The Carnival is at Mummy Do That! and it’s great read!

No related posts.

here we are for another Carnival. The family of bloggers involved is growing really nicely and this is really contributing to creating a debate on bilingualism and sharing ideas, doubts, tips and tricks. Most of all I think we can all feel less lonely on our journey, and that is of tremendous help when you need to find in yourself the motivation to stick to your plans and speak that language that nobody else around you is speaking, often enough not even your own children!

So let’s go for it once again, and feel free to join us. You can submit your own posts to the Carnival or you can host the Carnival yourself, you’ll find all the info here. Also, to be always up to date  with the Carnival, deadlines for submitting, new issues, etc please subscribe to the newsletter. You will receive only one or two emails per month, just for coordinating the carnival.

Here we go!

Sarah, from Bringing up Baby Bilingual, shares a truly inspiring story. Clarisse and her family are raising 28 months old Julia quadrilingual. What is really inspiring, and makes me feel slightly envious, is not the number of languages, but where they live, which languages they chose and how they are exposing the child to the languages. And the picture in the background too! This is just like a dream….

Sandra from bxlsprout is raising her child trilingual, which I understand is the bare minimum necessary to guarantee survival in Bruxelles, where they live (I’m kidding, but just a bit). Her point of view is very interesting and quite unusual. Contrary to most parents of bilingual children, who were raised monolingual, Sandra was raised as a bilingual child herself, so she’s looking at her child’s experience through the lens of her own experience.

Mamapoekie from Authentic parenting gives us a different view of Belgium and Brussels, and indeed the experience of living there is very different depending on whether you are a local or an expat. Why in such a multilingual country is bilingualism and cultural differences among the Flemish and the French “side” still considered an issue? Or is it really? Mamapokie reminds us that languages are often used and abused.

Melanie from Multilingualmania hosts Sandrine, who’s raising her children trilingual in a rather hostile environment. If you think raising a bilingual child is hard for you in your settings, try to imagine what it would be like to raise an autistic child trilingual. No I don’t think we can even begin to imagine, but we can read Sandrine’s story, admire her focus and determination and share similar stories on our blogs, because bilingualism is a gift for all children, also those with disabilities, but their parents all too often feel isolated and criticized for their efforts.

Smashedpea from intrepidlybilingual shares one of those moments when you finally  feel you’ve done something right. All your efforts, and doubts and wondering and trying and trying some more were worth it. As I’ve been reading her blog since she started on her journey I’m really happy for her, but also, I think we can learn a lot by sharing the journey with each other. Once you’ve achieved something everything looks obvious and easy, but to keep going when you don’t know where you are going, this is the tough part, let’s just be aware that applies to virtually everybody and let’s share the burden.

Janis from mumversuskids at times finds raising a bilingual child rather demanding, specifically when they start asking really specific questions, which by the way, most parents wouldn’t be able to answer anyway, no matter in which language!

Jan and Souad from babelkid made me laugh. Their child manages to speak Arabic with hardly a whole arabic word in the sentence, yet in her view she is speaking arabic! This is also an opportunity for parents to spend some thought on code mixing and code switching, it’s difficult to expect children not to mix if parents do it.

Maria from Fabmums has a brilliant idea! “Learn though play” and because the kind of game your bilingual child might not be ready available just make it yourself. There you go, really smart!

Eve from Blogging on Bilingualism (last minute entry, my fault) is packed with info and practical advice about traveling with children. It is indeed possible, and it can even be fun, really! all you have to do is make sure you have everything you need. This is a post I’ll go back to over and over in the future!

And finally there’s me, Letizia, here on Bilingual for Fun. I want to question your definition of a bilingual family. More and more families are raising bilingual children against all odds and with plenty of initiative and creativity and a pinch of risk taking. Who are these families? How do they do it? What do experts think of them?

I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading all these posts and getting to know the families behind them. Before I close I have a suggestion to make, I find Twitter a really powerful tool. It’s much more flexible than Facebook and it allows you to stay on top of what’s going on and to connect in a very effective way. I swear i receive no money whatsoever for saying this, it’s just that I’m looking for your blogs on Twitter so I can follow you there but most of you aren’t on Twitter please, give it a chance, try it. At first it’s rather awkward, but after few days you’ll get used and you’ll soon realize how effective it is. If you have questions feel free to ask, at bilinguepergioco AT yahoo DOT com. Or find me a bilingualforfun or bilinguexgioco.

Finally don’t forget to subscribe the newsletter, so you won’t miss any carnival, do it now, here. And please let us know if you’s like to host, here you’ll find schedule and info.

