Tag: bilingualism

https://montessorisociety.org.uk/Articles/4333290

Supporting Bilingual Children

 by: Irene Fafalios

This is an excerpt from a lecture given by Irene Fafalios at the Montessori Society AGM in London

What do we mean by bilingualism? Simply defined a bilingual person would be one who has the ability to speak two languages. I could further qualify this initial definition, by saying that a bilingual person is one who has been exposed to two languages from birth. But a bilingual person is also one who has immigrated to, or chosen to settle in another country and has had to learn a second language later on in life. A bilingual family is one in which at least one member has a different mother tongue from the others. Irene explains the different forms that bilingualism takes in today’s multicultural society and how as teachers and parents we can support children who speak more than one language.

But again there are many instances – for both parents may speak the same language which is different from the language their child is becoming proficient in at school, or, the two parents may have two different native languages, and perhaps communicate using a third language. According to Jim Cummins, bilingual education exists when two languages are used as a means of instruction, in order to attain proficiency in one language. When this proficiency is obtained, then bilingual education is stopped. However, there is also bilingual education, which is in fact instruction primarily or exclusively in one language, in order to maintain both!

Bilingualism has to do with language, of course. Language is not just something that has to do with the neural pathways that connect the linguistic centres of our brain – language touches our very identity. As Montessorians, we know that we become that which we absorb in those first three years of life. The language we are exposed to as infants clearly provides us with an identity that goes well beyond images and experiences or linguistic skills. In absorbing a language we are not just absorbing a way of communicating. In absorbing a language, we become a member of our human group. Our mother tongue is laden not only with all our mother’s being and emotions, it is also our native tongue – belonging to a particular people, a particular community – and is therefore laden with all their beings, their histories, their tragedies, their triumphs. Our language not only expresses our emotions, but it is also our emotions. Our language is our heritage. In assuming a language, we are taking on a heritage. In continuing and developing this heritage we are continuing and developing, in fact, a language and together with that language – ourselves!

It is therefore important that as teachers and parents we are aware of one or two factors, which will explain the child’s behaviour towards us and will, in turn, determine our behaviour towards the child. Broadly speaking, we could say that there are two main categories of bilinguals:

The Elitist Bilingual is one who speaks English and French…. English and German – who by being bilingual attains social status and prestige, has great social advantages, opportunities and access to universities and prestigious jobs. For this person, bilingualism is a very positive factor: since two languages, exposes the individual to two cultures, two literary traditions and hence to a huge wealth of cultural and moral ideas – ideally making of the individual a far more tolerant, flexible and adaptable person. Greater interpersonal and communication skills are acquired, thereby raising the individual’s confidence and self-esteem.

The Non-Elitist Bilingual is the migrant, the refugee asylum seeker, the one stricken by poverty, illness, high birth rates, poor education – people who are socially excluded precisely because of the two languages they command. Children of these families realize, that their own family and home culture serves as a handicap. They feel increasingly excluded, and negative feelings about themselves, their background and their origins, are reinforced by the wider community – the dominant society. This lack of self-esteem and confidence becomes apparent early on in their school performance and their gradual withdrawal and disinterest are reflected in their low academic achievements.

We see, therefore, that it is not bilingualism per se which is the disadvantage, but it is the peripheral society’s attitude that influences our perception of specific bilingual situations. The bilingual child is seen as one who has great advantages if the two languages it speaks are French and English, but not so if it speaks Greek and Albanian. Children who speak two languages and who feel accepted by both cultures will identify with both. However, when the two cultures have unfriendly relations, then it is often the case that children are instead shunned by both cultures. This, however, is not a bilingual issue – it is clearly a political issue with distinct social and psychological repercussions for the bilingual individual.

Schools can play a very important role, in offering both children – but particularly the non-elitist bilingual – the sort of support required to raise self-esteem, provide a sense of self-worth and confidence that will enable them to survive and succeed in a seemingly hostile society. As teachers, we need to confront our own experiences, feelings and prejudices on these issues, for they unconsciously creep into the classroom and very subtly colour our interactions with various children. Our awareness and sensitivity to our own reactions and to those experienced by the children in our care is crucial if we are to provide each individual and his or her family with the sort of help and support that they might need.

One of the primary concerns of parents, who find themselves in a bilingual situation, is the question of whether they should continue to speak the home language to their child. The truth is that there have been many attempts in the past, to convey the message that the bilingual child is at a clear disadvantage. People felt that bilingualism caused linguistic handicaps, emotional conflicts and cognitive confusion in children. So there were many attempts to prevent children from speaking their home language either in school or at home, on the grounds that this was detrimental to their development and to the nation at large.

The first thing we need to convey to parents is that bilingualism is not a pathology – it actually seems to do you good! So long as a supportive environment affirms a child’s identity, then research indicates that bilingualism can positively affect both intellectual and linguistic progress and that there are distinct cognitive, communicative and cultural advantages to having access to two linguistic systems. It seems that bilingual children show a greater sensitivity to linguistic meanings, may be more flexible in their thinking and show greater analytical and problem-solving skills. This conceptual development in two languages allows the transference of academic skills across two languages and enables young children to acquire an awareness of the structure and function of language itself.

What we can do as teachers, is to encourage and help parents find a fixed pattern for language use in the home, for this makes things much easier both for the children learning the languages and for the adults in their day to day life with two (or more) languages.

One such pattern is One Parent One Language: where the two parents each speak two different native languages and each consistently speaks their own native language to the children. Emphasis must be given to the words ‘native’ and ‘consistently’. Consistency is of the utmost importance, so that children may have a clear idea who speaks which language and to whom. Bearing in mind what we know about the child and his sensitive periods for order and language in the first six years of life, this should not surprise us. For me, it is the most efficient and efficacious model for all concerned.

Another pattern could be The Minority Language at Home or The Foreign-Home Pattern where everyone speaks the minority (non-community) language at home and the community language outside. This also is a very good pattern to recommend to parents – it is simple, clear and functional.

In a bilingual family, the parents will certainly have to invest time in sustaining an equally strong and rich linguistic environment in terms of songs, stories, riddles, tales, jokes and tapes. It is important that the child receives the same type and degree of linguistic stimulation in both languages, where possible. Above all, however, it is important that the family enjoys its bilingualism. No child should be coerced into speaking a language when it does not wish to. Asking children to say something in a certain language for a guest to hear is humiliating and embarrassing. A bilingual family is nothing special and is increasingly less of a phenomenon. A child should see it as a natural part of his family life. It is then far more likely that children will grow up enjoying being bilingual and that both languages will be kept active.

