Author Archives: L.

5 ways to react when Bilingual Children mix languages

Posted in Bilingualism by L.
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Does your child start a sentence with one langue and finish it with another? Yes, that happens a lot, but what this really means strongly depends on how you react to that. If you think you just react normal, keep reading, there are at least 5 different ways of reacting normal, they are all normal, [...]
Posted on May 10, 2009

Bilingual Preschoolers: Day Nursery and Kindergarten for Bilingual Children in Italy

Posted in Bilingualism by L.
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Schooling is a big issue for all expat families. Is it better to send the kids to a local school, where they’ll learn the local language and integrate in the local society, or to send them to an international school, where they’ll grow with a more international profile and culture, but might risk living in [...]
Posted on May 5, 2009

Research proves Bilingual Babies have better mental skills.

Posted in Bilingualism by L.
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The Research has been conducted and published by Kovacs and Mehler at the Language, Cognition and Development Lab in Trieste (Italy). However the scientific publication is probably more than the most of us would ask for, so I’d rather offer you this review as published on another blog (all details below): Bilingual infants have better mental control Posted [...]
Posted on May 4, 2009

Code Mixing and Code Switching in Bilingual Children (and Families)

Posted in Bilingualism by L.
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Code Switching and Code Mixing refer to similar, yet very different, ways of mixing languages. Code Switching happens when a person that speaks two languages mixes them, or say borrows words from one language, to be clearer and more effective in his/her communication.
Posted on April 30, 2009

The Importance of a Social Context (think Playgroup) for Bilingual Children

Posted in Bilingualism, Playgroups by L.
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Do parents or society shape children? A lot has been said on this, but I think most people would agree that it is a bit (or a lot) of both. Children take input from many sources and recognize the authority of different people (parents, teachers, older children, uncle, etc…), this way they build their own [...]
Posted on April 29, 2009

7 Strategies to use when a bilingual child doesn’t want to speak a language

Posted in Bilingualism by L.
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It’s quite common for bilingual children to refuse to use one of the languages they are exposed to and parents get often very frustrated. However this is very normal, and there’s no reason to worry about it nor to be bothered. To start with let’s clarify the difference between active bilingualism (i.e. talking two languages- and [...]
Posted on April 28, 2009

What the OPOL are you saying?

Posted in Bilingualism by L.
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OPOL (One Parent One Language) is one of the most used techniques by bilingual families. It’s very easy to explain (each parent speaks his/her language to the children) but it’s not easy to implement with rigour, so everybody finds his/her own way of implementing it, deciding when and how to make exceptions to the rule. Managing [...]
Posted on April 26, 2009

Linda and her international, and multilingual, family

Posted in Real Life by L.
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Linda and her family are americans and live in Rome. But soon they’ll be off to Bali for a while. Well, that’s a nice family on the road, proving all of us that life and travelling don’t end when kids are born. By the way, their technique is MLAH. Thanks, Linda. My husband and I are [...]
Posted on April 26, 2009

Lisa's recipe for trilingualism

Posted in Real Life by L.
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Lisa has three children, and she has succefully raised them trilingual. Her recipe is simple: each parents speaks his/her own language, the third language is learnt at school.  However she does have a secret ingredient: the whole family follows the (OPOL) rule, always and without exceptions. That’s not easy to do, but it seems to pay off… I am [...]
Posted on April 26, 2009

English, French, German (etc.) Playgroups for Bilingual Children in Italy

Posted in Playgroups by L.
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Bilingual For Fun was born in Italy, and here it is organizing Playgroups, i.e. opportunities for adults and children to meet and play in English, German, French, Spanish, name it! Basically in any language other than Italian.
Posted on April 26, 2009