10 bloggers and a Carnival, on Bilingualism

Welcome to the Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism, a monthly get-together for all interested in bilingualism and in raising bilingual children and an opportunity to share experiences, info and best practices.

Raising bilingual children is seldom as straightforward as one would think, or hope, and it can be a bit lonely if you live in a monolingual society, however we also came to realise that the experience of raising a bilingual child has some common aspects no matter where one lives and which languages one speaks. So by sharing our views, doubts and tricks we all grow wiser, stronger, more motivated, which implies that growing up bilingual should be a better experience for our own children (conditional in not an optional here, those little things can be sneaky!).

Every month the Carnival is hosted at a different blog, here you can find the schedule and book your turn for hosting (next available slot seems to be March, so if you’re interested you should let us know as soon as possible). If you’d like to be updated about future issues, know when and how to submit your posts to the carnival, or just make sure you won’t miss any, please sign up to this newsletter, which will be used only for the bare minimum of communication needed to get the Carnival going, normally 2 emails per month, nothing else.

Excellent let’s start! Today we have a rich Carnival!

0. Well, It’s not quite 10 bloggers, but 10+1, because I managed to leave one out by mistake. How silly… And the point is that this is a VERY GOOD post, and it touches a point that is often overlooked but can be really tricky. What if your child’s second language is taught also in school and your child has a better command of the language than the teacher? It’s very common, and difficult to handle.  Kathryn from ourprivateblog talks about her experience with a her boy speaking a better, although less formal, English than his English teacher. Sorry Kathryn.

1. Laura from Bububooks with her post gave us much more info than she thought, I believe. The really astonishing piece on information is that in Illinois there are publicly funded Bilingual Parents Advisory Councils, where parents go to receive advice on raising their children bilingual. The second very valuable piece of information is that they also publish tip sheets, like the one Laura is posting.  It’s simple but effective advice and it shows a real committment to bilingualism.
2. Maria from Fabmums talks of a really tough problem that sooner or later will hit all bilingual families: ok we kind of manage the understanding and talking bit, but how about literacy? When and how should a child learn to read and write in the minority language? Maria got her answer sorted.
3. Eve from Blogging on Bilingualism made a list of all the things they do to support French, the minority language. Now that’s a really interesting idea! Just by going through the list you realize how diversified is their approach, how much effort and thinking they put into raising their children bilingual, and how this results in their kids having a rich exposure to the language, both in terms of quantity and quality. A good food for thought.  
4. Jan and Souad from Babelkid tell us quite an amazing story. Their little girl managed to form a 4 words long sentence using 4 different languages (that’d make the One Word One Language approach, wouldn’t it?) AND, here comes the really interesting bit, without breaking any grammatical rule in any of the 4 languages. Isn’t that something? Go here for the most impressive 4 words sentence ever.
5. Than there’s my post here at Bilingual For Fun. I want to challenge your assumptions. Raising a bilingual child can only be done if your mothetoungue is different from the majority language? Who said so?  As a matter of fact many non native speaker parents are raising bilingual children, and here are 8 reasons why anybody could raise a bilingual child (providing they want it hard enough).
6. Steffi at Mummy do that! went home, like back home, for 4 days. Now 4 days aren’t that long, but when you go back home and bring your child with you and are seeing your family and and and… then those 4 days expand, grow  and become a really important experience, for language developmenttoo, among other things…   
7. Deanna from Bilingual Readers touches on a point that is as important as widely underestimated: the powerful impact of playing pretend. She brings to us reasearch that shows how playing pretend, using imagination and storytelling are really important for the linguistic development of a child, on top of being fun and etertaining that is.
8. Smashedpea from Intrepidly Bilingual has a lot of thinking going… Choosing the schooling system and the actual school for a bilingual child can be really difficult, there are lot’s of criteria to take into consideration and way too many questions for which there isn’t a clear cut answer. I’m sure that reading this post many families will recognize their own dilemmas.
9. Ana from Spanglishbaby has a really important message, no matter how much effort you put into raising a child bilingual at home, that’s not enough, you need to give the child opportunities to speak the language also outside the house and manage carefully the child’s perception of the language status (or coolness).
10. Sylke from Sylkeweb seems to be pretty sorted, for once. Bilingualism works just fine in their family but they also allowed time for things to develop.

Before you leave make sure you register  sign up to the Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism  newsletter, so that’s you’ll know about next issues and will be able to contribute if you wish. The schedule is here, next Carnival will be November 30th at Babelkid, so make sure you don’t miss it!

Please ReTweet the carnival, you can find me @bilingualforfun.

Image by A Journey Round My Skull

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