The significance of keeping the home language alive is apparent in recent research that shows how the development of this first home language, helps the development of a second or third language. In the past, it was thought that if the child is not proficient in the language of instruction, i.e. English, then more time should be given to learning English and less time to his home language. However, research shows that in order to gain greater proficiency in the language of instruction, it is best to sustain and support the home language. This is because of cross-language transfer, where skills, knowledge and cognitive strategies that a child has, are transferred between the first and second language – by acquiring and developing one language well, the child gains a universal understanding of language that makes it much easier for him to learn and become proficient in a second or additional languages. But what do we mean when we talk about ‘proficiency’ in a language? We have two levels of language acquisition that are relevant to bilingualism:

Rapid Language Development– Social English

In this instance, the speaker learns the surface language patterns and can, within a very short period of time – usually one to two years – sound like a native speaker. This informal, superficial language skill, in which short, simple sentence structures are predominant, is what is also referred to as ‘conversational’, ‘playground’ or Social English. Social English requires a smaller vocabulary than Academic English. Children use Social English with peers and adults in relaxed, playful, informal situations. It is the first type of English that we hear our young English Learners use, and it is important for teachers to remember that each child will develop this skill at his or her own pace.

Academic Language Development– Academic English

Studies have shown that it takes school-age bilingual children five to seven years to master Academic English that requires longer, more complex sentence structures as well as a larger vocabulary than Social English. It is important for us teachers to remember this time factor so that when we come to assess language development, we do not immediately label this child as having language difficulties or disorders.

So far we have given emphasis on the importance of supporting and maintaining the home language, throughout a child’s education, for better acquisition and proficiency in the language of instruction. However, we should make it clear that our aim should never be to have a totally balanced bilingual person – there is no such thing. There is always a dominant language, which may also be expressed by the use of different languages in different contexts.

The relationship between first and second language development and learning is never one where the two are equal. Although it seems that the key factor in the acquisition of bilingualism is the age of exposure to the two languages and the type or extent of exposure to each language, it is very difficult to develop the same skills in both languages.

There are three ways to acquire and develop a second language:

Simultaneous Bilingualism applies to children who are exposed and who develop both languages more or less, at the same time. The pattern of language acquisition that such a child follows is very similar to a child who learns each language separately i.e. it follows the usual path of language development.

In bilingual preschools, the ideal would be to have native speakers for both languages spoken, thereby reflecting and supporting what is going on at home. We need to be aware of how important it is to model appropriate language for children at this stage. We need to listen patiently to attempts the child makes to express himself verbally, and be aware of how sensitive bilingual children are of mistakes they make or might make.

We need to provide children with opportunities for appropriate use of specific language, both in group situations and on a one to one basis with friends. A mixed age group is ideal for exposing children to a variety of opportunities for language use be it in conversation with one another, where they can express their feelings and explore their ideas in both languages, or be it in activities that children organise themselves. Children who are reluctant to speak are sometimes more forthcoming if we organise games where they can imitate or repeat what someone says.

Successive Bilingualism applies to children whose home language is well established and they learn the second language when they come to school. Children acquiring a second language generally go through the following four stages of language acquisition. [3]Being aware of this model helps us have reasonable expectations of children.

1. The child who enters the preschool understanding hardly any English, will either stop talking altogether and use nonverbal ways of communicating, or he will use his home language, which may not be understood by others but which is his only means of communication. Eventually, of course, children no longer use their home language with those who do not understand it. However, it appears that continued use and development of the child’s home language, will benefit children as they acquire English. For this reason, we should not discourage parents from using the home language at home during this time.

2. Children then go through a Silent or nonverbal period. This stage can last from one to twelve months. If we are not aware of this stage, we might think that the child is having difficulties and consider professional intervention. This silence, however, is the silence we find in the young infant, who is still absorbing his language, prior to speaking it – where an understanding of the language precedes his ability to use it. During this silence, a lot of listening is taking place, as well as acute observation of the gestures, sounds, facial expressions etc. that accompany any language. The child is trying to make sense and find meaning in this jumble of sounds and movements. If children find themselves in a safe, secure situation they will gradually start making a few attempts at speaking – combining gestures and facial expressions.

The role of the adult at this stage is to ‘let the child be’. We need to ensure that the child finds himself in a linguistically rich environment where things are being said, exchanged, explained, sung, read, written and recounted, so that children may absorb all the sounds, structures, words, gestures etc. that they require. I have found that using images and materials to reinforce what is being said, a lot of pointing and dramatic gestures etc. all help to convey meaning to a child who is able to understand in fact, much more than what he can say. We must respect this creative silence since we know full well that although voiceless, the child is creating his new voice, and with that will also come his identity.

3. The next phase begins when children start cracking the code of this new language, usually in a telegraphic or formulaic way i.e. they will use a few words, or phrases without understanding how they really function in order to communicate mainly action, possession or location e.g. ‘me home’ ‘I like…’ ‘Gimme…’ ‘I want… ‘. We respond to these efforts, by showing we understand and by verbalizing the complete phrase of what the child is saying. We help by repeatedly giving him these formulaic phrases, which he will quickly pick up and which will serve to communicate to others his basic needs and feelings.

4. Finally, the child comes to the Fluid Language phase, where he is able to use his second language like all surface users i.e. he becomes proficient in Social English. We find children are constantly experimenting in the use, form, sound, purpose and intent of both languages. They love to play with language and we should not worry about this trial and error phase. On the contrary, we need to support and encourage the child’s attempts at speaking, accepting all the mistakes made in pronunciation, syntax and expression but ensuring that we respond using the language correctly. We help by giving all the appropriate names of objects, emphasizing key words in sentences, repeating important words in context and coordinating, where necessary, actions with language, so that we may optimize the child’s understanding capabilities, thereby enhancing his self-esteem.

Receptive Bilingualism refers to children who are able to understand two languages but express themselves in only one. These are children, who have been exposed to the language prior to coming to school, through television for example, or through older siblings who may be learning English in school and may speak it amongst themselves. This is a fairly common experience for many children, although they are not considered fully bilingual.

As preschool teachers, we can support parents in their work, by being aware of the different languages spoken in our environment and finding ways in which we can include these languages in our daily exchanges, without confusing our three to six year olds. We can make children aware of the languages within their school community, simply by naming them. We can encourage children to say a word – a greeting – a song – in their home language – or we can talk about a culture which a specific child can relate to – and there we often see that the child’s initial embarrassment, is coupled with a sense of pride and joy.

In all instances and across all age groups we need to show our children through our behaviour (and not through sermons) that cultural diversity enriches our interactions and enhances our existence. Bilingualism does not cause language or identity problems. The way we manage bilingualism, however, is what causes the problems. We really need to rethink and reassess the messages that our children are receiving. The microcosm of the school – the learning community – is one place where we can affect societal attitudes as regards the bilingual child, and “inferior” or “superior” cultures. We need to start talking not so much about bilingual people, but about bilingual environments.

