The Role of Hungarian in the Communication Styles of Infant and Early Childhood Educators with Bilingual Children in a Hungarian Nursery Care Setting

Abstract

Enhancing bilingual competencies and intercultural skills is a European priority, and it is beneficial to begin developing bilingual-related skills as early as possible. Accordingly, this study aimed to investigate the development of linguistic competencies in bilingual children aged 0–3 at a Hungarian day nursery in the capital. The qualitative research design included two components: interviews with bilingual parents (N=5) and interviews with infant and early childhood (IEC) educators (N=8). This paper focuses on the latter, exploring the educators’ beliefs, perceptions, and experiences, regarding Hungarian language development at the target institution. One of the key findings is that, although the educators possess varying levels of foreign language knowledge, they consistently apply the same communicative approach − namely, the immersion method − with both monolingual and bilingual children. This approach appears to be effective, as both educators and parents report that the bilingual children’s communicative competence in Hungarian, alongside their other language, tends to improve over time.