Monthly Archives: August 2009

First Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism now Live

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A fellow mom, and blogger, and bilingual parent had a great idea, starting a Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism. If you don’t know what a blogging carnival is you have two ways to learn about it: Go read it, here at Mummydothat! This is the recommended option, you’ll find some really useful posts about bilingualism! Read the theory about [...]
Posted on August 31, 2009

Bilingualism at 23 months, IV

Posted in Real Life by Bilingual For Fun
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Something special happened today, and I want to share it. I think that for the first time I saw A. switching language, in a way that was both conscius and contextual. Fact: we were reading a book, The Snail and the Whale.  In the drawings figured also a boat, A. pointed to it and said Baca [...]
Posted on August 27, 2009

Bilingualism at 23 months, III

Posted in Bilingualism by Bilingual For Fun
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One interesting component of A.’s recent speech development is that he now sings! Music has always been a strong presence in his life, I always played lot’s of music for him and sang to him. He never used a pacifier, or a comfort object or anything like that, all he needs to calm down and [...]
Posted on August 21, 2009

Bilingualism at 23 months, II

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I read few articles stressing how gestures play a key role in facilitating learning (see here, and here), particularly among young children. I also spoke about it with some experts and have seen children of 1.5years old achieving impressive communication efficiency by using gestures. So I am convinced that gestures are useful, important, and armless [...]
Posted on August 18, 2009

Gestures and language acquisition

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This article appeared on Sciencenews Kids’ gestures foretell better vocabularies Language acquisition may begin even before children start saying many words By Laura Sanders CHICAGO — Anyone who has witnessed a 3-year-old imitate a rude hand signal from his car seat knows that young children are perfectly capable of picking up gestures from adults. New research suggests that 14-month-old [...]
Posted on August 18, 2009

Gesticulating helps children to learn

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A handwaving approach to arithmetic Feb 19th 2009 | CHICAGO From The Economist print edition Gesticulating helps children to learn HUMAN language is the subject of endless scientific investigation, but the gestures that accompany speech are a surprisingly neglected area. It is sometimes jokingly said that the way to render an Italian speechless is to tie his wrists together, [...]
Posted on August 18, 2009

Bilingualism at 23 months, I

Posted in Real Life by Bilingual For Fun
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It’s a long time since I last wrote about A. language development, but recently I read two blogs written by mothers who document the linguistic development of their bi/tri-lingual children, and I realised how useful these posts are, not only for the writer but also for the reader. For the writer it’s an opportunity to [...]
Posted on August 17, 2009

Playgroups’ enrolment now open

Posted in Playgroups by Bilingual For Fun
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This post is mainly directed at those of you who live in Italy (but if you live elsewhere and find the Playgroups interesting don’t hesitate to contact me and we can talk about it). As all of you living in Italy will surely know by now in August the whole country is on the beach [...]
Posted on August 13, 2009

Passive and Balanced Bilingualism

Posted in Bilingualism by Bilingual For Fun
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Most misunderstandings about Bilingualism derive from a lack of understanding of two very specific forms of bilingualism: Passive and Balanced Bilingualism. We have already looked at some definitions of bilingualism here, but now let’s focus on passive and Balanced bilingualism. Balanced Bilingualism: it might look like Balanced Bilingualism corresponds to the popular idea of [...]
Posted on August 4, 2009