Bilingual For Fun™ » Research

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

Bilingual For Fun — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:32:51 +0000

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 throughout my pregnancy, so really English is my son’s mothertongue… Or was he born bilingual? hmmmm…

I’ve seen the article mentioned on Blogging On Bilingualism, so let me give them credit for finfing it out.

Image from A Journey Round My Skull

Bilingualism Makes Children Smarter

Bilingual For Fun — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:05:51 +0000

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 delivered by Prof. Van de Craen himself.

It has been a very interesting speech, informative and also funny. There is one thing on which I don’t agree with the Professor. Answering a question I asked he said parents shouldn’t really make things more complicate than they actually are; in raising their children bilingual they should just behave normal and the children will grow up bilingual. I don’t know what normal means when it comes to bilingualism. I was raised monolingual, and that’s what’s normal to me. I see that every family has a different approach (or sometimes strategy) to bilingualism, so it’s difficult to say what is normal. Moreover I see that families have questions and doubts, and telling them to behave “normal” is unlikely to answer these concerns.

Research seems to be a bit disconnected from real life and I think this is an important point. It looks like by exploring the depth and wonders of the human brain they lost track of what it is all about, i.e. helping families to raise bilingual children, which only can be achieved by listening to their questions and giving them answers they can actually make use of in their daily lives.

That said I found Prof. Van de Craen speech very interesting and his research sends really encouraging messages to all parents of bilingual children. In particular he said something I liked and which I want to cite: “A trained brain is different from an untrained brain, just like a trained muscle is different from an untrained muscle”. I hope you’ll enjoy the article.

Yet another picture from A Journey Round My Skull, Ghost in The Rain

Bilingual children in non bilingual families

Tv, children and language, part 2

Bilingual For Fun — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 08:41:47 +0000

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 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

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

TV, children and language, part 1

Bilingual For Fun — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:30:49 +0000

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 to TV two are the fundamentals questions:

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

We’ll look here at the first question and in a next post at the second, the sources for the information give below are some articles as well as information given by pediatricians and psychologists at conferences.

How good or how bad TV is for children depends from:

How much, hours per day
What, content
How, context

HOW MUCH

Under 2 years the best TV is no TV. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no television at all for children under 2 and no more than 1 to 2 hours per day of quality programming for older children. They don’t deny that TV might have some potential positive effects “such as the promotion of positive aspects of socialbehaviour (eg, sharing, manners, and cooperation)”, but stress how the negative effects outweigh them to the point that TV can do real harm: “Research has shown primary negative health effectson violence and aggressive behaviour; sexuality; academic performance; body concept and self-image; nutrition, dieting, and obesity; and substance use and abuse patterns”.
TV instead of? A largely underestimated point is that one of the main side effects of TV is depriving children of opportunities for more stimulating and enriching activities. A show might be not too bad in itself, but odds are that it is far worse than talking with mommy, going out to play with daddy or reading a book with granny (providing mommy, daddy or granny would have time for any of these activities of course). See The effects of infant media usage by Christakis, a very interesting and comprehensive article; if you prefer something a little less comprehensive though read this review, which highlights some key points all parents should be aware of.

WHAT

Not all contents are the same, choose wisely. TV programs are particularly detrimental, both the programs and the commercials are not suitable for children. Neither their format, too fast and too noisy, nor the contents, too much violence, sex, and consumstic messages, respect children’s sensitivity and needs. However quality programs do exist, often available on DVD.
Quality programs share some common elements:
- Slow pace, very slow for young children. Pace is probably one of the main indicators of quality, yet programs are becoming faster and faster. Children that watch a lot of these programs are more likely to have attentions problems, you can call it ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), or in simple terms it could just be that the teacher at school will be just to slow for them and they won’t be able to concentrate on what she’s saying. Bottom line, they won’t learn.
- Educational content (see Christakis)
- Easthetics. Yes, programs for children should be beautiful and teach them to recognize and value creativity and artistic beauty. The standardised cartoons kill children creativity, if a child cannot think of anything else to draw than a character from a popular cartoon parents should worry, a lot. There are thousand of reasons why a child with no creativity or fantasy should be pitied, but let me also add a more pragmatic consideration: for adults creativity is also a key component of professional success.
This for instance in unquestionably a very high quality children video: . and you’ll find more of these videos here.