Next Carnival will be hosted at Mummy do that, those registered to the newsletter will receive a reminder, if not just email sbach AT cartside DOT co DOT uk.

Read, comment, share, think, laugh and try something new. In short have fun!

Image from A Journey Round my Skull

Related posts:

1. Second Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism
2. 5 ways to react when Bilingual Children mix languages
3. 10 bloggers and a Carnival, on Bilingualism

I owe you an explanation, I know… What’s up with me? Lot’s actually…

Now as most of you know, to be true to my mission to bilingualism I run two blogs, Bilingual for Fun, in EN, and Bilingue per Gioco, in Italian. Well I realised I wasn’t getting what I wanted out of either and decided to invest time and energy to bring at least on of the two blogs to the next level, to make something really impactful out of it. I chose Bilingue per Gioco because I felt that’s where I could make the most difference. There are great bloggers on bilingualism in English, but it’s a virtually unknown subject in Italy.

I think I can now say the efforts where well worth it! Please have a look and judge yourself: www.bilinguepergioco.com. Have a look even if you don’t speak/read italian, just to see what it’s like, please! I promise I’ll soon put the same work into Bilingual for Fun too, just give me the time to recover…

I am also starting a couple of projects in Italy, making playgroups a reality, and that takes a tremendous amount of work and passion and a vision. And quite a bit of stupidity too one might say, at least that’s what I say when I feel overwhelmed. I do happen to feel overwhelmed a lot lately, so you get the drift…

And I have written an E-Book!!! Yes I did! It’s in Italian though… I’d love to get it translated. It went out yesterday and I’m checking emails and stuff like crazy. The title is In che lingua giochiamo? Which in English would read something like Which language shall we play in? In other words it’s one those things that really don’t translate well. I’d have to find a decent English title, ideas welcome… Anyway as you can imagine it’s a book on bilingualism, specifically on all the incredible tool we have (but rarely use) to give children exposure to the minority language in a fun and natural way. It’s 66 pages, including Cover, Index, and Bibliography, granted, but still…!

I am giving away the Ebook for free to those who are registered in Bilingue per Gioco’s newsletter as a way to say Thank-you-for-sharing-the-journey-with-me, but I know that also among Bilingual for Fun’s readers there are quite a few people who read Italian, so I’ll give away a copy here too. To get the copy just comment on this post or on FB and share the link to this page In che lingua giochiamo? with your contacts on FB, Twitter, blogs, anything by Sunday next week, Jan 31st. Which happens to be my birthday too… Go figure! I’ll then do the usual thing of picking a lucky winner!

What else… I’ve been missing my fellow bloggers a lot. I’ve been missing the Carnivals and all the really interesting interactions I used to have with the broad bloggers community. I’m back, and looking forward to this new year!

Thanks for everything, I hope you are all well!

Related posts:

1. Summer vacation options for Italian-English bilingual children
2. English, French, German (etc.) Playgroups for Bilingual Children in Italy
3. Learning a second language is good childhood mind medicine, studies find

Have a look!

Related posts:

1. Second Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism
2. Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism, April
3. 10 bloggers and a Carnival, on Bilingualism

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

Related posts:

1. Second Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism
2. Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism, April
3. January’s Carnival on Bilingualism!

The second Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism went live today, hosted at Blogging on Bilingualism. I think this is a great resource for all bilingual parents, as Blogging on Bilingualism beautifully pointed out “the commonality of the bilingual journey ties us together”.

Enjoy the Carnival! And if you are a blogger join us, you can submit your post to the future Carnival or host it yourself in the future. Next session will take place here, on Bilingual For Fun. You can always check the schedule here, or you can receive all the new issues as well as call for submitting your posts here.

Picture by A Journey Round my Skull

Related posts:

1. Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism, April
2. 10 bloggers and a Carnival, on Bilingualism
3. January’s Carnival on Bilingualism!

Children will speak a language, any language, only if they have a reason to, in other words if they are motivated, and one of the trickiest parts of raising a bilingual child is to understand what motivation is and how to trigger it. Praise and reward certainly stand out among the tools most used to motivate children at present, just as punishment was until some time ago. However praise and rewards are not always effective, and can even become counterproductive, particularly in the long run. This doesn’t mean that praise is wrong, but  certainly it needs to be handled with care.

The good news is that if used properly praise actually becomes quite powerful, only, what does “use properly mean”? There are a couple of theories on this, and they all make perfect sense, in fact they are very closely related, so keep reading and try to find what will work best for you and your family. These different theories, or methods, all have the same objective: find a way to praise that will enhance the positive effect, Encouragement, and limit the side effects, Judgment. In fact when we praise someone, as well as when we criticise them, we are judging them and claiming the right to decide what is right or wrong about them. And this can be very disturbing, the idea that anyone, even Mom, can say whether I am right or wrong is not necessarily a pleasant feeling.

