Always value home languages and try to speak some basics like counting to five, please and thank you or hello in the home language of a child. ”