Author Archives: L.

Bilingual children, grandparents and extended family

Posted in Bilingualism by L.
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Quite often in OPOL families parents give up using the minority language in presence of the extended family, a sign of respect towards those who don’t understand the language. It is certainly a very good thing to involve the whole family, but it doesn’t necessarily need to happen at the minority language’s expenses. And by [...]
Posted on July 2, 2009

How reading, DVDs and even videogames can become an opportunity for language stimulation

Posted in Bilingualism by L.
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The importance of reading to rchildren cannot be overestimated. Reading is critical for language development, but also for children’s personal development, for acquiring the ability to understand oneself and the world and to elaborate experiences. It goes without saying that for bilingual children reading is also essential to stimulate language. However the link between reading [...]
Posted on June 22, 2009

Schooling options for Bilingual Children

Posted in Bilingualism by L.
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Choosing the school can be really difficult and painful in normal circumstances, but for bilingual families it is even more so, as they often have to compare apples with oranges, plus their own personal experience (i.e. their memories about the school they went to) can be of little or no help at all. We spoke about Day Nursery, Kindergarten [...]
Posted on June 11, 2009

Books, CD and DVD for bilingual children discounted on Amazon

Posted in Resources by L.
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 There are few good news for you, and I’m very happy to share them. Bilingual For Fun just opened its Amazon Store: Bilingual For Fun Bookstore. There you can find books, CD and DVD for children, plus of course books on bilingualism for parents. Everything you’ll see there has been selected by me, not by a random search [...]
Posted on June 3, 2009

Animal sounds in different languages

Posted in Bilingualism by L.
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Children love animals and reproducing animals’ sounds, and this as far as I know is true in all cultures and countries. However, funny enough, animal sounds do change from country to country, or to be pedantic, the way people reproduce animal sounds change. This is no minor thing, in bilingual families you’ll see daddy saying that [...]
Posted on June 2, 2009

Summer vacation options for Italian-English bilingual children

Posted in Bilingualism by L.
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 An italian mom who is raising her child bilingual in English, although none in the family is an English native speaker, asked some tips about how to find Enlish speaking opportunities for the summer vacation. Of course a trip is always a good idea, although the trip is expensive and is always done with family, [...]
Posted on May 30, 2009

My baby is bilingual, how can I help him learn English too?

Posted in Bilingualism by L.
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I’ll give a straight answer to this question (which I’m hearing quite often now): Don’t. English is clearly the one language we all need to speak now, so all to often parents of bilingual children are worried that their child should learn English early on too, but obviously don’t know how to go about it. [...]
Posted on May 25, 2009

Children who can speak two languages are better at learning a third language

Posted in Research by L.
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This interesting article based on research from Nothwestern University shows how bilingual children are better at learning a new foreign language than monolingual children. The implications are ery relevant for all multilingual and international families, who don’t need to worry about their kids learning English too early on (when English is not part ofb the [...]
Posted on May 25, 2009

Do Language Classes deliver Bilingual Children?

Posted in Bilingualism by L.
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 We have been talking about kindergarten schooling options for bilingual children, and we’ll soon talk about primary schools too, however let’s spend few word also on language classes. For parents that would like their children to grow bilingual, language classes are often considered an alternative to international/bilingual schooling, a less intense but a far less expensive [...]
Posted on May 21, 2009

Learning a second language is good childhood mind medicine, studies find

Posted in Research by L.
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An interesting article on Bilingual Children from the Cornell language Acquisition Lab. The article confirms that bilingualism has no negative impact on children, on the contrary it stimulates them positevely, and it also gives some very useful practical tips to parents, which I copy below (however I still encourage you to read the whole article): Tips to [...]
Posted on May 19, 2009