Bilingualism at 23 months, II

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 (meaning you can’t go wrong by accompanying a word with a gestures that symbolizes the meaning). Yet I don’t use gestures much… Or rather, I suppose I do, my not-italian friends seemed to think I do at least… but I haven’t developed a whole new set of gestures just for my little one. When talking with him I am normal, I don’t use my hands neither more or less than I normally do.

Now the interesting thing is that nonetheless A. has developed his own set of gestures, most of which are his own creation, no adult suggested them to him. He now has a gesture for “let’s take a shower”, one for “Let’s go for a ride, by car of course”, “please Play some music, I would like to dance” (I’m not sure he really means to say Please too, I’m just putting it there), “I want to eat”, “I want to ride this bicycle/motorbike”, and few more.

I find this interesting, and I draw two conclusions:

• Do what you can, but if you can’t just leave it As I said, however much I believe in the relevance of gestures, creating and using new gestures just to communicate with my son felt very unnatural to me. And mind, I use gestures a lot in the Playgroups, but I find that in the relationship with my son eyes play a much bigger role than hands. Whatever. I clearly decided that if I had to adjust my communication style my priorities lied elsewhere (i.e. implementing OPOL consistently) and wouldn’t let this thing stress me out. Eventually he is creating the gestures he needs and somehow he will turn out OK nonetheless.

• 3. However, if you can… then do it If using gestures comes natural to you, and I believe it does to some parents, or you think it would be little effort. Then do it, by all means. I’m really convinced it helps. On top of observing my own child I also saw the relevance of gestures in my Playgroups. I have the feeling that gestures really help children and take a lot of stress away from them, if they can say it with their hands they know they are sending the message across, and then they add the word too, but without the urgency of communicating something, just for the fun of it. I repeat these are just my impressions, but it is certainly trues that research proves that gestures help learning, although for reasons that are much more complicated and subtle than this.

So, that’s what I have in mind. I want to have a pragmatic approach and start introducing only 5 gestures in my communication, to express 5 concepts: Home, Nice, Hungry, Catch me, Walk. And then I’ll see what happens, and I’ll let you know.

See here for Bilingualism at 23 months, I and Bilingualism at 23 months, III

BILINGUALISM STEP BY STEP

Here’s your homework for today. Think of something you’d like to change in your approach to bilingual upbringing. It could be anything: to stop mixing languages, to speak the minority language outside the house, to read books more frequently, anything. Pick one single thing, and set yourself a small target, specific and achievable. Don’t ask yourself major changes, just a small and easy one. Keeping the same examples it could be something like I’ll stop mixing languages at bath time (or in any other specific moment of the day), or I’ll speak the minority language when we are walking on our own on the street, or I’ll read a book every Tuesday eve, or anything like that. And of course, let us know how it goes, it could be easier than you think…

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