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. [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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.
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 [...]
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 [...]
Summer vacation options for Italian-English bilingual children
Tags English, Holidays and Bilingualism, Italian, Non native-speaker, Playgroup, Support for Expat Families
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, [...]