Raising bilingual children

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Raising bilingual children

Thanks for responding.

How do you work with your kids? Do you read to them from storybooks, let them watch cartoons in a foreign language or do you simply chat with them occasionally? How often do you talk to them in Hawaiian etc? Do you find yourself reverting to English too soon? When I was a kid my mom would teach me French through fairytales. I'm not new to the subject of foreign languages but with a three-year-old I find myself scratching my head a little.

Gnostic, the first one is always the hardest but certainly not impossible. I don't think they did you a favor by removing the foreign language requirement. Most of your life you'll be too old or too young for something. If you want to do it, just go for it. Your economic theory is a bit shaky for this particular purpose. First, you have no one to trade with, and second your cost can be as low as 30 minutes of dead time somewhere in a bus. BTW, you're not the first one I hear mention recorders. I asked my wife about it but she grumbled something about popular kids and how she got stuck with a recorder while the cool kids got to play the clarinet

Speak the minority language only, all day and every day. Tapes, books, videos, and if you can find them, playmates. If ou have more than one kid, insist that they speak together in the minority language.

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Raising bilingual children

Speak the minority language only, all day and every day. Tapes, books, videos, and if you can find them, playmates. If ou have more than one kid, insist that they speak together in the minority language.

Okay....sometimes I have to threaten or beg my kids to speak Engish together. Sometimes they forget, when playing.


"I'm gonna beat that frikken French out of you! This is my house and we speak my language!"

"How you gonna be able to speak wid your Gramma, if you don't practice?"

[Menehune Man]

Re: Raising bilingual children

Yes, you're right on this part. No one is really too old to learn. And I do have a growing list of things that I wish I had more exporsure or known of its importance. But yes, nothing is impossible. If there's a will, there's a way.

Yes, it seems harder to learn new things as we age. Maybe it's time constraints due to other obligations, since as a kid we have more time for what we wish to do at the time, but what we truly make important in our lives and strive for we'll accomplish.
For sure.

[SusieMisajon]

Re: Raising bilingual children

Yes, it seems harder to learn new things as we age. Maybe it's time constraints due to other obligations, since as a kid we have more time for what we wish to do at the time, but what we truly make important in our lives and strive for we'll accomplish.
For sure.

It helps if you like what you're trying to learn. It took me years to learn to speak French. It only came through osmosis, I think. I didn't want to be here, I wanted to be back home in Hawaii.

[reineke]

Re: Raising bilingual children

The "critical period" theory has countertheories. I believe this one became so popular as it's so much easier to say hey, it's too late, I can't do it than sit down and study! A perfect excuse. You even get to cite a scientific theory
BTW the theory only regards native pronunciation and fluency, it does not claim adults cannot learn a foreign language effectively.

[Lei K]

Re: Raising bilingual children

Hi

I remember you from another thread where I think you mentioned your Portuguese heritage. Have you ever thought about learning it yourself or (if you already speak it) teaching it to your children? The problem with certain languages unfortunately is the lack of interesting and child-friendly material.

Absolutely! I wanna go check out the other islands I descend from and not rely on if the person I need to talk to knows English or not. One of my dreams is to take a trip to the Azores and Madeira and be able to have conversations with the locals. I'm not sure what kind of material is out there for teaching Portuguese but there's gotta be something decent for kids.

And on that note, I want to learn Cantonese for the same reason.

[GnosticWarrior]

Re: Raising bilingual children

The "critical period" theory has countertheories. I believe this one became so popular as it's so much easier to say hey, it's too late, I can't do it than sit down and study! A perfect excuse. You even get to cite a scientific theory
BTW the theory only regards native pronunciation and fluency, it does not claim adults cannot learn a foreign language effectively.

I know the rest of the world views Americans as self centered. Being old is not a good excuse to not make the effort to learn a foreign language if one truly desires. But already knowing English, and that being the most widely learned language of some of the most influencial countries of the world creates less incentive for someone like me to learn a foreign language.

I identify with being an American and of a human being culture and don't desire to learn the language of my ethnicity. However, it would have been nice if I was bilingual bcs my parents made that decision for me. It would create more opportunities for me. But as an adult, I can't justify the opportunity cost of learning. If I was born in a non-English country, there would be whole lot more incentive for me to learn English as a second language and as an adult to make the focus to learn. I'm in a different circumstance. And this circumstance could be changing for Americans and English speakers as Non-English speakers are gaining more global influence. It's nothing to fear, it's change. There will be more incentives for our future generations to be bilingual. By teaching your children, your helping them to prepare of the challenges that they will face in their lifetime.

[Pua'i Mana'o]

Re: Raising bilingual children

Prior to ten years old, language is acquired in the frontal lobe. After ten, that part of the brain closes off, and language is acquired somewhere over the left ear. This shift does not inhibit the ability to develop a high degree of fluency, but it does settle in certain linguistic behaviors, e.g. the teenage kid who moves to a new country and decades later still hasn't shaken his initial accent, even though he speaks his host country's language fluently.

Bilingual skills have everything to do with cultural context of using the language; picking up nifty phrases here and there, along with retaining bits of vocab isn't of the definition. In Susie's case, her kids' ability to speak English has to do with their social context: in the home, learning off of their mother, and the ability to communicate with her. Their communicating amongst themselves through English is a socialization of sorts, but it will find its roadblocks or comfort zones when negotiating age-appropriate concerns: idioms, slang, emoting, being cool. In other contexts, their reverting to French usage is because of the context in which they are used to that language: school, their friends, neighbors, shopping, learning, community and all the same concerns as I previously mentioned.

The point I am making is that true bilinguality is never without a social context. How people communicate. What rocks them. What they share in common. Media influence. The reason to strive for it is simple: it increases the pool of people with whom to discuss and understand. On a purely academic level, language acquistion and all of its social/cultural mores is one of only two ways to literally increase one's IQ. The other is the pursuit of mathematics. Why? The increased opportunity to analyize the unfamiliar until it becomes familiar and everything that it means.

[reineke]

Re: Raising bilingual children

My old psychology teacher was dead-set against the "critical period hypothesis" and I remember getting a lower score as I continued to dispute what she was teaching. Ahem, nowadays I don't dispute anything. Or maybe I do, but not as much as I used to

You might find the following links interesting.

"Typically, when pressed, people asserting the superiority of child learners resort to some variant of the "critical period hypothesis." The argument is that children are superior to adults in learning second languages because their brains are more flexible (Lenneberg, 1967; Penfield & Roberts, 1959). They can learn languages easily because their cortex is more plastic than that of older learners. (The corollary hypothesis is the "frozen brain hypothesis," applied to adult learners.)

The critical period hypothesis has been questioned by many researchers in recent years and is presently quite controversial (Genesee, 1981; Harley, 1989; Newport, 1990). The evidence for the biological basis of the critical period has been challenged and the argument made that differences in the rate of second language acquisition may reflect psychological and social factors, rather than biological ones, that favor child learners. For example, children may be more motivated than adults to learn the second language. There is probably more incentive for the child on the playground and in school to communicate in the second language than there is for the adult on the job (where they often can get by with routine phrases and expressions) or with friends ( who may speak the individual's first language anyway). It frequently happens that children are placed in more situations where they are forced to speak the second language than are adults..."

"However, experimental research in which children have been compared to adults in second language learning has consistently demonstrated that adolescents and adults perform better than young children under controlled conditions..."

http://lmri.ucsb.edu/resources/ncrcdsll/mclaughlin.htm


This one's too long to summarize but very interesting:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian....guisticsla.htm

[reineke]

Re: Raising bilingual children

Some very interesting reading

http://www.zompist.com/whylang.html