Bilingual For Fun™ » OPOL

Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism, April

Bilingual For Fun — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:42:29 +0000

Dear all,

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

OPOL on the Beach

Bilingual For Fun — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:09:21 +0000

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 .

Our holidays at the seaside are not chic, we go back to the origins (ie the place where my father is from) which is one of the most beautiful and less touristic places in Italy (I won’t say where it is because I have no interest in turning my beaches in a Rimini lookalike…) Suffice it here to know that our neighbours on the beach are mostly locals, some people who are from here but now live elsewhere, few regulars and three German families.

Right away I found it rather weird to speak English to my son on the beach, the fact in itself didn’t surprise me, but realizing I was feeling uncomfortable did. By now, I thought, I should be fully accustomed to speaking English even if everyone around us speaks Italian, translating when necessary, but I realized that my habit was strongly linked to the context. I came to realize that a mother’s life is not really full of excitement, I see more or less always the same people, go to the same playground, etc. etc. Many people know me and I know them even if we don’t talk to each other, I always know what to expect, like how many and what kind of people I will find in a place, whether the environment will be hostile or favorable, etc.

Change the context, and suddenly you’re not prepared any more. I don’t know whether people will be staring at me or not, what they will think, whether they’ll think I’m mad or lucky. So at first I studied the environment to understand how myself and my bilingual child shall move in that context and how we would be welcomed. The fact that I know this place since I was born did not help me much, because now I interact with different people and in a different way. When I was alone or with a small child I did different things, I even went to a different beach … All this of course I understood only later, after a bit of thinking, at the time I just acknowledged an unexpected feeling of discomfort.

And then a friend who was also on holiday in the area came to see us with her two children. V. and her children live in Berlin (ah, Berlin!) so the children speak Italian and German but no English. And then I made a mistake. Knowing that V. speaks a very good English and that her children are bilingual, I lost the automatic reflex of translating everything I said in Italian, obviously a silly thing to do given that her children don’t speak English. Partly because of this and partly because of her experience in Berlin, V. noted that according to her talking to children in public using a minority language might isolate them from other children.

Hmm, I started to question my OPOL strategy. V. has a point, we all know how difficult it is to speak a minority language in public, only I hadn’t thought much that this might be difficult for my child too… However in my circumstances I do not have much choice, either I apply OPOL or goodbye bilingualism, and I know that bilingualism is important for my child (because of very personal reasons).

So I didn’t give up, but I became more careful. I took great care in translating everything and including others in our conversations. It’s also true by the way that A. attracts lot’s of attention because of its features and is very sociable, so the risk of isolation is truly minimal (at least for now, I keep my fingers crossed for the future).

So what happened in the end? I started to notice that most of the children with whom A. plays on the beach and the adults we interact with began to say Bye Bye. It was Bye Bye all over the place ! Some people even venture to say, One, Two, Three! With great amusement of both children and parents!

In short, also on the beach we created our habitat. People know that A. is bilingual and are not bothered. Maybe someone will find the idea bizarre, but I don’t care, on the contrary I like to see that many adults and children play with the idea of using some words in English and A. is not isolated in any way.

Finally, seeing how these children spontaneously began to use English words gave me an idea…so since this Monday on our beach there are English playgroups for children: English On The Beach. But this is another story and I will tell you more some other time, for now let me just tell you that we are all having great fun!

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Picture by Wickedchimp

Bilingual children, grandparents and extended family

L. — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:34:11 +0000

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 way, what makes you think that grandparents refuse the second language altogether?

Involving the whole family in your bilingual project is often easier than you might think, providing you communicate it clearly and strategically:

Explain what you are doing, your objectives and motivation, and how this will impact your children
Address your relatives’ doubts and fears
Actively ask for help and support
Offer your support to the whole family, make sure this experience is positive for them too
Acknowledge and reward their efforts

Explain what you are doing, your objectives and motivation, and how this will impact your children

The whole family cares for children and understands that the world they’ll live in is different from the world they grew up in. Also, normally grandparents understand that for children of mixed origins it’s important to communicate with both families. So don’t assume that they won’t understand what you are trying to do, but talk to them. Explain in detail why you think bilingualism in important for your children, both in terms of personal development and of future opportunities. Tell them which methodology you chose and why it is important to be consistent with it.