Montessori schools can play a very important role in helping individuals and communities find their identities, and become strong. We have an educational system based on respect for all living things. One way we reflect and convey that respect to our young learners is by encouraging them to discover the immense diversity that makes up our planet. All of life’s manifestations however great, or small reflect a diversity that is awesome. We need to cultivate and encourage in our children an attitude which does not stand in fear, but which welcomes such diversity. Such an attitude is generated, once my own little world, myself, my family, my family’s history, has found a safe place within me. Once that is secure, I can easily accommodate other little worlds, other selves, other families, other families’ histories.

Amazing benefits of being bilingual

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160811-the-amazing-benefits-of-being-bilingual

12 August 2016

In a cafe in south London, two construction workers are engaged in cheerful banter, tossing words back and forth. Their cutlery dances during more emphatic gesticulations and they occasionally break off into loud guffaws. They are discussing a woman, that much is clear, but the details are lost on me. It’s a shame, because their conversation looks fun and interesting, especially to a nosy person like me. But I don’t speak their language.

Out of curiosity, I interrupt them to ask what they are speaking. With friendly smiles, they both switch easily to English, explaining that they are South Africans and had been speaking Xhosa. In Johannesburg, where they are from, most people speak at least five languages, says one of them, Theo Morris. For example, Theo’s mother’s language is Sotho, his father’s is Zulu, he learned Xhosa and Ndebele from his friends and neighbours, and English and Afrikaans at school. “I went to Germany before I came here, so I also speak German,” he adds.

Was it easy to learn so many languages?

“Yes, it’s normal,” he laughs.

He’s right. Around the world, more than half of people – estimates vary from 60 to 75 per cent – speak at least two languages. Many countries have more than one official national language – South Africa has 11. People are increasingly expected to speak, read and write at least one of a handful of “super” languages, such as English, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish or Arabic, as well. So to be monolingual, as many native English speakers are, is to be in the minority, and perhaps to be missing out.

Multilingualism has been shown to have many social, psychological and lifestyle advantages. Moreover, researchers are finding a swathe of health benefits from speaking more than one language, including faster stroke recovery and delayed onset of dementia.

At the current rate, half our languages will be extinct by the end of the century

Could it be that the human brain evolved to be multilingual – that those who speak only one language are not exploiting their full potential? And in a world that is losing languages faster than ever – at the current rate of one a fortnight, half our languages will be extinct by the end of the century – what will happen if the current rich diversity of languages disappears and most of us end up speaking only one?

(Credit: Getty Images)

As adults, we try desperately to decipher a foreign tongue – but we may learn quicker if we stop looking for patterns that aren’t there (Credit: Getty Images)

I am sitting in a laboratory, headphones on, looking at pictures of snowflakes on a computer. As each pair of snowflakes appears, I hear a description of one of them through the headphones. All I have to do is decide which snowflake is being described. The only catch is that the descriptions are in a completely invented language called Syntaflake.

It’s part of an experiment by Panos Athanasopoulos, an ebullient Greek with a passion for languages. Professor of psycholinguistics and bilingual cognition at Lancaster University, he’s at the forefront of a new wave of research into the bilingual mind. As you might expect, his lab is a Babel of different nationalities and languages – but no one here grew up speaking Syntaflake.

The task is profoundly strange and incredibly difficult. Usually, when interacting in a foreign language, there are clues to help you decipher the meaning. The speaker might point to the snowflake as they speak, use their hands to demonstrate shapes or their fingers to count out numbers, for example. Here I have no such clues and, it being a made-up language, I can’t even rely on picking up similarities to languages I already know.

After a time, though, I begin to feel a pattern might be emerging with the syntax and sounds. I decide to be mathematical about it and get out pen and paper to plot any rules that emerge, determined not to “fail” the test.

The experience reminds me of a time I arrived in a rural town a few hours outside Beijing and was forced to make myself understood in a language I could neither speak nor read, among people for whom English was similarly alien. But even then, there had been clues… Now, without any accompanying human interaction, the rules governing the sounds I’m hearing remain elusive, and at the end of the session I have to admit defeat.

I join Athanasopoulos for a chat while my performance is being analysed by his team.

Glumly, I recount my difficulties at learning the language, despite my best efforts. But it appears that was where I went wrong: “The people who perform best on this task are the ones who don’t care at all about the task and just want to get it over as soon as possible. Students and teaching staff who try to work it out and find a pattern always do worst,” he says.

“It’s impossible in the time given to decipher the rules of the language and make sense of what’s being said to you. But your brain is primed to work it out subconsciously. That’s why, if you don’t think about it, you’ll do okay in the test – children do the best.”

(Credit: Getty Images)

Language is intimately connected to culture and politics (Credit: Getty Images)

The first words ever uttered may have been as far back as 250,000 years ago, once our ancestors stood up on two legs and freed the ribcage from weight-bearing tasks, allowing fine nerve control of breathing and pitch to develop. And when humans had got one language, it wouldn’t have been long before we had many.

Language evolution can be compared to biological evolution, but whereas genetic change is driven by environmental pressures, languages change and develop through social pressures. Over time, different groups of early humans would have found themselves speaking different languages. Then, in order to communicate with other groups – for trade, travel and so on – it would have been necessary for some members of a family or band to speak other tongues.

We can get some sense of how prevalent multilingualism may have been from the few hunter-gatherer peoples who survive today. “If you look at modern hunter-gatherers, they are almost all multilingual,” says Thomas Bak, a cognitive neurologist who studies the science of languages at the University of Edinburgh. “The rule is that one mustn’t marry anyone in the same tribe or clan to have a child – it’s taboo. So every single child’s mum and dad speak a different language.”

In Aboriginal Australia, where more than 130 indigenous languages are still spoken, multilingualism is part of the landscape. “You will be walking and talking with someone, and then you might cross a small river and suddenly your companion will switch to another language,” says Bak. “People speak the language of the earth.” This is true elsewhere, too. “Consider in Belgium: you take a train in Liège, the announcements are in French first. Then, pass through Loewen, where the announcements will be in Dutch first, and then in Brussels it reverts back to French first.”

The connection with culture and geography is why Athanasopoulos invented a new language for the snowflake test. Part of his research lies in trying to tease out the language from the culture it is threaded within, he explains.

Being so bound up with identity, language is also deeply political. The emergence of European nation states and the growth of imperialism during the 19th century meant it was regarded as disloyal to speak anything other than the one national language. This perhaps contributed to the widely held opinion – particularly in Britain and the US – that bringing up children to be bilingual was harmful to their health and to society more generally.

