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Volume 1, Issue 51
Naomi Steiner, M.D., is a developmental-behavioral pediatrician at Tufts Medical Center Boston. Dr. Steiner is an expert in the methods that are used to teach children more than one language, and she works closely with many bilingual and multilingual families. She is raising her own two children multilingual and lives in Boston. Susan L. Hayes is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in Parent & Child, Parenting, Womans Day, and other publications. She lives in Brooklyn.
Introduction
I rst began considering the possibility of raising my children to be bilingual when I was pregnant with my oldest child. Although I was born in England, I grew up speaking four languages. My Swiss husband spoke ve. How many languages, I wondered, could our baby learn? However, I soon realized that there were enormously conicting opinions. While some experts were certainly encouraging about raising bilingual children, others cautioned me not to confuse my child. As a result, I decided to explore the topic of raising bilingual children more fully. I have spent the past decade conducting my own research on the subject, as my children are growing and are learning multiple languages
and as I have continued working with many families who are on the same journey. In this book I will share with you the information I began gathering from professionals and research studies when I was an expectant mother and that I continue to gather today, many years later. Out of this information and my own experience, I have developed a step-by-step approach that will take you from thinking about raising a bilingual child to developing and carrying out a plan for making it happen to overcoming the challenges that can accompany raising a bilingual child. There are a total of seven steps, and each step is one chapter in this book. My hope in writing this concise, pragmatic, step-by-step book is that you will use it as a guide for offering your children the gift of speaking more than one language.
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Myth 4: Bilingualism leads to language delay. Fact: Children learning two languages sometimes start talking a little later, but no research has shown that bilin gualism typically leads to anything more than a temporary language delay. Myth 5: Parents must be fluent in more than one language before raising a bilingual child. Fact: Monolingual parents can raise a bilingual child. Myth 6: Children absorb a language passively, like a sponge. Fact: A childs brain is wired to learn different languages, but adequate language stimulation is a must. A poor language environment can lead to a child becoming a passive bilingual. Myth 7: The English language is losing ground in the United States and elsewhere. Fact: English is far from disappearing. In fact, the English language is expanding rapidly throughout the world. Learning another language gets the brain machinery going. The tasks of learning two sets of vocabulary and grammar, then learning how to shift from one language to another, provide terric brain stimulation. From an academic perspective, your bilingual child will reap many advantages. Around the world, research shows that bilinguals are more creative and detailed when answering exam questions, perhaps because knowing words in different languages offers them more elasticity and exibility in their thinking. But beyond conferring language, academic, cognitive, and even economic advantages, being able to speak a second language opens up new avenues of cultural understanding and connection for your child within your family, your community, and our world.
Myth 2: Bilingualism leads to confusion, causing children to mix languages and never become proficient in either. Fact: It is normal for children to mix languages as they learn them. Myth 3: If a child doesnt speak English by the time she enters kindergarten, she will have trouble learning to read and have difculty in school. Fact: A childs brain adapts to her language environment, and a child can learn a language well beyond 5 years of age.
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5. Determine how procient you hope your child will be in a second language. Determining the proficiency level you want your children to achieve in each language is very important because it will directly affect the decisions that you make and the actions that you take. Linguists describe levels of bilingual prociency in many different ways. But here is a quick guide: Level 1: Being able to understand a second language. Level 2: Being able to speak a second language, more or less uently. Level 3: Being able to speak, read, and write in two languages.
6. Do a reality check. Are your prociency goals realistic for your family? Keep in mind that the level of prociency your child achieves is going to be directly tied to the amount of time he spends speaking and studying the language. Therefore, it is very important to match your bilingual goal with the amount of time and effort you and your child can devote to the second language. 7. Take into account that one language will be dominant. When parents set out to raise their child bilingual, they sometimes believe that the child will speak both languages with exactly the same degree of fluency. But the truth is in the reality of everyday life, bilingual people usually use one language more than the other and that language becomes the stronger, or dominant, language. A second language does take years to learn. But try not to be daunted by that fact. Remember that time is on your side. You and your child have years ahead of you. All you have to do is start with one word, and then build on it. Right now, starting is the most important thing to do.
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Teaching, or arranging for, language instruction. You want your child to feel motivated to learn the language because its important to you, but you also need to feed that motivation by making the process enjoyable, interesting, and relevant to your childs life.
