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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 [...]

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Posted on August 21, 2009
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Bilingualism at 23 months, II

Posted in Bilingualism by Bilingual For Fun
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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 [...]

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Posted on August 18, 2009
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Gestures and language acquisition

Posted in Research by Bilingual For Fun
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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 [...]

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Posted on August 18, 2009
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Gesticulating helps children to learn

Posted in Research by Bilingual For Fun
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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, [...]

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Posted on August 18, 2009
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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 [...]

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Posted on August 17, 2009
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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 [...]

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Posted on August 13, 2009
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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 [...]

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Posted on August 4, 2009
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OPOL on the Beach

Posted in Bilingualism by Bilingual For Fun
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I recently landed on a beach, together with A. of course, like most Italians this time of the year and I want to share some reflections on the experience of using the One Parent One Language technique (OPOL), outside of one’s habitat .

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Posted on July 29, 2009
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More information about Playgroups. What, When, Where and most of all Who

Posted in Playgroups by Bilingual For Fun
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I recently received few emails expressing interest in creating Playgroups in one place or another, I would like to answer these questions and make some clarity about:

Playgroups in general, any language
English Playgroups
Where can you find a Playgroup
How to start a new Playgroup

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Posted on July 18, 2009
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Why some parents don’t want to speak their mothertongue with their children?

Posted in Bilingualism by Bilingual For Fun
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 Leonora asked for some advice via Facebook because her partner refuses to speak his mothertongue with their daughter. Her question is very interesting and far from unusual, so let’s think about it together.
Leonora is Italian, her partner is from Angola hence his mothertongue is Portuguese. They met in London but now live in Italy and have [...]

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Posted on July 6, 2009