Address your relatives’ doubts and fears

Anybody who doesn’t have a direct experience of bilingualism is confused about it, and this is very normal. Certainly it is puzzling to see a one year old child switching among languages and it is fair to wonder whether this will confuse him, or her. Just to put things in perspective, when research started to focus on bilingualism it did so with the assumption that bilingualism was bad for children and determined to prove it. It took decades of systematic research to prove it was otherwise and some of these prejudices are actually hard to kill. So don’t get mad at grandma if she’s worried for the child, but spend some time explaining to her how things are and answering her doubts.

Also, quite often grandparents or other relatives might just fear that they will be cut out from the child’s life, unable to understand him or her. Don’t underestimate these fears, rather address them. Explain to them that the child will learn the majority language without any problem and will always be able to communicate with them, tell them that the child might mix the languages in the beginning, but will sort them out soon enough, that learning a second language does not impair first language acquisition. Listen to them and reassure them.

Actively ask for help and support

People like to get involved and engaged, to feel responsible and part of a project. So don’t just ask them to watch you, ask them to help, make them aware of the role they can play and the impact of their actions. Make the children’s successes their successes too.

Grandparents and relatives can assist you in many ways: they can encourage the child, they can play minorità language DVD or CD when you are not around, they can answer the the child’s simple requests even when they are expressed in the second language, they can just accept a bilingual conversation and be positive about it, etc.

Offer your support to the whole family, make sure this experience is positive for them too

As mentioned above, all too often resistance stems from fear, fear of not being able to cope or of being let out. It’s up to you to give everybody the support needed, so that this experience will be pleasant for all.
Translate what you say to the child into the majority language, answer their questions, help them understand the few simple words a child might say in the second language (water, potty, sleep) so that they can satisfy his or her needs. In short, help them learn with the child.

Acknowledge and reward their efforts

Understanding and speaking two languages is very easy for you, but terribly difficult for your relatives, don’t ever forget this. Acknowledge and praise their efforts, make them feel good about it. If grandma gives a glass of water to a child who’s asking for some Eau praise her, celebrate both the child’s and grandma’s success.

Finally, few words on my personal experience. My parents, A.’s grandparents, don’t speak any foreign language, they have some basic knowledge of English – grandmother – and French – grandfather. However they do understand why learning a second language is so important for A. and supported my efforts from day one.

Initially I would translate for them everything I said to A., or if I didn’t they asked me to. Then they started to ask less and less, and I began to rely more on gestures to help them understand what I was saying. Then grandmother began to translate for grandfather when he didn’t understand, and I encouraged her to do so, as this is a great way of learning and she was happy when she got it right (learning is very rewarding at any age! Later in life people are more likely to lack opportunities than enthusiasm for learning). A. is now 21 month old, few days ago I told my mother “Well, you have been learning quite some English too. Haven’t you?” “We certainly did!” was the proud reply, “We are really learning a lot!” Here you go, two pigeons…

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Picture by Futurestreet

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.

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.

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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5 ways to react when Bilingual Children mix languages

L. — Sat, 09 May 2009 22:56:33 +0000

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, but not all the same.

Parents often look at their children’s habit of mixing languages in one conversation (a phenomenon called Code Mixing and not to be confused with Code Switching) with some apprehension, fearing that they child might not become bilingual, or, worse, that s/he might end up speaking a language of his/her own, without mastering any language fully (now THAT would be scary, wouldn’t it?). Although these fears are normally completely exagerated, it still is not only reasonable but also sensible for parents to help children separate the two languages, so how do they go about it?

Research has showed that parents’ reactions mostly fit into one of 5 alternatives:

The parent pretends s/he doesn’t understand and can’t either understand or speak anything but the chosen language, and will wait until the child conforms to that
The parent guesses (or pretends to) what the child meant, normally asking in the chosen language a question like “do you mean…?”
The parent repeats what the child said in the chosen language, without asking any question or expecting any answer
The parent accepts what the child said and continues the conversation in the chosen language, without commenting on the fact that the child had switched to another language
Code switching, the parent follows the child’s lead and starts speaking the language the child had used

Unsurprisingly the first strategy, pretending one doesn’t understand, yields the best results in terms of bilingualism. The more coherent parents are in sticking to one language, the higher are the chances that the child will speak both languages. Unfortunately this method is also the most difficult to implement, both because sometimes it’s hard to pretend one didn’t understand, and because this can generate some tensions or frustration. For sure this approach requires a lot of consistency and firmness.

