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A multilingual journey

August 2008 - Posts

Are bilingual teaching materials helpful.. or not?

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

I’ve heard some bilingual parents saying that using bilingual materials such as CDs

and DVD in dual language setting is “Bad”, that the kids “tune out” the target

language and listen only to the “Majority language”.

In my opinion, that’s not true to all kids and circumstances. If you use materials in

the Target Language only, some kids can deduce the meaning of words by context

alone, yes, but many others cannot manage that and so they need some additional

support. I’m talking about children that are exposed to a new language after they

can somewhat understand and/or communicate in the “Mother” language, of course.

If they have no clue of what a song or dialogue is about, these kids might get

frustrated and lose interest in the target language completely.

My son, who is almost 4 years old and has been exposed to Spanish for 2 years, is

now asking every day for the meaning of some words that pop in our conversations

or the TV, words that I’d assumed he knew the meaning of! There are many words

in every language that cannot be figured out just by the context and need an

explanation or translation.

My brightest student is 11 years old She’s very smart and can guess word meanings

by context and root similarity, but what sparked her interest in learning Spanish

was a bilingual CD full of cute songs and so I’ve been encouraging her Mom to buy a

few more bilingual materials.

Whatever technique works to get your kid speaking the target language…. is the

right one!

If you think that materials in bilingual format can be of interest to your child, the

following are a good start:

“Hop, Skip and Sing, Spanish” by Ana Lomba (accent from Spain) CDBook

combo

Is full of fun, catchy little songs and finger‐plays. It’ pretty entertaining for little

ones.

“Professor Parrot speaks Spanish” (DVD)

My son, at age 2, loved the "bird" videotape! This video touches the basics in an

entertaining way so it's engaging for kids. The acting and singing isn't top notch but

it serves the purpose: my son used to belt out the "colores" song while visiting the

supermarket!

“Lyric Language, Spanish” (Audio –cassette or DVD + CD)

Lots and lots of songs to learn vocabulary

Posted Aug 29 2008, 02:09 PM by Webmaster with no comments

Filed under: teaching materials, multilingual homes

The "pros" of raising a child Multilingual

The information below is an excerpt taken from The Multilingual Children's

Association webpage. If you want more valuable info about Bilingualism, please,

take a look at their website.

http://www.multilingualchildren.org/index.html

"Growing up with multiple languages is the easiest, fastest, and most effortless way

to learn a foreign language. For your baby, it will be as natural as learning one

language is to all babies.

* It is easier to learn another language from birth than it is during any other time

in life ‐‐ baby simply has two first languages.

* Your child will have a head start in school. In most countries, a foreign language

is mandatory.

* If your child wants to study more languages later in life, she will have a leg up.

The differences in sounds, word order, stress, rhythm, intonation and grammatical

structures will be easier to learn. For related languages, such as Spanish and French,

the similar vocabulary will make learning especially fast.

* Multilingualism has been proven to help your child develop superior reading

and writing skills.

* Multilingual children also tend to have over all better analytical, social, and

academic skills than their monolingual peers.

* Knowing more than one language helps your child feel at ease in different

environments. It creates a natural flexibility and adaptability, and it increases her

self‐esteem and self confidence.

* Your child will develop an appreciation for other cultures and an innate

acceptance of cultural differences.

* Career prospects are multiplied many times over for people who know more

than one language. Helen Riley‐Collins, president of Aunt Ann's In‐House Staffing in

San Francisco, said more than half her clients request nannies who speak another

language. "Families who are involved in international business are thinking ahead,"

she said of her clients, many of whom work in high tech, investment banking or

finance. "They want to give their children a head start in business in 20 years."

* If your native language is different from the community language, you probably

will feel emotionally closer to your baby when speaking your native language to her.

Posted Aug 15 2008, 08:22 PM by Webmaster with 1 comment(s)

Filed under: multilingual, families, children, language

Mother Language, Majority Language.... what's the difference?

When talking about multilingualism there is such an abundance of terms used to

describe a family linguistic status that is quite normal for the un‐initiated to become

confused.

Today I wanted to try to clarify some of those terms for you.

Mother language: the language you learn from birth –be it the local language or not.

Majority/Local/Native language: the language spoken in the country you live in.

Minority/Target Language: a language that isn’t the Local Language. It could be one

of the parent’s original native language or a Foreign Language introduced at school,

or even a language one or both of the parents speak at home even though it isn’t

their native language.

OPOL: “One Parent One Language”: A household where 2 languages are spoken to

the child. It can be 2 Minority languages or the Local language plus a Minority

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