How to measure your family's language hours at home

Write down the hours each caregiver really spends with your child in a week, and the language used in those hours. King and Mackey, in The Bilingual Edge, recommend that families audit their real interaction time this way, and they care about quality as well as quantity. The Family Language Audit in the app counts quantity: hours and language. Quality you add by hand, and this article shows how.

Why count at all

King and Mackey recommend that families literally audit: how many hours a week each parent actually gets with the child, in which language, doing what kind of activity, such as talk, song, reading or play. The reason is that a plan and a week are different things, and only the week is what the child hears.

They give one family's example. A father who assumed he was doing his part had 3 to 4 hours a week alone with the child, under 5% of waking hours, which in their telling explained why the child did not speak his language. It is one household's account, not proof by itself, but it shows what an assumed number can hide.

For families whose parents have different first languages, which they call the mixed-language profile, they advise roughly equal quantity and quality of exposure in both languages. That is why the count below is only half the job.

How the audit counts quantity

For each caregiver you enter a name, the hours per week with the child, and the language that person uses: heritage, community or mixed. A heritage-only caregiver counts in full. A caregiver who switches between languages counts at half weight. A community-only caregiver counts as zero for the heritage language. The counted hours are divided by the child's waking hours in a week, which the app estimates by age band (UNVERIFIED, the app's own working estimates).

The result is read against two lines: about 20%, which is one study's debated figure and has its own article, and the 80% that King and Mackey recommend for the early years. The audit adds the numbers you enter and does not adjust them, so enter each hour once. If the hours add up to more than the child's waking hours, it warns that some rows probably overlap. If the family uses three or more languages, the app does not use the 80% line as a verdict: it lists the hours of each language instead, and flags any language below half of an even share. That cut-off is the app's own proxy, not a research threshold (UNVERIFIED).

An illustration, not data

ILLUSTRATION built from the app's arithmetic, not data about real families. Take a child aged 7: 87.5 waking hours a week. I ran one invented week through the audit code:

• Mother: 14 hours, heritage only. Counted: 14.
• Father: 18 hours, community only. Counted: 0.
• Grandmother: 6 hours, heritage only. Counted: 6.
• Nanny: 12 hours, switches between languages. Counted: 6.

50 hours are logged and 26 count, which is about 30% of waking hours. That is past the 20% line and short of the 80% target, which would need 70 counted hours. The rows show one caregiver as heritage-only and another as community-only, but the audit shows its one parent, one language note only if the child's saved plan also says the parents have different first languages. With that profile set, this week would show the note; without it, no note appears. The hours and the labels are invented. What comes from the app is the method.

How to add quality by hand

The audit records caregiver, hours and language. It does not record what the hours were spent on. So next to each caregiver, write the kind of activity, using the four King and Mackey name: talk, song, reading, play.

One finding makes reading worth marking. King and Mackey describe a 2002 study by Janet Patterson of 64 two-year-olds learning Spanish and English. Vocabulary size in each language could be predicted by how often the child was read to in that language, and in their account reading frequency in a language had more impact than even total exposure to it. That is one study, as they report it. It does not rank reading above talk, and the app does not weight activities differently.

1. List every caregiver, including the ones you tend to forget: grandparents, a nanny, relatives who call.
2. Enter real hours from a real week, not planned hours, and enter each hour once.
3. Label each caregiver honestly: heritage only, mixed or community only.
4. Read your share against both lines, and treat the 20% line as debated.
5. Beside each caregiver, note the activities: talk, song, reading, play. Look for caregivers whose hours are all one kind.

What is still unknown

• How many hours of which activity are enough. No source read for this site gives a number.
• Whether half weight for a switching caregiver matches real exposure. It is the app's own choice (UNVERIFIED).
• Whether the waking-hours estimates fit your child. They are the app's working estimates (UNVERIFIED).
• How a week with school, holidays or a trip compares with an ordinary one. No source read for this site addresses it.