So here are few alternative ways to praise without judging, they have been described to promote a balanced education of children, but apply just as well to the education of bilingual children. •

• Active Listening This is one of the most powerful tools described by Gordon in his book PET and is widely utilized in any environment, from family therapy to business training. Active listening basically means to step in another person’s shoes, make a real and sincere effort to understand what they feel (anger, frustration, fear, etc) and say it. The last passage is the key one, it’s not enough to think what the other person feels, you have to spell it out loud (you might be wrong, in that case you’ll just give it another try). BILINGUAL CHILDREN: say the child doesn’t want to speak German, or insists that Mom should speak German to him, then mom could just say: “you don’t like me to speak German to you because you don’t understand everything I say”. This technique is explained very well in this article, based on a really book I strongly recommend: How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk by Faber e Mazlish
• Praise effort, not results : if a child doesn’t believe in his ability to learn and overcome difficulties he won’t have enough confidence to try and put some effort into it. Funny enough this happens quite often to high performing children, who grow up hearing that they are good and have a natural gift may be, but think they know and they don’t know that they can learn. See this article. BILINGUAL CHILDREN: don’t praise them for what they say and how they say, but for their improvements and for how they are learning
• Descriptive Praise this comes from the Montessori school and the teaching is that instead of evaluating what children do we should just describe it. This has two implications: the child can accept praise without embarrassment, because it is not a judgement but the statement of a fact (you did this and that), secondly this way the child will learn to observe what he has done and elaborate his own judgement. see this article on Descriptive Praise. BILINGUAL CHILDREN: Mummy spoke to you in French and you answered in French. You sang the whole song on your own. This sentence you just said was correct, remember last week you got it wrong? 
• Reflective Listening is very similar to Active Listening, in fact the only reason I list it here is because I find this article very well written, and if you still have the energy definitely worth a look.

As you can see these techniques are very similar, they all point at avoiding judgment and helping the child understand and evaluate what he has done , boosting in self confidence and ability to decide. Punishment and criticism are different issues, we’ll come back to that.

BILINGUALISM STEP BY STEP

Your homework today, I’m sure you guessed already, is to think about these alternative approaches and analyze your own behaviour at the light of these info. Is there something you’d like to change in the way you praise your children? What? Make few specific examples of situation you would now address differently. As usual don’t make vague statements about how you will change everything, clearly identify few specific situations and decide what you will say when they arise.

Picture by A Journey Round My Skull

Related posts:

1. Pro and Contra of Praise
2. How to I brought my child from crying real tears to a happy smile with one question
3. Is praise always a good thing?

 We have already seen that praise, like punishment, is a means of external control. That is, I parent do this because I then expect the child do that. But the ultimate purpose of education is to help children develop a form of internal control, i.e. to do certain things because they’ are right and don’t do others because they are wrong. (See article by Gordon on forms of control). Different yet is the case of bilingualism, we do not expect a child to make a moral decision about speaking one language or another but we would like them to speak them spontaneously, without even thinking about it and and certainly not “to please mom” (this is what I think at least). Is praising the child the right way to go to achieve this? That’s for you to decide. But I would encourage you to think about it, because Praise is a tricky thing.

 Pros and Cons of Praise

PRO

• Praising a child shows what he did is evaluated positively by the adult, gives him the clue that he’s on the right track and is making mom or dad happy
• Praising a child makes the adult feel good too. It’s a means to express their consent and satisfaction (when my son says a new word in English I’m really happy, and to be honest I am pleased with him and ME, praising him I’m actually celebrating my own success)

CONTRA

• Praise can motivate as a prize, but it works only as long as the child wants this reward. It works very well with small children, but when they grow up and become less dependent, or even openly rebellious or independent (sooner or later it will happen, oh dear…), they might not think much of parents’ praise or even dislike it. See article by Gordon on the mechanisms of reward and punishment
• Praise can cause a child (or an adult for what matters) to feel uncomfortable. Most likely you know the uncomfortable feeling of hearing “You are so beautiful!”, “you are so clever!” and the like…
• Praise is addictive. If you praise me every time I say a word in English I actually expect you to praise me every time I do it, and with increasing enthusiasm, else it just won’t cut it. How creative you can you become in praising a child?
• The absence of praise is perceived as a punishment. If you praise me every time I open my mouth and today you don’t I must have said something wrong, but what?
• Praise creates pressure, the child may feel evaluated on the basis of his performance and forced to do even better. Imagine that I always said to A., and others in his presence, that A. and is a really good boy because he speaks really good English. This would put him in the position of having to speak really good English to meet the mom’s expectation. It’s not the same as speaking English because he likes it or because speaking it is natural to him. Definitely not the same thing…
• The child does not learn to evaluate his actions and abilities and to be proud of his achievements, but rather to depend on an external evaluation.