Watch out for the news. News are bad for children, they often represent shocking events. Children are deeply impressed but cannot understand nor rationalize what they see.
Remain in control. Several studies suggest that the content and context of TV exposure might be even more important than the quantity of TV children watch, particularly for children above 3 (Christakis). An important consequence is that parents should always choose what they watch, hence no TV in the children’s bedroom and no remote controller in children’s hands.

HOW

Daddy, seat here please. Adults should watch TV together with children, this point is stressed by all experts but largely underestimated by parents. It is true that our lives are often stressful and that parents might really need some 15 minutes break to take a shower or cook dinner, we all know this. But the point is, whenever possible watch CD and DVD with children. This is even more important if the show is in the minority language. Elaborate on what is happening on the screen, ask the child to comment it, make it interactive. Always remember that children, and adults, learn from interaction (Christakis).
Switch the light on, please. Imagine the child watching TV: body is completely still and the only active sense is sight, he’s there in the dark, immobilised, while eyes keep moving. Doesn’t this sound like dreaming? It does. When a child watches TV it’s like he was dreaming. Problem is, in dreams there is a strong identification. Dreams are REAL for the dreamer. Imagine the same happening to a child watching violence on TV, and you’ll see that something is wrong.
Background TV is bad too. The fact that the child is not watching TV doesn’t mean that TV is not on, it’s not the same. Background TV affects children attention spans too and short attention spans are bad, because they mean that children cannot concentrate for long enough to understand and learn.

Few more points I found very interesting:

Emotions come first, words follow. Emotions are immediate, while words require a lot of processing. This is an important point, because discussing things with children is not always a solution, it might well be that before you even start a discussion a deep emotional impact has already happened that is difficult to undo.
Whatever arouses emotions that cannot be controlled leads to dependency. This is a fascinating and at the same time very scary concept. The idea is that dependency happens towards things, people, or events that arouse emotions or feelings on which the person has no control whatsoever. TV is by definition a passive mean, there is no way to influence what is going to happen next on the screen, although analysing, reasoning on and elaborating what ones see helps making the viewer less passive, hence less dependent. In fact TV addiction has been found to be very similar to drug addiction.
TV is also linked with obesity. Avoid by all means the habit of eating snacks in front of TV and make sure you lead by example

BILINGUALISM STEP BY STEP

Aaron Escobar

Gestures and language acquisition

Bilingual For Fun — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:10:22 +0000

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 children who gesture more will go on to have higher vocabularies by the time kindergarten begins, researchers reported February 12 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The research also appears in the Feb. 13 Science.

“Children on the first day of school vary greatly in vocabulary,” Susan Goldin-Meadow of the University of Chicago, coauthor of the study, said in a news briefing February 12. “The question is, why?”

Goldin-Meadow and colleague Meredith Rowe, also of the University of Chicago, studied 50 families representing the economic and educational levels in the greater Chicago area. For 90 minutes at a time, researchers videotaped everyday interactions in the home between a 14-month-old child and the primary caregiver, who was almost always the mother. Researchers then tallied the number of gestures with a clear associated meaning, like a child pointing at a cup or nodding his head.

“At 14 months, you can’t see a difference in speech,” says Goldin-Meadow. But researchers did detect what Rowe calls “striking differences” between the number of meaningful gestures children from wealthier, educated families made and the number children from poorer, less educated families made.

Children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds performed an average of 13 meaningful gestures during each 90 minute session, while kids from higher socioeconomic families averaged 24. “The number almost doubles,” says Rowe. The numbers of gestures from caregivers was also greater in the higher socioeconomic group, suggesting that children pick the gestures up from caregivers.

