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A multilingual journey

Praise works miracles

Lana Privitera is the proud Mom of a fun-loving, bilingual "chatterboy" that likes to spice his speeches in English with long-winded Spanish words. Her goal for 2008 is to pack also some French and Italian in his very expandable 3.5 year old brain. Lana still qualifies as a SAHM but uses her "spare" time working as a watercolor artist and Spanish/art teacher.

PRAISE, praise and more praise. That’s what works with my son. Whenever I see him

forgetting to use Spanish, I teach him a couple new expressions, praise him lavishly for

his efforts and then he’s on a roll again!

Even though he’s still addressing me mostly in English when his Dad is around, I barely

have to remind him to speak in Spanish when we are alone. He seems to enjoy the

challenge of creating sentences all of his own and you can see him thinking hard,

searching for words to add to them. Whenever he’s stumped by a particular word, he

either asks me for it or finds a substitute of sorts. Like the other day, when he couldn’t

find a way to describe “crusty morning-eyes” and asked me: “ Mama. What are esas

bolitas I have en los ojos when me levanto? (What are those little balls I have in the eyes

when I get up?) After I rephrased the whole question again in Spanish, I answered that

they were called “legañas”. He went then on a rambling monologue about what legañas

were for, and used the word 6 or 7 times before I finally steered him out of his bed and I

subtly changed subjects.

That’s one word I won’t praise him for again, otherwise, knowing my son, we’ll have

“legañas” for breakfast, lunch and dinner several days in a row!

Links for today:

For books in any language http://www.languagelizard.com/

For bilingual educational program in any language try “Lyric Language” DVDs.

Published Jul 27 2008, 06:16 PM by Webmaster
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