There were warnings that bilingual children would be confused by two languages, have lower intelligence and behave in deviant ways

There were warnings that bilingual children would be confused by two languages, have lower intelligence, low self-esteem, behave in deviant ways, develop a split personality and even become schizophrenic. It is a view that persisted until very recently, discouraging many immigrant parents from using their own mother tongue to speak to their children, for instance. This is in spite of a 1962 experiment, ignored for decades, which showed that bilingual children did better than monolinguals in both verbal and non-verbal intelligence tests.

However, research in the last decade by neurologists, psychologists and linguists, using the latest brain-imaging tools, is revealing a swathe of cognitive benefits for bilinguals. It’s all to do with how our ever-flexible minds learn to multitask.

Split personality

Ask me in English what my favourite food is, and I will picture myself in London choosing from the options I enjoy there. But ask me in French, and I transport myself to Paris, where the options I’ll choose from are different. So the same deeply personal question gets a different answer depending on the language in which you’re asking me. This idea that you gain a new personality with every language you speak, that you act differently when speaking different languages, is a profound one.

Athanasopoulos and his colleagues have been studying the capacity for language to change people’s perspectives. In one experiment, English and German speakers were shown videos of people moving, such as a woman walking towards her car or a man cycling to the supermarket. English speakers focus on the action and typically describe the scene as “a woman is walking” or “a man is cycling”. German speakers, on the other hand, have a more holistic worldview and will include the goal of the action: they might say (in German) “a woman walks towards her car” or “a man cycles towards the supermarket”.

Part of this is due to the grammatical toolkit available, Athanasopoulos explains. Unlike German, English has the -ing ending to describe actions that are ongoing. This makes English speakers much less likely than German speakers to assign a goal to an action when describing an ambiguous scene. When he tested English–German bilinguals, however, whether they were action- or goal-focused depended on which country they were tested in. If the bilinguals were tested in Germany, they were goal-focused; in England, they were action-focused, no matter which language was used, showing how intertwined culture and language can be in determining a person’s worldview.

In the 1960s, one of the pioneers of psycholinguistics, Susan Ervin-Tripp, tested Japanese–English bilingual women, asking them to finish sentences in each language. She found that the women ended the sentences very differently depending on which language was used. For example, “When my wishes conflict with my family…” was completed in Japanese as “it is a time of great unhappiness”; in English, as “I do what I want”. Another example was “Real friends should…”, which was completed as “help each other” in Japanese and “be frank” in English.

Many bilinguals say they feel like a different person when they speak their other language

From this, Ervin-Tripp concluded that human thought takes place within language mindsets, and that bilinguals have different mindsets for each language – an extraordinary idea but one that has been borne out in subsequent studies, and many bilinguals say they feel like a different personwhen they speak their other language.

These different mindsets are continually in conflict, however, as bilingual brains sort out which language to use.

In a revealing experiment with his English-German bilingual group, Athanasopoulos got them to recite strings of numbers out loud in either German or English. This effectively “blocked” the other language altogether, and when they were shown the videos of movement, the bilinguals’ descriptions were more action- or goal-focused depending on which language had been blocked. So, if they recited numbers in German, their responses to the videos were more typically German and goal-focused. When the number recitation was switched to the other language midway, their video responses also switched.

(Credit: Getty Images)

Searching for a word in one language – while suppressing the corresponding word in another – gently taxes the brain, helping to train our concentration (Credit: Getty Images)

So what’s going on? Are there really two separate minds in a bilingual brain? That’s what the snowflake experiment was designed to find out. I’m a little nervous of what my fumbling performance will reveal about me, but Athanasopoulos assures me I’m similar to others who have been tested – and so far, we seem to be validating his theory.

In order to assess the effect that trying to understand the Syntaflake language had on my brain, I took another test before and after the snowflake task. In these so-called flanker tasks, patterns of arrows appeared on the screen and I had to press the left or right button according to the direction of the arrow in the centre. Sometimes the surrounding pattern of arrows was confusing, so by the end of the first session my shoulders had been hunched somewhere near my ears and I was exhausted from concentrating. It’s not a task in which practice improves performance (most people actually do worse second time round), but when I did the same test again after completing the snowflake task, I was significantly better at it, just as Athanasopoulos has predicted.

How to learn 30 languages

So-called “hyper-polyglots”, like Alex Rawlings mentioned in this story, have learnt to speak at least 10 languages. They claim that anyone could learn their skills if only you take the right approach. To learn more, read our in-depth feature article here.

“Learning the new language improved your performance second time around,” he explains. Relieved as I am to fit into the normal range, it’s a curious result. How can that be?

The flanker tasks were exercises in cognitive conflict resolution – if most of the arrows were pointing to the left, my immediate impulse was to push the left button, but this wasn’t the correct response if the central arrow was pointing right. I had to block out my impulse and heed the rule instead. Another example of cognitive conflict is a test in which the names of colours are written in different colours (“blue” written in red, for example). The aim is to say which colour each word is written in, but this is tricky, because we read the word much quicker than we process the colour of the letters. It requires considerable mental effort to ignore the impulse just to say the word we can’t help but read.

The part of the brain that manages this supreme effort is known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), part of the “executive system”. Located on the frontal lobe, it is a toolbox of mental attention skills that enables us to concentrate on one task while blocking out competing information, and allows us to switch focus between different tasks without becoming confused. It is the executive system that tells us to go when we see a green light and stop for a red, and it is the same system that tells us to ignore the meaning of the word we read but concentrate on the colour of the letters.

The snowflake test prepared my ACC for the second flanker task, just as speaking more than one language seems to train the executive system more generally. A steady stream of studies over the past decade has shown that bilinguals outperform monolinguals in a range of cognitive and social tasks from verbal and nonverbal tests to how well they can read other people. Greater empathy is thought to be because bilinguals are better at blocking out their own feelings and beliefs in order to concentrate on the other person’s.

“Bilinguals perform these tasks much better than monolinguals – they are faster and more accurate,” says Athanasopoulos. And that suggests their executive systems are different from monolinguals’.

Mental muscles

In fact, says cognitive neuropsychologist Jubin Abutalebi, at the University of San Raffaele in Milan, it is possible to distinguish bilingual people from monolinguals simply by looking at scans of their brains. “Bilingual people have significantly more grey matter than monolinguals in their anterior cingulate cortex, and that is because they are using it so much more often,” he says. The ACC is like a cognitive muscle, he adds: the more you use it, the stronger, bigger and more flexible it gets.

Bilinguals, it turns out, exercise their executive control all the time because their two languages are constantly competing for attention. Brain-imaging studies show that when a bilingual person is speaking in one language, their ACC is continually suppressing the urge to use words and grammar from their other language. Not only that, but their mind is always making a judgement about when and how to use the target language. For example, bilinguals rarely get confused between languages, but they may introduce the odd word or sentence of the other language if the person they are talking to also knows it.

