Not-for-profit organisation Foyer, a Brussels-based intercultural body, has launched a new board game called Liba Lingua. Liba Lingua should encourage parents to reflect on their child's multilingual upbringing and help them to learn the language used in their home as well as Dutch.
The game was co-developed by HaBilNet, an organisation that promotes research into multilingual development. According to the charity Foyer the board game is an important element in supporting children's multilingualism. That’s because children whose home language is not Dutch often only come into contact with that language on their first day at school.
"It’s often a difficult encounter. Parents can assist their children with this process but need extra support to do so," Foyer says. Liba Lingua should encourage parents to reflect on the importance of Dutch for their child, while at the same time not neglecting the home language. A good balance between home language and school language is very important, the organisation believes.
"Both languages are communicating vessels that support each other, and we would like to emphasise that in this game," says Hilde De Smedt, multilingualism coordinator at the not-for-profit association. "We want to avoid parents stopping to speak the home language, because it is very important for the child's development, but at the same time we want to engage parents and let them know that they have an important role to play in learning the school language and cannot leave matters entirely up to the school".
Sven Gatz (Flemish liberal/Open VLD) is the minister responsible for promoting multilingualism in the Belgian and Flemish capital:"For some time now we have known that the home language forms the basis for further language learning. In children aged 2 to 6, this language is still in full development and parents should continue to focus on the important languages within the family context. This game is an excellent tool to that end."