Researchers later tested the children’s vocabularies at age 54 months, right around when children start school. Children who had gestured more at a younger age scored significantly higher on vocabulary tests.

“This is excellent work,” comments Erika Hoff of Florida Atlantic University in Davie. She says the finding is interesting because it shows that language acquisition begins well before children start to say very much.

Children whose parents speak to them more are known to have higher vocabularies. But gesturing also affects vocabulary, even when all speech effects are removed from the analysis, the researchers say. Gesturing effects go above and beyond speech effects, says Goldin-Meadow.

The researchers point out that these results do not prove that gesturing causes high vocabulary, just that the two are correlated.

A child’s gestures may spark more “teachable moments,” creating opportunities for verbal reinforcement of ideas. “The child points at a dog and the parent says, ‘Yes, that’s a dog,’” says Rowe.

Research from Goldin-Meadow’s team also suggests that gesturing may encourage children to think more creatively by bringing out new ideas and improving clarity. By manipulating how much children gestured, researchers gauged the influence of gesturing. Older children told to gesture while solving math problems on a chalkboard got the answer right more frequently than children who were told not to gesture. “These gestures are not mere hand waving. Kids are extracting meaning from gestures,” says Goldin-Meadow. “The educational relevance could be fabulous.”

Children with a poorer vocabulary go on to do worse in all subjects in school, says Rowe. And unfortunately, “the gap doesn’t get smaller. It’s going to grow and get worse. What we’re doing is trying to understand when this gap first starts.”

Rowe and her colleagues plan to continue following the children until they enter the fifth grade.

No related posts.

Gesticulating helps children to learn

Bilingual For Fun — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:08:15 +0000

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, but almost everyone moves their hands in meaningful ways when they talk. Susan Goldin-Meadow of the University of Chicago, however, studies gestures carefully—and not out of idle curiosity. Introspection suggests that gesturing not only helps people communicate but also helps them to think. She set out to test this, and specifically to find out whether gestures might be used as an aid to children’s learning. It turns out, as she told the AAAS, that they can.

The experiment she conducted involved balancing equations. Presented with an equation of the form 2 + 3 + 4 = x + 4, written on a blackboard, a child is asked to calculate the value of x. In the equations Dr Goldin-Meadow always made the last number on the left the same as the last on the right; so x was the sum of the first two numbers. Commonly, however, children who are learning arithmetic will add all three of the numbers on the left to arrive at the value of x.

In her previous work Dr Goldin-Meadow had noted that children often use spontaneous gestures when explaining how they solve mathematical puzzles so, to see if these hand-movements actually help a child to think, or are merely descriptive, she divided a group of children into two and asked them to balance equations. One group was asked to gesture while doing so. A second was asked not to. Both groups were then given a lesson in how to solve problems of this sort.

As Dr Goldin-Meadow suspected, the first group learnt more from the lesson than the second. By observing their gestures she refined the experiment. Often, a child would touch or point to the first two numbers on the left with the first two fingers of one hand. Dr Goldin-Meadow therefore taught this gesture explicitly to another group of children. Or, rather, she taught a third of them, taught another third to point to the second and third numbers this way, and told the remainder to use no gestures. When all were given the same lesson it was found those gesturing “correctly” learnt the most. But those gesturing “incorrectly” still outperformed the non-gesturers.

Gesturing, therefore, clearly does help thought. Indeed, it is so thought-provoking that even the wrong gestures have some value. Perhaps this helps to explain why the arithmetic-intensive profession of banking was invented in Italy.

Bilingualism at 23 months, II

The expert’s advice: English as a third language

Bilingual For Fun — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:13:33 +0000

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 of PhD. Sabine Pirchio*, who does research in Developmental and Education Psychology at La Sapienza University (Rome) as well as being herself italian-french bilingual and mom of a bilingual baby.