“My mother tongue is Polish but my wife is Spanish so I also speak Spanish, and we live in Edinburgh so we also speak English,” says Thomas Bak. “When I am talking to my wife in English, I will sometimes use Spanish words, but I never accidentally use Polish. And when I am speaking to my wife’s mother in Spanish, I never accidentally introduce English words because she doesn’t understand them. It’s not something I have to think about, it’s automatic, but my executive system is working very hard to inhibit the other languages.”

For bilinguals, with their exceptionally buff executive control, the flanker test is just a conscious version of what their brains do subconsciously all day long – it’s no wonder they are good at it.

(Credit: Getty Images)

Speaking a second language can help forestall the symptoms of dementia (Credit: Getty Images)

A superior ability to concentrate, solve problems and focus, better mental flexibility and multitasking skills are, of course, valuable in everyday life. But perhaps the most exciting benefit of bilingualism occurs in ageing, when executive function typically declines: bilingualism seems to protect against dementia.

Psycholinguist Ellen Bialystok made the surprising discovery at York University in Toronto while she was comparing an ageing population of monolinguals and bilinguals.

“The bilinguals showed symptoms of Alzheimer’s some four to five years after monolinguals with the same disease pathology,” she says.

Being bilingual didn’t prevent people from getting dementia, but it delayed its effects, so in two people whose brains showed similar amounts of disease progression, the bilingual would show symptoms an average of five years after the monolingual. Bialystok thinks this is because bilingualism rewires the brain and improves the executive system, boosting people’s “cognitive reserve”. It means that as parts of the brain succumb to damage, bilinguals can compensate more because they have extra grey matter and alternative neural pathways.

“Bilinguals use their frontal processors for tasks that monolinguals don’t and so these processors become reinforced and better in the frontal lobe. And this is used to compensate during degeneration of the middle parts of the brain,” Bialystok explains. However, it is no good simply to have learned a little French at school. The effect depends on how often you use your bilingual skill. “The more you use it, the better,” she says, “but there’s no breaking point, it’s a continuum.”

Bilingualism can also offer protection after brain injury. In a recent study of 600 stroke survivors in India, Bak discovered that cognitive recovery was twice as likely for bilinguals as for monolinguals.

Such results suggest bilingualism helps keep us mentally fit. It may even be an advantage that evolution has positively selected for in our brains – an idea supported by the ease with which we learn new languages and flip between them, and by the pervasiveness of bilingualism throughout world history. Just as we need to do physical exercise to maintain the health of bodies that evolved for a physically active hunter-gatherer lifestyle, perhaps we ought to start doing more cognitive exercises to maintain our mental health, especially if we only speak one language.

In recent years, there has been a backlash against the studies showing benefits from bilingualism. Some researchers tried and failed to replicate some of the results; others questioned the benefits of improved executive function in everyday life. Bak wrote a rejoinder to the published criticisms, and says there is now overwhelming evidence from psychological experiments backed by imaging studies that bilingual and monolingual brains function differently. He says the detractors have made errors in their experimental methods.

One estimate puts the value of knowing a second language at up to $128,000 over 40 years

Bialystok agrees, adding that it is impossible to examine whether bilingualism improves a child’s school exam results because there are so many confounding factors. But, she says, “given that at the very least it makes no difference – and no study has ever shown it harms performance – considering the very many social and cultural benefits to knowing another language, bilingualism should be encouraged”. As for the financial benefits, one estimate puts the value of knowing a second language at up to $128,000 over 40 years.

(Credit: Getty Images)

Immersing children in a second language may help benefit their performance in all subjects (Credit: Getty Images)

The result of my test in Athanasopoulos’s lab suggests that just 45 minutes of trying to understand another language can improve cognitive function. His study is not yet complete, but other research has shown that these benefits of learning a language can be achieved quickly. The problem is, they disappear again unless they are used – and I am unlikely to use the made-up snowflake language ever again! Learning a new language is not the only way to improve executive function – playing video games, learning a musical instrument, even certain card games can help – but because we use language all the time, it’s probably the best executive-function exerciser there is. So how can this knowledge be applied in practice?

One option is to teach children in different languages. In many parts of the world, this is already being done: many Indian children, for example, will use a different language in school from their mother or village tongue. But in English-speaking nations, it is rare. Nevertheless, there is a growing movement towards so-called immersion schooling, in which children are taught in another language half the time. The state of Utah has been pioneering the idea, with many of its schools now offering immersion in Mandarin Chinese or Spanish.

“We use a half-day model, so the target language is used to teach in the morning, and then English is used in the afternoon – then this is swapped on other days as some learn better in the morning and some in the afternoon,” explains Gregg Roberts, who works with the Utah Office of State Education and has championed immersion language teaching in the state. “We have found that the kids do as well and generally better than monolingual counterparts in all subjects. They are better at concentrating, focusing and have a lot more self-esteem. Anytime you understand another language, you understand your language and culture better. It is economically and socially beneficial. We need to get over our affliction with monolingualism.”

The immersion approach is being trialled in the UK now, too. At Bohunt secondary school in Liphook, Hampshire, head teacher Neil Strowger has introduced Chinese-language immersion for a few lessons.

(Credit: Getty Images)

Immersing yourself in a new language and culture may open your mind to new ways of thinking (Credit: Getty Images)

I sit in on an art class with 12-year-olds being taught by two teachers: one speaking English, the other Chinese. The children are engaged but quiet, concentrating on the task of learning multiple ideas. When they speak it is often in Chinese – and there is something rather surreal about watching young people in the UK discussing British graffiti artist Banksy in Mandarin. The children say they chose to learn in Chinese because they thought it would be “fun” and “interesting” and “useful” – a far cry from the dreary French lessons I endured at school.

The majority of the art class will take their Chinese GCSE exams several years early but Strowger tells me the programme has had many benefits in addition to their grades, including improving students’ engagement and enjoyment, increasing their awareness of other cultures so that they are equipped as global citizens, widening their horizons, and improving their job prospects.

What about those of us who have left school? In order to maintain the benefits of bilingualism, you need to use your languages and that can be tricky, especially for older people who may not have many opportunities to practise. Perhaps we need language clubs, where people can meet to speak other languages. Bak has done a small pilot study with elderly people learning Gaelic in Scotland and seen significant benefits after just one week. Now he aims to carry out a much larger trial.

It is never too late to learn another tongue, and it can be very rewarding. Alex Rawlings is a British professional polyglot who speaks 15 languages: “Each language gives you a whole new lifestyle, a whole new shade of meaning,” he says. “It’s addictive!”

