When I was pregnant with our first child, my husband and I started reading about language development. One of our books said "a baby can potentially learn as many languages as you can imagine". This set off crazy expectations in our minds. We started to try to figure out a way that our children could learn Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, French and Japanese. Of course we assumed that our baby would pick up English quite easily. We bought tons of books in foreign languages.....at least two for each of the languages I mentioned. We were sure that our children would be multilingual because they would be exposed to all these languages.
We were wrong! While all these books and tapes were probably entertaining, they did not really help our children reach any real type of proficiency. What children really need for language development is interactions with people of that other language. This is how they truly learn....by interacting with somebody of the other language. This interaction is somewhat a slow process that takes time. Although we still believe that our children will be multilingual as adults, we realized that being multilingual should be a long term goal. It was not quite as easy to have our children learn a foreign language as some of the books we read.
We realized that we should let our children be children instead of trying to make them into multilingual geniuses. We bought into the pressure of always trying to give our child a new skill that will make them ahead of the class. The funny thing about this is that more recent articles have discussed how it is truly the children who had imaginative free time who really excel. It seems that making your child read early or learning their numbers early only gives them a temporary edge. In the long run, children who were not allowed to be children usually feel burned out. As they get older, they lack their own motivation truly needed to succeed. Children who had more laid back childhoods tend to have more imagination and eventual drive to succeed.
Does this mean we as parents should stop trying to educate our children? Of course not! This just means that we should try to find experiences that will spark our children’s curiosities and let them experiment with their environment on their own. Helping our children to be successful is like the hare and the tortoise. Slow and Steady
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Learning by ear is easy.....well, not quite
Learning by ear is a phrase that people use to describe language learning. Originally people thought that it was easy for children to pick up and learn any language because their brains are wired to do so. More recent studies have found this to be true and not so true. It is true that babies are wired to pick up language. It is not necessarily true though those children learn language easily. From almost at the beginning of birth, children try to learn language. Babies first listen to what we have to say, and then they try to imitate us. When babies first imitate us, it comes out sounding like babble. Eventually the sounds start to some together to form words we recognize. It is not until about 1 year old that the baby starts to speak his/her first words. Babies differ in their language ability so some might speak before they are 1 and some might start to speak afterwards. At 3 years old, some children might speak clear sentences while other might be struggling to connect simple nouns and verbs. Studies have shown that children need to be able to connect words and objects. This means that it helps when caretakers say a word while moving an object so that the child can associate the object with that word. The movement helps the child remember.
You might wonder than why is it that children seemingly learn a language faster. This might have to do with the necessity for the child to learn the language. For babies, language is the way that they can clearly communicate. For adults, there is usually not that kind of extreme necessity because adults can use another language. Adults are also able to take care of themselves. Babies depend completely on others so it is in their favor to learn the caretaker’s language as fast as possible. Since the baby is completely dependent on his/her caretaker, the baby is usually immersed in the language. This immersion helps the baby learn the language. Babies are also usually more willing to try to speak a new language because they are not embarrassed to make mistakes unlike many adults.
One thing seems to hold true about learning a language early as children is that children tend to have better pronunciation of the language. It seems to be true that children are better at hearing different sounds of a language. If a child does not hear certain sounds of a language as a child, it becomes more difficult for that child to hear those sounds as an adult. This became apparent to me when I was using some Cantonese with my own kids. My husband does not speak any Cantonese. I was telling the kids that I wanted to go upstairs. My husband asked me why I was saying a word twice. I did not know what he meant so I said it again. He again thought I said a word twice. It turns out he thought the words in Cantonese of "want" and "up" were the same words. I kept saying it to him, but he could not hear the difference. This was amazing to me because the words sounded completely different to me. We realized that the difference in our listening is that Cantonese (Mandarin as well) has different tones. If the sound at the end of the word goes up, it completely changes the meaning of the word. Since I grew up listening to my parents speak, it was easy for me to understand the difference in the tones. Since my husband did not have a trained ear, he had a lot more difficulty. English words do not really change with tone so my husband's ear was not trained to listen for this as a child. This made it difficult for my husband to even hear the differences now as an adult. One can only assume that a person would need to be able to hear the sounds in order for him/her to be able to imitate the language properly and to sound native-like.
