Category Archives: Research

Research says children learn languages in the womb, and cry accordingly…

Posted in Research by Bilingual For Fun
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This is a very interesting article, it shows that as they are born children already “speak” their mothertongue, i.e. the way they cry depends on the language they have been exposed to in the womb: The crying song.
Now this is very interesting for me… I’ve been living in London and speaking practically only English [...]

Posted on November 12, 2009

Bilingualism Makes Children Smarter

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Another interesting article on Bilingualism: Bilingualism Makes Children Smarter.
The article reports the results of a research conducted in Belgium by Prof. Van de Craen. Funny enough last week I attended a very interesting conference on bilingualism (more on this later, a lot more actually, hopefully not a lot later) and there I attended  a speech [...]

Posted on September 29, 2009

Tv, children and language, part 2

Posted in Bilingualism, Research by Bilingual For Fun
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We mentioned earlier that there are two fundamentals questions that need to be answered with regards to TV and bilingualism

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 [...]

Posted on September 3, 2009

TV, children and language, part 1

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

Posted on September 1, 2009

Gestures and language acquisition

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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 [...]

Posted on August 18, 2009

Gesticulating helps children to learn

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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, [...]

Posted on August 18, 2009

The expert’s advice: English as a third language

Posted in Real Life, Research by Bilingual For Fun
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After writing on English as a third language for bilingual children, we received comments and questions from parents who feel that once they are raising their child bilingual it would be a pity to miss English out, and wonder whether they can at least help their children familiarize with the language. We asked the opinion [...]

Posted on June 28, 2009

The expert answers: The family is moving abroad, will this result in trauma or bilingualism for the child?

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In order to better answer your questions Bilingual for Fun is hosting some experts on Bilingualism. Today Professor Sorace answers the question Federica sent us, Federica is moving abroad and wonders whether changing language might confuse her child and if and how to prepare her.
Antonella Sorace is professor of Developmental Linguistics at the University of Edimburgh, [...]

Posted on June 15, 2009

The expert answers: Does Trilingualism cause Confusion or Delays?

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In order to better answer your questions Bilingual for Fun is hosting some experts on Bilingualism. Today Professor Sorace answers the question Giovanni sent us, Giovanni has a trilingual child and some real concerns about his linguistic development.
Antonella Sorace is professor of Developmental Linguistics at the University of Edimburgh, and together with her team created Bilingualism [...]

Posted on May 27, 2009

Children who can speak two languages are better at learning a third language

Posted in Research by L.
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This interesting article based on research from Nothwestern University shows how bilingual children are better at learning a new foreign language than monolingual children. The implications are ery relevant for all multilingual and international families, who don’t need to worry about their kids learning English too early on (when English is not part ofb the [...]

Posted on May 25, 2009