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your friends, neighbors, and colleagues, regardless of whether they are monolingual or bilingual (or even whether they could imagine speaking another language other than English to their own children), can sometimes be surprisingly helpful toward nding new ideas to add to your Bilingual Action Plan. Finding School Support. Many families start out thinking that raising their children bilingual will require enrolling them in a full-time bilingual school, but the truth is that most private bilingual schools are prohibitively expensive. Below are some alternate solutions that can be a great compromise and successfully support your bilingual goals. public schools Saturday or Sunday language schools at-home tutoring do-it-yourself programs foreign-language summer camps
Making the Most of Community and Family Resources. Most parents who are raising their children bilingual (myself included!) are reassured to nd out that achieving bilingualism does not have to be (and in all truth, probably cannot be) solely an in-home activity. Discussions with other parents, your childs teachers,
Create Your Own Bilingual Action Plan. Life coaches and productivity experts will tell you that one of the most effective ways to accomplish a major goal (and raising a child to be bilingual is a good example of a major goal) is to break it down into small, specic, and, perhaps most important, manageable tasks or activities that you can do on a daily or weekly basis. These experts also say that writing down these tasks and activities and actually scheduling them on our calendars makes it more likely that we will actually do them. Write in the activities, who will do them, and what materials will be needed. Try to space the activities evenly throughout the day and the week (if possible with at least one activity every day).
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make himself understood as quickly as possible. In this way, the child is no different from a tourist visiting another country who generally makes a valiant effort to speak the language of that country, but is occasionally stumped as to what the word for something is. 4. Im self-conscious about speaking my language to my child in public. You are the one who gets to decide when, where, and whether to speak your language or English, and you should make the choice that feels best for you and your family. 5. Because Im the one who speaks a second language, I feel Im the one doing all the work to raise our child bilingual. If you havent fully involved your partner in devising your Bilingual Action Plan, he or she can end up undermining it unintentionally. It is crucial to have your partners support when you encourage your child to speak to you in your language and when you talk with her about why learning your language is important to you. As every parent learns, children naturally try to play off one parent against the other to get what they want, so if your child senses that your partner is ambivalent about this whole bilingual business, she will denitely try to take advantage of it. 6. My work schedule has become really hectic, and theres little time for my childs bilingualism. When your work schedule gets even more hectic than usual, its easy to feel that there is simply not enough time in the day or week for your child bilingualism and that it is one activity that can be put on hold. Instead, draw on the tips in the previous Steps to help you formulate or modify your Bilingual Action Plan so that it can continue to work even when youre at work. Because when it comes to bilingualism, something is always better than nothing!
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Conclusion
We have now reached the end of our journey together. While I hope that this book will serve as your guidebook on your journey of raising your child bilingual and will be well thumbed as a result of your returning to it again and again as specic questions and issues arise, Id like to leave you with what I believe are the three pieces of advice that I hope you will take most to heart: 1. Help your child identify positively with the language. As weve discussed throughout the book, learning a second language can be fun and immensely satisfying, but theres no getting around the fact that it also requires a lot of effort and energy over a long period of time. But the truth of the matter is that none of us, child or adult, is going to devote the amount of effort, energy, and time it takes to become truly procient in a language (or at a sport or a musical instrument) unless we identify with it and feel a deep personal connection to it. 2. Adjust your bilingual goals and plan as needed and let your child know you love him just as he is. The last thing you want to do is to send your child the message that his best is not good enough. Not only
will that cause your child to truly give up on learning a second language, but it makes it less likely that hell want to make the effort to do his best at anything. 3. Trust the process. On the path to bilingualism, there will be many joys as you witness your childs successful progress. Revel in them, but at the same time, dont forget aboutand more importantly, dont sweatthe predictable obstacles. Dont worry! Trust the process; this will pass. People always point out to me how the forces of globalization are leading to an increased awareness of the importance of bilingualism and multiculturalism. This is true. However, as a parent, raising your child bilingual is about so much more than your child being able to speak, read, and write in two languages. It is a family adventure, a gift that you are passing on to your child, and an opportunity for him to learn about another culture and be proud of his identity. Good luck on your journeyand enjoy it!
Reprinted by permission of the publisher, from 7 Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child, by Naomi Steiner, M.D., with Susan L. Hayes. 2007 by Naomi J. Steiner and Susan L. Hayes, AMACOM books, American Management Association, New York, New York. www.amacombooks.org. 224 pages. $14.95. ISBN-10: 0814400469; ISBN-13: 978-0814400463. Summary Copyright 2010 by FamilyIntel, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this book summary may be reproduced or transmitted in any manner without written permission from FamilyIntel, www.familyintel.com, except in the case of registered FamilyIntel users who may print or download the summary for individual use.