An interesting point is that all 5 these methods have been observed in families that reported practising OPOL, One Person One Language. That should make you think. This confirms that OPOL is quite a vague word but in reality OPOL is different in every family. Your family’s OPOL is defined by thousand little decisions you take on a daily basis, like whether you give or not a biscuit to your child who’s asking for a biscotto. Little things do add up and create a trend, so be aware.
This does not mean that some methods are better than others and that you should do this or that, by any means. True some approaches will have a stronger impact on promoting bilingualism than others, but this is not the only thing that really matters. You only can and should decide what is best for you and your family, taking into consideration your specific circumstances, your family members’ personality and sensitivity, how much exposure your children have to either language, your relationships, etc.
What this does mean though is that you should take some time to think about it and decide what is best for your family, because if you don’t take a conscious decision you’ll still be taking many small unconscious decisions (like giving that biscuit or not), which might lead you in the right direction, or might not. And again, you and your family are the only persons who can answer that.

Click here to read more on OPOL and different OPOL implementations.

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What the OPOL are you saying?

L. — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:23:19 +0000

OPOL (One Parent One Language) is one of the most used techniques by bilingual families. It’s very easy to explain (each parent speaks his/her language to the children) but it’s not easy to implement with rigour, so everybody finds his/her own way of implementing it, deciding when and how to make exceptions to the rule.

Managing OPOL is particularly difficult when one goes out, say to the park, or in general when other people are around who don’t speak the minority language. Let’s make an example. I leave in Italy but speak English with my boy, and at home I’m very rigorous on that. Then I go out and…

I meet the neighbour, a not too young lady, who stops sto exchange few words with the boy. What should I do there? Shall I tell A. “Say hello to Mrs. XXX” “Goodmorning Mrs. XXX” etc. etc. ? That would feel artificial to say the least, the lady doesn’t understand English and knows that A. understands Italian perfectly.
Or, we are at the park, what should I tell him: “Vuoi andare sull’altalena” or “Would you like to go on the swing”? Knowing that if I go for the latter all the mums will note that and I’ll feel observed
Again, at the park, A. is “interacting” with another child, Should I tell him: “A., restituisci la palla” (therefore breaking the OPOL rule), “A., give the ball back” (immagine how the other child would stare at us) o “A., give the ball back, restituisci la palla” (OPOL is preserved, the other child is reassured, but communication is completely redundant)?

Raising a bilingual child implies making this kind of choices day after day. Apparently they are small, irrelevant choices, but they sum up and build a pattern, which will be my OPOL method and will influence A.’s perception of which language shall be spoken when.

On one side any of the behaviours above is OK, but they are not equivalent. The only suggestion I can give is to think about it, decide which way to go and then stick to it. Children like predictability, to know what to expect, instead of seeing different reactions every time. However in deciding how to deal with these situations one should have a realistic approach and consider not only impact on bilingualism (of course the more one speaks the minority language the better it is) but also his/her own reactions. If talking a foreign language in public creates embarrassment it is not mandatory to do it.

By the way sometimes we overemphasize others’ reactions, may be we fear we’d stand out while other parents are envying us and our children. May be we can influence other’s perceptions. If we are confident and positive they’ll look at us with respect, if we are ashamed they’ll look at us with arrogance.

As far as my (very) personal choices go, that’s what I do:

When we meet the neighbour I speak with her in Italian and don’t involve A., I don’t know what I’ll do when he’ll start talking.
At the park, and on the street, I speak English to him, as I do at home. Quite frankly I do feel a bit uncomfortable, but I haven’t noticed that much attention from others so I think it’s more my problem than an objective one. Anyway if I see another mother looking at me I smile and say a couple of things to her in Italian and have a small chit chat.
When A. is plaging with another child I would say something like “A., give the ball back” and then I would say to the other child “scusa ora ti restituisce la palla” (he’ll give you the ball back don’t worry)

Does it work? I don’t know… I have questions myself, and I don’t know how I’ll manage these situations when he’ll start speaking properly… We shall see. And you, what do you do?

Lisa's recipe for trilingualism

L. — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:05:01 +0000

Lisa has three children, and she has succefully raised them trilingual. Her recipe is simple: each parents speaks his/her own language, the third language is learnt at school. However she does have a secret ingredient: the whole family follows the (OPOL) rule, always and without exceptions. That’s not easy to do, but it seems to pay off…

I am an American mother of three children, whose father is Italian, and we are living in French-speaking Switzerland.

