This paper reports on a survey conducted in Australia among parents raising their children with a heritage language (HL). We found strong awareness of the importance of HL maintenance (95%), but only moderate levels of engagement (37–44%) with community initiatives for HL support. There were significantly more primary school-aged children reported as enrolled in community language schools than pre-school aged children, but attendance at informal initiatives, such as language social groups, was higher for pre-schoolers. Less than 20% of respondents indicated that there was enough HL support available, with significantly less support reported for pre-school aged children. However, parents of children who attended HL initiatives during pre-school years reported a significantly higher HL maintenance success rate. Most parents who did not bring their children to HL initiatives stated that it was because they did not know about them. Parents of school-aged children had more positive opinions about available HL support than parents of pre-schoolers and most parents said that if more initiatives were made available they would commit to attending them on a regular basis. Consequently, we suggest a formal language extension programme at the pre-school level as the solution for improving multilingual families’ experience.

Children’s ability to learn new words during their preschool years is crucial for further academic success. Previous research suggests that children rely on different learning mechanisms to acquire new words depending on the available context and linguistic information. To date, there is limited research integrating different paradigms to provide a cohesive view of the mechanisms and processes involved in preschool children’s word learning. We presented 4 year-old children (n= 47) with one of three different novel word-learning scenarios to test their ability to connect novel words to their correspondent referents without explicit instruction to do so. The scenarios were tested with three exposure conditions of different nature: (i) mutual exclusivity–target novel word-referent pair presented with a familiar referent, prompting fast-mappingviadisambiguation, (ii) cross-situational–target novel word-referent pair presented next to an unfamiliar referent prompting statistically tracking the target pairs across trials, and (iii) eBook - target word-referent pairs presented within an audio-visual electronic storybook (eBook), prompting inferring meaning incidentally. Results show children succeed at learning the new words above chance in all three scenarios, with higher performance in eBook and mutual exclusivity than in cross-situational word learning. This illustrates children’s astounding ability to learn while coping with uncertainty and varying degrees of ambiguity, which are common in real-world situations. Findings extend our understanding of how preschoolers learn new words more or less successfully depending on specific word learning scenarios, which should be taken into account when working on vocabulary development for school readiness in the preschool years.

Heritage languages (HL) are spoken in most households, yet developmental trajectories beyond vocabulary are mostly represented by monolingual children. We tested 53 4-year-olds (26 HL multilingual from heterogeneous ethnicities, 27 monolinguals, 29 females) on English receptive vocabulary and oral discourse skills (story comprehension and retelling). Using Bayesian modelling we found that age and amount of English input predicted vocabulary, comprehension, and retelling skills, with monolingual children exhibiting an age-sensitive advantage in receptive vocabulary and retelling but not in comprehension. Multilingual children demonstrated comparable linguistic skills to those of monolingual peers, even when mostly exposed to their HL. Crucially, increments in English input with age led to monolingual-like proficiency in multilingual children. We discuss the implications of our findings for children’s lifespan multilingualism.

The one-parent-one-language (OPOL) approach has traditionally been considered a widely recommended strategy for heritage-language (HL) maintenance in bilingual families. However, alternative strategies, such as both parents consistently speaking the HL, may be equally or more effective. This study examines families’ self-reported language policies and their perceived effectiveness in HL maintenance in Australia, where minority languages often hold lower status than English and receive minimal institutional support beyond the home. Using data from a nationwide survey of 280 families, we analyzed parents’ self-reported language-use patterns and their perceived impact on HL transmission. Most mothers, who more often identified as primary caregivers, reported speaking a HL with their children, while secondary caregivers’ self-reported language use was varied. Families were categorized into four language-use approaches: OPOL, mixed-language use from one or both caregivers, HL-only from both caregivers, and single-caregiver only. Comparisons across these categories revealed that families following the HL-only and OPOL approaches reported significantly greater success in maintaining the HL than the other two groups, which showed no significant differences in self-reported outcomes. Follow-up analyses showed that Mixed-language families who reported high HL use percieved success comparable to that of HL-only and OPOL families. Our findings suggest that language input may be a central, but not exclusive, contributor to HL transmission. Families who reported higher perceived success showed strong commitment to HL maintenance, with caregivers likely reinforcing each other's efforts beyond direct language input. This study contributes to discussions on bilingual parenting and family language policy, providing empirical insights to inform HL maintenance strategies in diverse linguistic settings.

Little Multilingual Minds (LMM) partners with universities, multilingual communities, and early childhood centres to offer a language exposure program for heritage language (HL) and additional language (AL) speakers in a naturalistic, play-based environment. This paper reports on two implementations of the LMM program conducted in a Spanish-English bilingual preschool in Sydney, Australia. Implementation 1 focused on HL children (n= 11; Mage = 4.24) for HL maintenance over six months, while Implementation 2 expanded to include both HL and AL children (n=27; Mage=2.93) with a new cohort over one year. Both implementations were quantitatively evaluated in three key areas: linguistic proficiency (vocabulary, listening, speaking, literacy/numeracy), alignment with educational principles (disposition, interaction, interest), and task-related precursors of school readiness (attention, cooperation, engagement), using Bayesian modelling for reliable statistical testing. Results from Implementation 1 showed significant improvements in HL children’s linguistic skills from the first to the last assessment, effectively strengthening HL proficiency while preventing a shift toward English. In Implementation 2, despite challenges, the program was successfully adapted to accommodate both HL and AL children in the same session, yielding encouraging outcomes for both groups. We discuss these findings in terms of their implications for successful HL maintenance and AL learning within preschool classes with mixed language backgrounds.