“People say it’s too hard as an adult. But I would say it’s much easier after the age of eight. It takes three years for a baby to learn a language, but just months for an adult.”

As the recent research shows, that’s a worthwhile investment of time. Being bilingual could keep our minds working longer and better into old age, which could have a massive impact on how we school our children and treat older people. In the meantime, it makes sense to talk, hablar, parler, sprechen, beszel, berbicara in as many languages as you can.

—

This article first appeared on Mosaic and is republished here under a Creative Commons licence.

J

A Bilingual Brain Solves Problems Faster

https://www.newsy.com/stories/a-bilingual-brain-solves-problems-faster/

Check inside the link for video.

Language allows us to share thoughts and feelings with somebody else. It’s our cultural glue. Otherwise, we’d live in a world of babel. But there’s much more to language, including elements that affect the structure and functioning of the brain.

While the first words spoken may have been 250,000 years ago, now more than half of the people around the world – estimates vary from 60 to 75 percent – speak at least two languages.

Eighty percent of primary and secondary students in 24 European countries are learning a foreign language, usually English. Across the United States the number is closer to 20 percent, but this varies by state. In New Jersey, 51 percent of students have a second language course included as part of the school day.

Learning those languages impacts our noggins. Brain scans show that people who speak more than one language have more gray matter in their anterior cingulate cortex, the area linked to everything from learning to social behavior to resolving conflicts.

RELATED STORYYoung Kids Who Hold More Conversations Grow Their BrainsYoung Kids Who Hold More Conversations Grow Their Brains

A leading neuropsychologist says it’s like a muscle – using it makes it bigger and more flexible. There’s a sort of competition that goes on in the brains of people who speak multiple languages. Since it’s possible to use either language at any moment, their brains have developed ways to regulate which language is spoken. The brain’s executive functions, a regulatory system that includes inhibition, allow a person to focus, and “pause” the language not being used.

Research shows this mechanism has a lot of other benefits. People who speak more than one language are better at switching between two tasks. For example, bilinguals can switch from categorizing objects by color to sorting them by shape more rapidly than monolingual people.

Why is this? Their brains regularly inhibit languages and employ that same regulation to “inhibit” tasks. It doesn’t end there. People who speak more than one language also have the ability to make more rational decisions. When faced with a choice, the inhibition center quiets intuitions and emotions.

This means that bilingual people might be better employees in jobs requiring rational planning, managing complexity and problem solving. Other implications: bilingual children are better at adjusting to environmental changes, and bilingual seniors can experience less cognitive decline. There are even indications that speaking more than one language can lead to faster stroke recovery.

Is picking up a second language easy?  Not always, especially as an adult. But the brain-benefits are awfully robust, not to mention it’s useful knowing the difference between embarazada and embarrassed.

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Code switching, what to do, when should I worry?

Code switching, what to do, when should I worry?

Code switching, what to do, when should I worry?

By 

 

At our Free Online Meeting on Multilingualism we talked about code switching or code mixing, what to do if our children keep on mixing their languages, when it is a good sign and when we should worry (9 May 2018)

First of all, the term code switching is widely used as an umbrella term for using different languages in the same sentence, alternating them to some extent. It is not to be confused with borrowing, where a language is integrated into the other:

Ça m’étonnerait qu’on ait code-switché autant que ça! (I can’t believe we code-switched as often as that!)

Code switching can involve a word, a phrase or a sentence and there is always a base language. In these examples, the base language is French with integrations in English.

Vas chercher Marc and bribe him avec un chocolat chaud with cream on top

(Go fetch Marc and bribe him with a hot chocolate with cream on top)

Des wild guys à cheval

(Some wild guys on horseback) (Grosjean 1982)

 

“Code switching is not a haphazard behaviour due to some form of semilingualism but it is a well-goverend process used as a communicative stratagem to convey linguistic and social information”.  (Grosjean 2013)

 

The reasons for code-switching are many: using the right word or expression, filling a linguistic need, marking group identity, excluding or including someone, raising our status etc.

 

Code-mixing, on the other hand, is a stage of bilingual language acquisition. Bilingual children naturally mix their languages. They use both languages in a single sentence. It is not a sign that the child is not learning the languages properly, on the contrary, it is a sign that the child is acquiring those languages in a quite systematic way! With mixing the languages, the child proves to naturally find interchangeable elements of the sentence.

I like to compare this code-mixing to playing with lego. Imagine you have a box full of lego in different colours. Each colour stays for another language you are acquiring. If the child wants to build a house, she can choose to build a very colourful house, or build a house with one colour only. The colourful house is the one that stays for a code-mixing conversation and the one colour house for a conversation in one language only.

Many parents fear that by mixing the languages our children will never really learn to speak one of the languages correctly, but this usually is not true.

 

Lanza (2004) identifies 5 parental discourse strategies:

 

  • Minimal Grasp strategy: when the parent indicates the lack of understanding of the child’s mixed utterance and asks what did you say?

– I personally  wouldn’t advise to use this strategy because our children usually would only use languages they know we understand when talking with us, or if they use another language it is because they really don’t know the words in our languages! Pretending not to understand our children is interpreted as not being honest! I know this first hand as the one who was asked this question by people I knew were just being difficult and wanting me to “stick to only one language” and I always felt being silenced. Denying that we understand what our child is saying can stop the communication, affect the relationship – if one constantly applies this strategy !
I would also never advise teachers to use this strategy, as it can lead to complete silence. It builds a wall instead of a bridge, and when communicating with each other, we want to build bridges…

 

  • Expressed Guess strategy: the parent reformulates the child’s mixed utterance by way of a guess and adds a question like Is that what you mean? – This is a more effective strategy as it involves active hearing and true commitment to understand what the child is saying.

It also gives the child the opportunity to find other words, paraphrase what he/she wants to say, and keeps the conversation flowing.

 

  • Repetition: the parent reformulates the child’s mixed utterance in the target language without code-mixing. – With this strategy which is also known as modeling, the parents formulates the sentence in a grammatically correct way. The child hears how it should sound, but is not asked to repeat the sentence or give an opinion about the content. We can do this usually when we are sure about what the child wanted to say. Similar to 3, this strategy shows that the parent is actively listening, engaged in the conversation and interested in mutual understanding.

 

  • Move on: the parent continues the interaction without “flagging” the child’s mixing in any way. – This kind of reaction should not be our normal reaction, especially not with young children who are still acquiring the languages. The only time I would advise using it is when more people are involved in the conversation and we either don’t want to alienate the child – it can be embarrassing and humiliating if someone interferes with our speech… – or we don’t want to interrupt the flow of the conversation. Strategies 1-3 are all interrupting the flow and if done repeatedly can affect the conversation.

