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It can be intimidating to go somewhere where no one speaks your language and you don’t understand what is happening around you. Now, imagine experiencing that situation when you’re only two or three years old.

“Many immigrant children feel anxious and afraid when they join a new language environment, and they are often embarrassed by their home language”, says Roma Chumak-Horbatsch, a professor of early childhood studies who studies linguistic diversity.

Chumak-Horbatsch’s book, Linguistically Appropriate Practice: A Guide for Working with Young Immigrant Children (University of Toronto Press) is the first of its kind to profile the language lives of young immigrant children. It also provides guidance to professionals working with children who arrive with little or no proficiency in the language of program delivery.

Written for early childhood professionals, including kindergarten and primary grade teachers, childcare staff and settlement workers, this bestselling how-to book has arrived at a critical time. According to Statistics Canada, the 2011 census found that bilingualism in Canada has become widespread, but not in the two official languages English and French. Now, thanks to immigration, people in Canada speak about 200 different languages. Indeed, more than 50 per cent of children in the Toronto District School Board speak a language other than English at home.

“We can’t use old teaching methods in classrooms that are linguistically diverse. If we don’t support and validate home languages and literacies, they will be forgotten and lost – and this loss will deprive children of their bilingual potential,” says Chumak-Horbatsch, who grew up speaking Ukrainian.

The problem, she says, is that too many early childhood professionals do not move beyond the acknowledgement of home languages and do not support immigrant children’s dual language and literacy needs. Chumak-Horbatsch sought to understand and address those needs through years of research in schools and childcare centres across the Greater Toronto Area, including Ryerson’s own Early Learning Centre (ELC).

Her work resulted in the development of Linguistically Appropriate Practice (LAP). The new classroom practice goes beyond simply acknowledging immigrant children’s home languages. Instead, LAP helps early childhood professionals create multilingual and multi-literacy environments where linguistic diversity comes to life – and where all children are encouraged to share and explore their languages. Chumak-Horbatsch’s book offers more than 50 field-tested activities that can be adapted to match both children’s developmental level and the classroom curriculum.

Examples of LAP activities include bilingual name cards – written in both English and children’s home languages – as well as counting and singing in children’s home languages. “Children are fascinated with languages. They love to learn new words and discover what their friends speak at home,” says Chumak-Horbatsch. In addition, she explains, LAP doesn’t diminish a child’s ability to learn English. In fact, research has found that, with encouragement, exposure and purpose, young children can readily learn more than one language.

To that end, LAP provides benefits to those who are encouraged to be speakers of two languages. For example, Chumak-Horbatsch says bilingual children enjoy many advantages. They become good readers, are more open to learning additional languages, succeed in school and have more employment options as adults.

Today, LAP has been implemented in the ELC and other childcare centres, as well as in full-day kindergarten classrooms in Ontario, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, Massachusetts, Japan and Norway. Chumak-Horbatsch hopes the practice will eventually be adopted by all Canadian provinces and territories, and be included in college and university early childhood courses. In the future, she plans to write a second edition of LAP, this time focusing on the needs of older immigrant children as well as those that attend international schools.