Bringing up bilingual children: choices and challenges

Introduction: family language choices This paper explores a migrant mother’s struggle to pass on her language to her children; a struggle which Li (2007) claims is shared by “souls in exile”. It is one of thousands of stories in Australia which speak of the importance of passing on the gifts of bilingualism and biculturalism to children. The data on which it is based comes from the mother’s journals and recorded discussions with the researchers over a period of ten years.