I am raising my 3 kids in 3 languages and it works fine. My oldest (12) recently did a CILS test in Italian and received a 37/40! We are very proud! He goes to school in French and gets English from me and the TV!

None of the languages are as fluent as a monolingual child. You do notice a lack of vocabulary and a slight accent but they are fluent in all 3 languages.

We are proud of our children and happy with the choice that we made. We stay consistent with our children (I speak English, my husband speaks Italian, and they are schooled in French). We NEVER speak to them in another language. When other children are about we translate everything even though our children understand. We were told by our pediatrician to be ULTRA consistant. There have been times when my husband gets frustrated with them as their vocabulary is small in Italian but he trudges on and it has paid off!

I do admit that it is hard at the beginning but you must stop yourself from switching languages.
Also, if my kids asked me something in another language, I would just say…in English please, and they would repeat it in English. If they had trouble finding the right words then I would help them.

At one point my 2 oldest started speaking together in French (as they go to school in French) and I told them that when we were just us or between themselves, they must speak English together. I felt bad insisting on it but they didn’t bat an eyelash and have never looked back! They are thanking me now as they see other kids where the language is slipping
Geneva is an exceptional place. Everyone seems to have more than one language at home anyway! Switzerland has 3 main languages anyway (4 if you count Romansch) and on top of that Geneva is an international city. I only know a handful of couples where both parents are the same nationality!

I can thoroughly recommend Tracey’s book: Raising multi-lingual children.

Lisa

I'm raising my child bilingual, or am I?

L. — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:55:17 +0000

All bilingual families from time to time should try to find the time to stop and think, to check how they are doing and whether the method they are following is the right one. All families raising bilingual children have a technique, irrespective of whether it is an explicit one supported by rules, or an implicit one left to the family’s natural dynamics. Either way though it is often the case that we are not doing what we think we are doing… It is often the case that what appear to be occasional exceptions or inconsistencies create patterns we are not even aware of.

An example. Let’s take a fictional family where Amy, 1 and half year old, speaks Italian with mom and English with dad, i.e. the OPOL method. In theory… May be though analyzing the number of hours Amy speaks and listens to each language per day, we’d realize that in the morning dad is around for just about 30 minutes, then he has to rush to work, rightly. In the evening dad comes back and speaks English with Amy for about one hour, if none rings him for some important issues that is, then Amy goes to bed. During the weekend dad spends a lot more time with Amy, let’s say that on Saturday they speak English for about 3 hours, and the same on Sunday, unless Amy’s cousin doesn’t come to play and they have to speak Italian. End of the story, OPOL doesn’t mean 50% one language, 50% the other…
Amy hears English for about 8 to 10 hours a week, against more than 40 hours of Italian…

Another example. Mom speaks Franch with Pierre, and dad speaks italian. Mom works and pierre goes to the kindergarten, in italian, of course… Grandparents pick Pierre up at 4.0, then mom arrives at 5.30 and from then on she speaks French with him. Sometimes though they stop for dinner at granparents’, and they have to speak Italian there. During the weekend though it’s a full immersion, also because dad speaks French too. Pierre happens to listen a lot more French than Amy listens to English, yet Italian is always predominant.

Ok, so what? What could Amy’s and Pierre’s parents possibly do? Amy’ and Pierre’s parents, like all parents raising bilingual children, are already doing a lot. But may be they hadn’t realised themselves that their child was getting so much Italian each day. Once realised that, may be they could simply pay more attention, try to exploit every possible occasion to use the minority language, be firm on speaking that language even in presence of people who don’t understand it, find one hour per day to spend with Amy or Pierre when no interruption is allowed, try to see more often little friends who are also bilingual, go to a Playgroup…

Any family can find many small tricks, the important thing is to understand what one is really doing in practice, which is always a bit different from theory… So this is our tip. Mom and dad, when you’ll have the luxury of a nice chat without having to rush to the supermarket, clean the house or go to work, try to think of a typical day of your child, weekdays and weekend, and make an estimate of how many hours s/he gets in each language. And don’t forget naps! Two hours of native speaker baby sitter spent sleeping don’t count for much, unfortunately…