Technology-mediated multilingual learning experiences: the OCOL (one character one language) model

Children, who are acquiring several languages from birth or at an early age, are typically raised in extremely complex and varied multilingual and multicultural environments. In their everyday life, these children are constantly exposed to several languages, different script systems and mixed cultural customs. Currently, few educational systems have been designed to specifically address their needs. In this paper, we discuss typical approaches to bilingual parenting and suggest several advantages to recreating multilingual learning contexts in educational software. As an example, we propose the "OCOL" (one character one language) model: a simulation of the popular OPOL (one parent one language) strategy adopted by many multilingual families. A prototype is currently being developed in English and Japanese.