How to make a family language plan in 30 minutes

Start with four decisions: how many minutes a day your family can really keep, what you most want your child to do in the language, how much of it your child hears now, and who speaks it at home. The plan generator turns those answers into a daily activity mix, a 30-day milestone and a list of tips. Below, each tip is traced to its source and tagged with how strong the source is. Some tips have no source, and this article says which.

What you decide first

The generator needs seven answers: your child's age, the heritage language, the community language, minutes per day, one main goal (everyday conversation, reading and writing, connection with relatives, or support for a school program), current exposure (minimal, some or regular), and who speaks the heritage language at home (one parent, both parents, or a parent and a grandparent). The minutes should be what your family actually has, not what you hope to have. The generator also accepts five optional answers that can change the plan: birth order, learning style, temperament, family profile and extra languages. Two more optional fields, the variety of the heritage language and the script it is read in, are display only and change no minutes.

What you get back

You get an age band, a weekly focus, a list of activities with minutes, one 30-day milestone and tips. ILLUSTRATION from running the plan code, not a recommendation: a child aged 4, Spanish at home, English in the community, one Spanish-speaking parent at home, 30 minutes a day, a goal of everyday conversation, some exposure. The plan was talk 14 minutes, reading 7, songs 5 and a family ritual 4. That adds to 30. It returned four tips.

The activity mix itself, meaning the weights by age band and the adjustments for each goal, has no source in the methodology notes (UNVERIFIED). It is the app's design. Treat it as a starting split that you can change to fit your day.

Where each tip comes from

The generator adds a tip only when its condition is met. With every optional answer filled in, it can add up to 12. The connection tip and the reading-and-writing tip never appear together, because each needs a different main goal. Here is each one, with its source and strength.

• Minimal exposure (consistency over duration): the notes contain no study for the comparison of five daily minutes against one long weekend session. UNVERIFIED.
• One parent at home (protect that parent's one-on-one time, which carries much of your child's exposure): this is the app's own wording and has no source. King and Mackey report a father with only 3 to 4 hours a week alone with the child, under 5% of waking hours, which shows why counting matters but does not rank the time.
• Connection goal (a standing call with a relative): this comes from the app's product notes, not from research. UNVERIFIED.
• Reading and writing come later (ages 0 to 2 with a reading and writing goal): our suggestion, and the plan keeps the baby mix of talk, songs and picture books. We have found no source that sets an age for starting to read in a heritage language. UNVERIFIED.
• Below the 20% line: Pearson and others (1997), as King and Mackey report it. REPORTED, and the threshold is CONTESTED.
• Learning style: the tip says matching activities to a preferred style is disputed. The notes record that as background knowledge, not read in a source. UNVERIFIED. It changes the wording of one activity, not the minutes.
• Later-born child: Shin, as King and Mackey report it. REPORTED. The book gives the study's year as 2002 in one chapter and 2005 in another, and the notes leave that unresolved.
• Older sibling in school: King and Mackey, ch. 5, from a parent interview: the sibling brings home more of the community language, and school hours free time for one-on-one. REPORTED.
• Shy or outgoing child: King and Mackey, ch. 5. REPORTED. Gass and Selinker call the adult research on introversion and extroversion an open question. That is a different population, so the nudge stays modest.
• Offer a choice or rephrase: Gass and Selinker, ch. 10. VERIFIED that the book says it. It describes conversations between non-native speakers, not parents and children.
• Reading: Patterson (2002), as King and Mackey report it. REPORTED.
• Family profile: King and Mackey, ch. 6, their own three profiles. VERIFIED.
• Three or more languages: King and Mackey, ch. 11, their own position. VERIFIED. The 1994 Basque-Spanish study, as they report it, is REPORTED.

An order of work for 30 minutes

1. Answer the seven questions with the minutes your family really has.
2. Choose one main goal. The generator takes one.
3. Build the plan and read the activity list. Change the split if it does not fit your day.
4. Read each tip with its strength in mind. A sourced tip and an unsourced one are different kinds of advice.
5. Decide when the largest activity happens, and write the 30-day milestone where you will see it.

The 30 minutes is a planning budget we chose. It does not come from a source (UNVERIFIED).

What the plan cannot tell you

• Whether your minutes are enough. For a child aged 4, the generator's 20% line works out to 138 minutes a day. That uses an estimate of 11.5 waking hours a day, which is the app's own working figure with no source (UNVERIFIED). The 30-minute example is below the line, so it returned the tip about it. The 20% figure itself is CONTESTED.
• What happens in a real week. The plan is aspirational. The audit counts the hours that actually happened. Run the audit after a week and compare.