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:

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

ones.

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!

Lots and lots of songs to learn vocabulary

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.

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.

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

language.

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’m so, so proud of my son! His Spanish is progressing now at kangaroo jumps  as

opposed to the leaping frog pace of past months ‐I’m spending more time teaching  him and that’s really shows. 

Every sentence he has uttered the last 7 days has one or more Spanish words in it:

“Mama, I like gusanitos. We can buy them una casa grande and they’ll turn into

mariposas.” (That was after watching a commercial where they sell caterpillars that

turn into butterflies)  He’s also starting to talk to himself in Spanish when playing alone. He either sings

the alphabet or counts to 20 while jumping on the couch, or makes his cars talk to

each other: “Para, para! You abajo! No, you arriba!” No need to say that I’m totally

thrilled!  But the best of all is that he’s actually starting to ask me for new words in Spanish so

he can use them in his sentences.  My son thrives in praise so I make sure he gets plenty of it when he uses Spanish

voluntarily. He even gets an occasional Jelly Bean after a specially difficult word

combination  (I was able to completely potty‐train him at 30 months because of his

love for Jelly beans).  For him they are as priceless as free time is for me.

Not two kids are alike and parents might have to use different techniques with each

of their offspring.

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 always regretted that my Croatian Dad didn’t bother to teach me more of his native

language when I was little. It could have made learning other languages much easier for

me, not to mention the missed job opportunities as a bilingual adult.

But I almost followed my Dad’s example and made the same mistake: I took the easy

road and started speaking to my newborn son in the language I share with my husband

and the community: English….and left Spanish, my native language, waiting in the

sidelines.

My excuses for not starting to speak Spanish to my son from day one were multiple and

similar to those of other misinformed multicultural families: 1 – My husband didn’t know

more than 10 words in Spanish and I was afraid he was going to feel like an outsider in

his own home. 2- I’d been thinking and dreaming in English for about 15 years and my

Spanish came out all choppy. 3– I was afraid of confusing my son and delaying his

speech –and afraid of provoking horrendous tantrums because of that. 4- And, finally,

the one excuse that carried the most weight: my fear of speaking Spanish in public

because of potential ugly looks.

And then, when my son was about 15 months old, I found a couple of great websites

created by and for multilingual parents that helped me to get in gear. These days I firmly

believe in the amazing benefits of bilingualism and the need to start your family’s

Bilingual Journey from Day One –or as soon as you can- so this is my present for you

today, to get you motivated. Better late than never!

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

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/multilingualmunchkin/?yguid=228980480

One apple a day keeps the doctor away…and one word a day in a non-local language will

help to make your child multilingual.

I just started exposing my son, Nickey, to his third language. I was lucky to find the

adorable “Trotro, l’ane” on YouTube and that jumpstarted our French adventure.

Originally I had planned to introduce French after he had mastered Spanish but then I

realized that there was no need to wait.

One word a day is all it takes.

When I started teaching him Spanish he was already 21 months old and speaking in

sentences in English. I introduced a new Spanish word every morning and I would use it

repeatedly throughout the day. (ie: “Nickey, please, sientate. Sit down, Nickey.

Sientate.“) In a couple days that word was etched in his brain and it had equal meaning

to the English equivalent. I could then add more Spanish words to the sentence. (ie:

“Please, sientate. Nickey, sientate, por favor”)

I had heard of children rejecting the new language when parents switched suddenly so I

went quite slowly at first.

It really worked for us. For my son “red” and “rojo” mean the same thing today. No

translating in his head. He’s 3.5 now and his Spanish vocabulary is almost par with his

English.

Tip of the day:

Check out these websites on Multilingualism. You’ll learn about all the wonderful pros and

the very few and lame cons in this matter.

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

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/multilingualmunchkin/?yguid=228980480