Chapter 6: Towards Translanguaging in Early Literacy Practices

In the early childhood years, the language of home provides the foundation for reading, writing and future learning in school. Young children (0-8 years) from immigrant families may have access to several languages and can switch between languages in educational settings (McDevitt, 2021). Research into early literacy and immigrant children is of prime importance because the number of the children in immigrant households is projected to increase continually, with one in three children growing up in a bilingual households by 2040 (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2009). In Australia, 49% of Australian citizens were either born overseas or have at least one overseas-born parent (D’warte, 2020) and currently over half the world population is bilingual or multilingual (Gottardo et al., 2021).