Well I guess what you’re thinking here, the same I thought at first: “What the hell! I just said “Well done” to my son, it can’t be that bad!!” It certainly isn’t, but there is some truth in all these points. For example it is true that being praised can be annoying. Or that praise often seems a unsincere and manipulative. However do not despair. There are ways to praise a child and at the same time avoid all these problems. More than one way in fact, we will see them later and you can receive them automatically by clicking here.

BILINGUALISM STEP BY STEP

Here is the task today: look at the dynamics of praise in your family. Behave in an absolutely normal way, do not try to change your behavior, and observe: How often do you praise your children? In which occasions? How do they react? Mom and dad have different behaviours? How children react to each parent? And above all, what function does praise have in the development of bilingualism in your family?

Related posts:

1. Is praise always a good thing?
2. How to praise to boost motivation
3. 7 Strategies to use when a bilingual child doesn’t want to speak a language

Your 3 year old says a whole new sentence in …. (fill in with your minority language), what do you do? Jump with joy? Open a bottle of champagne? Head for the toy shop to buy him a reward gift?

I bet most parents, like me, would at least be very happy and proud and praise the child, just so s/he knows s/he did a good thing. But actually… is this the best way to go about it?

I started a very light-hearted post, just few thoughts about the importance of praising children for their results, and before I knew I realised I had hit one of the single most critical yet underestimated factors about bilingual education and upbringing: the impact of praise on children’s motivation. There is much more to praise than we might think, and actually praise might not be the smartest way to motivate a child, or an adult for what matters. I think these are very important points, they certainly are for me. I know the reflections I’m doing writing these posts will have a dramatic impact on my parenting style and on A.’s bilingual education. And I think you should all take some time to think about it, and not because I say so, but because some of the brightest minds spent really a lot of time (and money) researching and exploring the dynamics of reward and punishment, so most likely they had some valid points to make.

Who are these minds anyway? People like Thomas Gordon and Maria Montessori to start with.

Thomas Gordon was an American psychologist who developed a model for relationship management based on effective and non confrontational communication. Initially he elaborated a model for optimizing family dynamics and communication, which developed into the Parent Effectiveness Training courses and later in the best seller Parent Effectiveness Training book.  Later the same concepts and techniques have been exported to all areas of communications and relationship management, particularly in professional environments, think topics like team management and leadership and rest assured that they are built on his work. His work had such a major impact that he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times.

There two things I find slightly disturbing about the PET thing: that it is based on the assumption that parenting can and should be taught and that today it is really a big business. That said, these two factors don’t alter the fact that Gordon had some brilliant and powerful ideas, and that familiarizing yourself with his techniques is more likely to make you a better communicator, hence a happier person, parent, friend, professional, name it.

Maria Montessori made a quite but long lasting revolution. She put the child, and the child’s skills and needs, at the center of her pedagogic approach and laid the foundations for a scientific pedagogy, i.e. a pedagogy based on scientific methods and rigour, not on opinions. She brought attention to the importance of freedom (certainly an innovative concept at the beginning of XX century). The child’s freedom according to het is important not only to stimulate and nurture his/her creativity, but also, in less obvious ways, to help him/her gain self regulation and eventually discipline.

So the first interesting thing is that both Gordon and Montessori address the issue of praise (reward) and punishment as one. But one’d normally think they are very different things, aren’t they? Let’s see…

What is Praise?

When a child does a good thing we make sure he knows, we reward him with our praise, we are sincerely happy about his success and share our happiness with him and with others. This way, we think, he’ll feel good about what he has done and will be inclined to do more of the same.

So what is punishment instead? Let’s change few words…

When a child does a bad thing we make sure he knows, we punish him with our disapproval; we are sincerely disappointed about his failure and share our disappointment with him and with others. This way, we think, he’ll feel bad about what he has done and will not be inclined to do more of the same.

Well, there isn’t so much difference between praise and punishment then! Praise and punishment are two sides of the same coin and they share very similar mechanisms. I had never thought about it and I personally find the idea quite shocking, or at least thought provoking. Because I was under the impression that punishment is bad and praise is good. But if they are so similar may be their effects are similar too and I have to reconsider my assumptions (and trust me, I am).