Phd Sabine Pirchio says:

Is it advisable to introduce English as a third language in the life of a child? Introducing a language in the life of a child is always a very delicate matter. Whether the child will learn the language or not depends on several factors, including:

How often the child is exposed to the language
Who are the people the child can interact with in that language
How the language is delivered
Motivation
Consistency in the approach used

In fact we know very well that learning a language requires considerable efforts and use of mental resources, although it might seem a very natural and spontaneous process, particularly in the early years. Both adults and children go through this process only if they deem it useful or necessary. What children really care about is relating and communicating with people they like and love, and of course engaging with them in interesting and pleasant activities. If they need English in order to accomplish this they will learn it, if not, they won’t. So really it’s up to parents to make a decision and behave accordingly with consistency.

As a psychologist I perfectly agree with what stated in the previous post: English can wait, there’s no hurry! However this is not a hard rule, there are exceptions or way to work around it, here a couple of ideas:

The child could learn English at day nursery and/or kindergarten. Nowadays this is a widely available option in most countries, often even in state owned schools. At home parents can support and reinforce what the child learns at school, without actively teaching English the parents can help the child’s learning experience by acknowledging and praising him.
English is now part of our lives, wherever we live, to the point that we often forget that words like T-shirt and computer are foreign words for most of us. This is very similar to what happens with writing, which is everywhere around us even before children know how to write. One option then is to take a similar approach, children are encouraged to “read” and “write” well before they are actually able to do so, similarly they can be encouraged to play with English words.

A key point though is to have realistic expectations about efforts and results: if parents expect children to actually speak English they should be ready to invest a considerable amount of time, identify suitable methodologies and implement them consistently over time, they should also be aware that they are asking a considerable effort of their children and factor in that they might be frustrated if things don’t turn out as they wish.

On the other side a light, a playful approach would do no harm. Things like “gimme five”, counting “one, two, three”, singing “jingle bells” or watching English cartoons has no negative impact on the child’s psychological health, on the contrary it can even be positive if the whole experience is pleasant and loving. However in this case one can’t realistically expect the child to learn the language, not even to familiarize with it, unless these experiences were frequent and both consistent and diversified.

A last point. Parents might consider the early introduction on English because they would like the child to have a positive attitude towards the language before they are taught it at school. However if the school environment will be good and supportive there’s no reason why the child should offer resistance to learning the language, the association English=Good and fun will easily happen in due time. However if the school environment or the way English is taught at school will be negative or demotivating, this will unfortunately but surely overwrite any previous, positive, experience.

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*PhD. Sabine Pirchio does research in Developmental and Education Psychology at La Sapienza University (Rome- Italy). Her work focuses on language acquisition and use, particularly on second language acquisition is infancy; relationship between gestures and language in the development of normal, bilingual and special needs children; relationship between abstract abilities, bilingualism and cognitive development as well as integration of immigrant children in primary school. Sabine is French-Italian bilingual and is raising her child, 21 month old, bilingual.

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

Bilingual For Fun — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:01:59 +0000

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, and together with her team created Bilingualism Matters, whose objective is to bridge the gap between research and the community.

Federica asks:

Hi,

Thank you so much for this blog, it’s been really useful and is helping me finding my way in the complicated world of bilingualism… Myself and my husband are Italian, we have a daughter, who will be 4 in September and we both speak English.

Last year my husband moved to the US because of his job, and with my child we moved between countries spending about 4 months in the US. Initially she refused the idea that we would speak a different language with other people, but eventually came to terms with it, although she never tried to speak English herself. Things will change soon, we’ll join my husband in the US for good, so we’ll all be together. Once there I’ll start working too, so my child will go to childcare, which of course will be in English only. I’m worried this might be a shock for her and don’t know how to make things easier for her.

Also, I wonder how we should behave when other people are around, shall we keep speak Italian to her or switch to English?

Thanks and best wishes.

Professor Sorace answers:

All too often in similar circumstances parents project on the children their own fears and doubts, while they actually don’t have any. In this specific case the best thing parents can do is to keep speaking Italian at home. The child will hear and learn English at school, so it will be important to provide lot’s of input in Italian too for her to grow bilingual. She will certainly learn English in no time, there’s no need to “prepare” her in advance, quite the contrary it could well be the case that she’ll end up talking English at home too (in this case it will be even more important that parents speak italian to her).