 

 

  • Code-Switching: the parent switches into the language which the child has introduced by means of code-mixing. – This might sound like an unexpected strategy, because we are supposed to help our children stick to one language, right, but it actually is the most multilingual reaction. As multilinguals we always have the whole repertoire of words, nuances to our disposal and especially in multilingual settings, e.g. when we talk with others who share our languages, we feel like we can relax and let language just flow. Just imagine that you have a set of coloured crayons and are asked, or have the opportunity, to draw a flower. You would most probably try to use as many colours as you like. If now someone would ask you to only use green, you may feel limited in your drawing, you might only draw the stem of a flower and its leaves, but you would miss the freedom to draw colourful petals…

 

 

We can use a mix of all these strategies (except the first one for the reasons I mentioned before) and see which one works best for us, our child, our family, and the situation we are in.

 

There are always situations where we feel insecure about what to do and it is ok to seek for help whenever we feel this way. Parents always should trust their gut: we know our children best and when there is anything that feels just “not right”, it is our responsibility to take action for the sake of our child. This applies to  their overall wellbeing.

 

At what point should we worry when our child mixes the languages?

 

There are a few situations when we should observe our child’s code mixing a bit closer.

 

  • If our child is for example using the syntax structure of language B while speaking in language A consistently, we should start modeling the right grammatical structure andask if this is what they wanted to say.

I know by experience that this kind of code mixing can be discouraging, but it could be only a phase. Try to find out what the reasons can be for such a mixing:

Our children can produce this kind of sentences when they are tired, or when they just switched from talking in the other language (B) and are now transitioning to talk in language A. If this phenomenon is only temporary, we shouldn’t worry too much, but if it pertains and our child seems not to be able to form one grammatically correct sentence anymore, then we should seek for help.

  • If our child struggles with forming a sentence in one language only and this in monolingual settings, for example at school: try to find out if the child only would need a bit more time to find the right words, and help with finding the right word order. For many bilingual children, time, patience, the right modeling and encouragement is all what they need.

I would only worry if I see that the child can’t form a sentence – even an easier form of it – in the two (or more) languages correctly when talking in that language only, in a monolingual setting; even not if given time.

In fact, if this happens, communication can become almost impossible as the meaning is difficult to be understood, even by multilinguals who code-switch between the same languages!

When this happens with a child that used to talk in a comprehensive way before, we should seek for help. A Language Consultant or a Speech Pathologist who is fluent in all languages involved would be ideal.

 

My first advice is always to assess the situation. What makes the child struggle to form a grammatically correct sentence? It depends on the child’s age and stage of bilingual or multilingual language acquisition, the situation (formal, non formal, at school, with people the child knows or not…), the topic (if it is a familiar topic or not), and if the child is tired or stressed for any reason.

Something that always helps in these situations is to give the child the time he/she needs to recollect the thoughts and listen. Encouraging the child to talk can be done by just being silent. You can also bridge between the languages the child knows. There are several techniques that have proven to be effective. What surely never helps is to make the child feel your anxiety or put any kind of pressure into the difficult conversation: the more anxious the child becomes the more this situation becomes a problem.

What I found helped in a similar situation was singing, or playing music in the backgrouns. With the help of music, different intonations and a topic that is dear to the child, the situation is more relaxed and the child (and the adult!) feels more comfortable.

 

If you have any question about this topic or if you would like to discuss a personal issue, please don’t hesitate to contact me at info@UtesInternationalLounge.com. – I’m only a mail away 😉

 

François Grosjean, Life with Two Languages: An Introduction to Bilingualism, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.

François Grosjean and Ping Li, The Psycholinguistics of Bilingualism, Wiley Blackwell, 2013.

Elizabeth Lanza, Language Mixing in Infant Bilingualism: A Sociolinguistic Perspective, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Frequently asked questions

Frequently asked questions

The information below first appeared in the pamphlet ‘Raising Bilingual Children’ written by Antonella Sorace and Bob Ladd in May 2004 and was published by ‘The Linguistic Society of America’. It has been reproduced here in its entirety with the Society’s permission.

For further details you can email the ‘The Linguistic Society of America’ on lsa@lsadc.org or visit their website at http://www.lsadc.org.

Sorace, A. and Ladd, D.R. 2004. Raising bilingual children. Series: Frequently Asked Questions, Linguistic Society of America.

Why want bilingual children?

There are many reasons, but the two most common are:

      • The parents speak different languages (say, an American woman and a Turkish man).
      • The parents speak the same language, but live in a community where most people speak something else (say, a Korean couple living in the UK).

In the first case, both the mother and father may want to be able to use their own language when talking to their children. This is the bilingual home situation. In the second, the parents may want to be able to use their own language at home even though their children also need to function in the world outside the front door. This is the bilingual setting situation. Our own situation is an Italian/English bilingual home in an English-speaking setting, and some of what we say here is based directly on our experience bringing up bilingual children.

Don’t children get confused when they hear two languages spoken around them?

The short answer is no. Children are incredibly sensitive to the different ways people speak. Even when they only hear one language, they learn very quickly about differences between the way men and women talk, the difference between polite and impolite ways of talking, and so on. For children, the bilingual situation is just a matter of another difference between people!

Fifty years ago educators throughout North America used to tell immigrant parents that it was better for their children’s schooling if they spoke English at home. Some researchers thought that early exposure to two languages put children at a disadvantage. Newer research tells us that this is not so, and there may be advantages to being bilingual (in addition to knowing more than one language), such as more flexible thinking. The disadvantages that earlier research found were generally economic disadvantages, linked to the hardships of immigrants’ lives.

Bilingual development sometimes results in slightly slower language development than for some monolingual children. Our older child was still saying things like ‘Where you are?’ instead of ‘Where are you?’ in English at four and a half. This is a normal developmental stage for monolingual English children, but they usually figure out that they have to say ‘Where are you?’ by the time they’re three or four. Our older child just took a little longer.

Don’t bilingual children ever mix their languages up?

Like adult bilinguals, bilingual children often use words from one language when speaking the other. (This is called code-switching.) But this doesn’t mean they are confused about which language they are speaking. In our Italian-English bilingual home, a lot of our food vocabulary is Italian, and we use this even when we’re speaking English (and when English words are available). So we’ll talk about pollo instead of chicken and sugo instead of sauce. Yet in speaking to monolinguals, bilingual children are careful to use only the relevant language.

So how do we start teaching our children two languages?

The main thing to keep in mind is that parents don’t really ‘teach’ children to speak, any more than they teach them to walk or smile. The most important things in language development are exposure and need. If children are exposed to a language in a variety of circumstances with many different people from the time they are born, and if they feel they need the language to interact with the world around them, they will learn it. If they are exposed to two languages in varied circumstances with different people from the moment they are born, and if they need both languages to communicate with the people around them, they will learn both.

