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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 .
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
TV, children and language, part 1
Tags 0-2 year, 2-4 year, TV and Media
TV and DVD are often part of children’s lives, and more and more are used to “teach” children a language. Is this right or wrong? Is TV a language learning tool or a brain killing device? I have done some research on the subject and I want to share the results with you. With regards [...]