In my personal and professional experience I’ve seen that children don’t have any linguistc trauma when they move to another country, although they have face some difficulties in adapting to the new environment. If parents are relaxed and don’t transfer anxiety to her, if they provide a bilingual environment (like Italian at home and English outside) the child won’t have any problem.

A mom adds:

I’m really happy we got Prof. Sorace’s view, I think in Federica’s shoes I would have worried a bit too, while her words are really reassuring.

I have seen something similar happen in my child’s day nursery, a german little girl arrived without speaking a word of italian. The first couple of weeks were hard for her, she cried a bit, but it was soon over and she’s the happiest child now. So I would say you might see few tears, but don’t worry about it; as Prof. says, if you are at ease, she’ll be too.

As for your question about what to speak in public, different families take different approaches, some stick to the minoritày language also outside, unless other people are present, some switch language the moment the walk through the door. This really is for you to decide, my advice, if you have time and wish to, is to read a book, like Raising a Bilingual Child by Zurer, it’s easy to read and has many practical examples. It might help you making up your mind.

Please let us know how it goes!

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The expert answers: Does Trilingualism cause Confusion or Delays?

Bilingual For Fun — Wed, 27 May 2009 08:34:21 +0000

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.

Giovanni asks:

“I’ve been living in London for 10 years where I met my partner, a Swedish girl with whim we have a 3.5 year old child. Sandro goes to kindergarten here in London. His friends speak a good English, but Sandro is not fluent yet.

At home his mother and the baby sitter speak Swedish to him, and I speak Italian, when I can. Between me and my partner the common language in English, so when we are all together we speak English, although sometimes we translate in our languages. This is probably a bit confusing for Sandro.

Sandro doesn’t speak either Italian nor Swedish, but sometimes mixes words from either language into English sentences, he seems to understand well both languages, if I ask him something in Italian he would answer in English, but appropriately. So far we just tried to give him exposure to all languages without sacrificing the communication between us, but now we are noticing delays in his speech development and we are getting worried. We would welcome any advice.

Thanks.”

Professor Sorace, are Sandro’s parents’ concerns justified?

Their situation is not unusual. I know many trilingual children who understand three languages but say little in either language. Delays are normal, particularly for trilingual children. The fact that Sandro’s understanding is good should reassure his parents.

Also it is quite normal for a child to mix languages, borrowing words from other languages. Growing up he’ll normally develop both grammatical and social rules for his code mixing, i.e. he’ll mix more if the parents mix languages too. Sandro will certainly learn English, give that he lives in London, so the parents are right in speaking their own languages, which need more input.

It’s also important to accept that the development of the three languages might differ, because it’s very rare that the child receives the same amount and quality of input in all languages. However he’ll still develop and understanding of the languages, and later on if circumstances change his command of the language might become fluent.

In any case parents can be reassured: trilingualism doesn’t cause confusion in the child.

But when should parents start worrying if the observe a delay?

“I don’t personally deal with speech impairments, but I am in touch with some speech therapists who tell me that before seriously considering the risk of speech problems one should wait until the child is 3 year old and should consider also the mastering of other communication channels, like visual communication. Of course bilingual children can have speech problems too, but the incidence is just the same as among monolingual children, hence speech problems are not to be attributed to bilingualism”

Whom should parents ask for a specialist’s opinion?

“ We are trying to inform speech therapists to help them distinguish normal reactions from pathologic ones, however all too often doctors and teachers recommend to abandon Bilingualism, without really knowing what they are talking about. So it is really important to identify speech therapists that have experience with Bilingualism.”

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

L. — Mon, 25 May 2009 10:18:58 +0000

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 family’s languages that is): sooner or later they will, so don’t worry about it!
Exposure to 2 languages carries far reaching benefits