Do you really mean that if our children are exposed to two languages from birth they will learn both, just like that?

No, but children can do this with no difficulty, and it doesn’t do them any harm. The hard part is making sure they have enough natural exposure to both languages. Most of the time, one of the two languages you want them to learn will be “more important” somehow, and the trick is to provide enough opportunities for them to use the “less important” one in a way that isn’t forced or artificial. The best way, if you can manage it, is to put children in situations where only the “less important” language is used so that there is no temptation to mix languages or revert to the “more important” language.

What do you mean by saying that one language is “more important”?

One language is likely to seem more important to children when that language is needed more frequently than the other. For example, suppose the American woman and Turkish man in the bilingual home speak English with each other. The children will notice that English is used in cases where Turkish isn’t and think that English is “more important”. But if the same family moves to Turkey, the children will notice that Turkish is used in lots of cases where English isn’t, and may decide Turkish is “more important”. Some children are very sensitive to these differences and may be reluctant to use the “less important” language—especially if other children don’t use it. Others don’t seem to mind.

When we talk about one language being “more important” here, we’re only talking about the children’s point of view! Nonetheless, many adult bilinguals are “dominant” in one of their languages. Even if the differences between their two languages are subtle, most bilinguals feel slightly more at home in one language than the other in certain settings or for talking about certain topics.

Would it be better to start teaching the second language after children have a good start on the first?

No, definitely not, especially in the bilingual home situation where the second language is likely to seem “less important” to the children anyway. Introducing the second language later is just about guaranteed to make them think it’s less important and not worth the effort.

On the other hand, in the bilingual setting situation (say, the Korean couple living in the United States), there isn’t any harm in letting children’s exposure to English begin naturally and gradually. As long as the family stays in the US and the children go to American schools, there is no risk that they will fail to learn English. Actually, the more common problem with the bilingual setting situation is that the children sometimes reject their home language in favor of the outside language.

My partner and I speak different languages. Should we only speak to our children in our own language if we want them to be bilingual?

Many experts recommend the “one-parent-one-language” method for a bilingual home. The idea is that Mommy (or Mamma, or Mutti) always speaks her own language with the children, and Daddy (or Papa, or Vati) always speaks his own language with them. This is a good basis for a successful bilingual home, but it’s not the only one, and even one-parent-one-language can go wrong.

What are some of the problems with one-parent-one-language?

One problem can be balance. Children need to hear both languages often and in a variety of circumstances. If they never hear the ‘less important’ language except from one parent, they may not get enough exposure for that language to develop naturally. It is especially true that when both parents understand the ‘more important’ language, the children don’t feel they need the ‘less important’ one.

In these cases it is essential to find other sources of exposure and other ways of creating the sense of need. Monolingual grandparents can be especially helpful! Can you enlist a cousin or grandmother or a paid babysitter who speaks the other language to look after the children? Is there a daycare or playgroup where they can hear the other language? Can you get videos and story tapes in the other language? All of these can make a big difference; especially exposure that involves interaction with other people, not just watching TV. When our children were small, we did things like this to reinforce Italian in a largely English-speaking setting.

Another problem is keeping the situation natural. If children feel that they are being forced to do something weird or embarrassing, they will probably resist it. Explicit rules say, speaking one language on some days and the other on others can be very hard to enforce and can help create a negative attitude.

Still another problem is exclusion. If one of the parents doesn’t speak the other’s language (in our example, suppose the American woman doesn’t speak Turkish), the children will know that every time they say something in Turkish to their father they are excluding their mother from the conversation. This may make children reluctant to speak one of the parents’ languages when both parents are present. In our experience, a bilingual home is more likely to succeed if both parents at least understand both languages. That way, nobody is ever excluded from a family conversation.

What about siblings?

The arrival of a second child can upset the language balance in a bilingual home, and it’s common for a second child to be less fully bilingual than the first. Usually the first child speaks to the second in the ‘more important’ language, increasing the exposure the second child gets to that language and decreasing the sense of need for the ‘less important’ one. Think about what you want to do about this in advance. Come up with a strategy that fits your own situation, but it’s probably worthwhile to try to enlist the older child or children to promote the ‘less important’ language in your home situation.

My children used to speak our home language just fine, but now that they’re going to school, they mix it up with English all the time. What can I do?

Relax. Language mixing is normal where everyone speaks both languages. It doesn’t mean that the children will forget one language, and it doesn’t mean that they can’t tell the difference any more between two languages. If you scold them for speaking English it may create a negative attitude about the home language and actually make things worse. Instead, create natural situations where the children really need the home language: like calling on those monolingual grandparents again!

You can understand this kind of language mixing if you keep in mind that simple exposure is an important ingredient of children’s language development. When your children were small, they were probably more exposed to your home language – say Korean – than they were to English. Now that they are going to school, they are exposed only to English for hours a day, and they are learning all kinds of new words and new ways of using language, but only in English. They probably don’t know the Korean word for ‘notebook’ or ‘social studies’ or ‘principal’. When they use an English word in a Korean sentence, tell them what it’s called in Korean rather than worrying that they’re losing their home language. Remember, even if they end up with English as their dominant language, they can still be perfectly competent Korean speakers as well.

Further reading

Baker, Colin. 1995. A Parents’ and Teachers’ Guide to Bilingualism. Multilingual Matters.

Grosjean, François. 1982. Life with Two Languages. Harvard University Press.

Harding-Esch, Edith, and Philip Riley. 2003. The Bilingual Family: A Handbook for Parents. 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press.

Bilingual, biliterate and culturally aware children

https://www.anaelisamiranda.com/literacy

Becky Morales is an ESL and Spanish teacher. She’s an American mother of five bilingual and multicultural children and the founder of Kid World Citizen. She lives in Mexico with her family and loves connecting with teachers and parents on Facebook and Twitter.

Bilingual, biliterate and culturally aware children

Recommended books for bilingual families

Books

  • Baker, C. (2014) A Parent and Teacher’s Guide to Bilingualism, Bangor University Beck, A. (2016) Maximize your Child’s Bilingual Ability. Hiroshima: Bilingual Adventures
  • Grosjean, F. (1982) Life with Two Languages:  An Introduction to Bilingualism. Harvard University Press
  • Koshy.V. (2010) Action Research for Improving Educational Practice. A Step-by-Step Guide. London: Sage
  • Medina, J. (2014) Brain Rules for Baby. How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five. Seattle: Pear Press
  • Miller, J. (1983) Many Voices: Bilingualism, Culture and Education. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
  • Rosenback, R. (2014) Bringing up a Bilingual Child. Surrey: Filament Publishing LTD.