I want to explore this topic in depth, and I will do it on the next few posts so if you want to receive them just click here.

BILINGUALISM STEP BY STEP

This is thinking time more than action time, and I would encourage you to spend some time thinking about these issues to, because you can’t overestimate the importance of praise and reward in children’s education, and in bilingual education specifically.

So today’s homework is to spend some time to think about what impact praise has on YOU, not on your children.

Have you ever been praised and:

• Felt embarrassed or annoyed?
• Felt they were making fun of you?
• Didn’t believe what you were hearing?
• Had a poor opinion of the person who was praising you?
• Felt pressure to deliver or perform above your abilities and capabilities?
• Felt manipulated?
• Thought there was no need to put more effort given that what you had done was already good enough?

If you answered yes to at least one of these questions you start to see that praise can have drawbacks too. We’ll see later all the pro and contras and how subtle changes can make our praise more effective, in all senses. To receive the updates click here.

Picture by annthrop

Related posts:

1. Pro and Contra of Praise
2. How to praise to boost motivation
3. The Importance of a Social Context (think Playgroup) for Bilingual Children

• How bad is TV for children?
• Do TV and DVD support language learning?

Here we’ll look at second question and see what experts think about it.

• Very young children learn from interactions, i.e. from playing and talking with real people, they don’t learn from passive devices like TV and DVD. However as they grow up, around school age, TV and DVD can indeed become a support tool to language learning. This is confirmed by research, let me just mention  few articles on the subject, like Television Viewing in Infancy and Child Cognition at 3 Years of Age or, again, Christakis’ article, as well as a book: The Bilingual Hedge, the only book among the many I read on bilingualism that explores in depth the impact of TV and media on language development at different ages, giving very useful advice to parents on when to introduce these tools and how to optimise their impact.
• Infants’ (o to 3) exposure to TV and impact on language and cognitive development. There is no evidence that any form of DVD or TV program can enhance (first) language development, in fact several studies suggest the opposite, that early TV watching is correlated to speech delay and later on to poorer scholastic performance.
• Preschoolers (3 to 5) exposure to TV and cognitive development. It has been observed that good educational programs can in fact have positive impact on children.
• School age children’s exposure to TV and language learning. Finally, the positive message you might have been looking for. Yes, watching TV or DVD in the minority language can help language acquisition at school age and above. In fact the fact that English skills are so far better in Nordic countries seems to be linked to the fact that movies there are normally not dubbed but shown in the original version, with subtitles. Mind you, this is not good enough a reason to seat a 6 year old in front of the TV for 4 hours a day. An interactive environment is always to be preferred.
• Older children, TV and video games. Both TV, or DVD, and video games can be used to support language acquisition of older children and teenagers. They can provide an entertaining and interesting activity AND exposure to the language. The key issue there is that parental supervision is essential to make sure that the content is suitable for the young person’s age and, of course, that the environment is safe.
• You can promote and support language learning with few tricks. We already covered this topic on the post How reading, DVDs and even videogames can become an opportunity for language stimulation

BILINGUALISM STEP BY STEP

I’ll be pedantic this time, apologies in advance, and I will propose again last time’s homework. I do this because it’s important but largely underestimated, so please do it. You might not see an obvious  impact now, but you certainly will in few years time.
Consider these 15 tips a Pediatrician (Dr. Generoso) gave on optimising children’s TV usage. Go through the list and highlight all the tips that are currently not implemented in your family. Then chosse max 3 tips you might want to introduce and decide HOW you are going to do it. Discuss this with your partner, baby sitter, grandparents, etc. Hang the new rules on the fridge, and make it happen. It’s in your hands (certainly not in your children’s).

1. Propose programs to children that are most suitable to their age
2. Watching television with your children.
3. Do not use the television as a punishment or reward.
4. Do not use the TV as baby-sitter
5. Establish with the children the time to devote to TV
6. Prevent children from watching television before going to school.
7. Prevent children from watching television just before bedtime.
8. Keep the TV off during mealtimes and homeworks.
9. Do not give the child the remote control.
10. Do not place a TV in your children’s bedroom.
11. Use DVDs rather than TV.
12. Seek viable alternatives to television.
13. Have books suitable for exploring topics your children are interested in.
14. Pay attention to the “conditions” of the vision and listening, i.e. no dark in the room and not too high volume.
15. Check the quality and quantity of food taken in front of the television

Related posts:

1. TV, children and language, part 1
2. Bilingualism at 23 months, III
3. English Speaking Playgroups Starting in S. Saba, Rome