A new review reveals that research into supporting young dual language learners in Australia heavily concentrates on English-Spanish contexts, leaving children speaking other languages underserved amidst increasing linguistic diversity.
A new scoping review published in the journal Child: Care, Health and Development says research on language support for young dual language learners remains heavily skewed towards English-Spanish pairings, leaving children who speak other home languages under-represented, including in Australia’s multilingual communities. The review focused on children aged three to nine who have, or are at risk of, language impairment and found too little intervention evidence to guide practice in settings where English is learned alongside languages such as Mandarin, Arabic, Vietnamese, Cantonese and Italian.
The authors set their work against Australia’s linguistic diversity. The Australian Bureau of Statistics says 5.8 million people, or 22.8% of the population, speak a language other than English at home, while more recent ABS data show 7.7 million residents, or 29.5%, were born overseas. In schools, the review notes, more than a quarter of children in early childhood education and almost a third of primary and secondary students come from non-English-speaking backgrounds. That creates a significant demand for support, especially for children who must build English while preserving their home language.
The review argues that this is not simply a matter of translation. It points to evidence that bilingual development can be uneven and easily mistaken for disorder, with slower vocabulary growth in one language, code-switching and cross-language transfer often treated as warning signs when they may be typical features of bilingual acquisition. The paper also notes that children with genuine developmental language disorder often show difficulties in both languages, though not always to the same degree. Recent studies in the field reinforce that picture, including work showing that language proficiency in Spanish-English bilingual children is shaped by both language ability and exposure, and that bilingual intervention can improve vocabulary whether delivered in both languages or only in English.
More broadly, the review highlights what appears to work best. Interventions are more promising when they are culturally responsive, involve caregivers, and build on shared language skills rather than treating the home language as a problem to be removed. It also points to evidence that bilingual children can benefit from strategies such as dialogic reading and structured support for narrative and phonological skills, while some language-specific features still require targeted, language-by-language work. The authors say the field now needs more research tailored to local multilingual populations, including Australian children who speak languages other than the well-studied English-Spanish pairing.
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