People are able to learn a language at any age, but it might be more difficult for the adult to hear some uncommon sounds and to sound native-like. Adults benefit though from having more of a focused learning meaning that someone can sit down and tell them about how nouns and verbs interact in a certain language. Babies/Children have to figure out how the nouns and verbs interact on their own through listening and practicing.
A good article I found about this subject was from an interview with a professor at Harvard. The professor's name is Catherine Snow. http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/features/snow10012002.html
You might wonder than why is it that children seemingly learn a language faster. This might have to do with the necessity for the child to learn the language. For babies, language is the way that they can clearly communicate. For adults, there is usually not that kind of extreme necessity because adults can use another language. Adults are also able to take care of themselves. Babies depend completely on others so it is in their favor to learn the caretaker’s language as fast as possible. Since the baby is completely dependent on his/her caretaker, the baby is usually immersed in the language. This immersion helps the baby learn the language. Babies are also usually more willing to try to speak a new language because they are not embarrassed to make mistakes unlike many adults.
One thing seems to hold true about learning a language early as children is that children tend to have better pronunciation of the language. It seems to be true that children are better at hearing different sounds of a language. If a child does not hear certain sounds of a language as a child, it becomes more difficult for that child to hear those sounds as an adult. This became apparent to me when I was using some Cantonese with my own kids. My husband does not speak any Cantonese. I was telling the kids that I wanted to go upstairs. My husband asked me why I was saying a word twice. I did not know what he meant so I said it again. He again thought I said a word twice. It turns out he thought the words in Cantonese of "want" and "up" were the same words. I kept saying it to him, but he could not hear the difference. This was amazing to me because the words sounded completely different to me. We realized that the difference in our listening is that Cantonese (Mandarin as well) has different tones. If the sound at the end of the word goes up, it completely changes the meaning of the word. Since I grew up listening to my parents speak, it was easy for me to understand the difference in the tones. Since my husband did not have a trained ear, he had a lot more difficulty. English words do not really change with tone so my husband's ear was not trained to listen for this as a child. This made it difficult for my husband to even hear the differences now as an adult. One can only assume that a person would need to be able to hear the sounds in order for him/her to be able to imitate the language properly and to sound native-like.
People are able to learn a language at any age, but it might be more difficult for the adult to hear some uncommon sounds and to sound native-like. Adults benefit though from having more of a focused learning meaning that someone can sit down and tell them about how nouns and verbs interact in a certain language. Babies/Children have to figure out how the nouns and verbs interact on their own through listening and practicing.
A good article I found about this subject was from an interview with a professor at Harvard. The professor's name is Catherine Snow. http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/features/snow10012002.html
Monday, May 19, 2008
Just starting off........
This blog will chronicle our family as we try to help our children become bilingual. I am starting this blog to share experiences and to gain insight from others. Please join us on this journey as we try to raise our children to be global citizens!
To start off, we have three young children. They are ages 1, 3, and 5. I have always found it fascinating when people know more than one language. Unfortunately neither I nor my husband is fluent in a second language. I grew up speaking Cantonese which is a dialect of Chinese. I can still speak Cantonese, but it is more of the "kitchen table" Cantonese. This means that I can understand and speak basic Cantonese involving experiences that occur everyday. I would not be able to speak in depth about poetry or anything like that in Cantonese. I took Spanish in high school so I have a working knowledge of it. My Spanish is rusty though since I have not used it in several years.
My husband has a working knowledge of Spanish as well from high school. I think these days that almost everybody in the US knows a few words in Spanish. My husband is also conversational in Japanese. He took Japanese in school as well.
We would like our children to be bilingual. We believe that this will open opportunities for them in the future in terms of career as well as make them more open-minded.
In the coming weeks, I plan to do the following:
1) Centralize several foreign language websites and resources by categorizing them so that parents will have a easier time finding what they need about children learning a foreign language.
2) We will also review and discuss some foreign language materials that my husband and I have used.
To start off, we have three young children. They are ages 1, 3, and 5. I have always found it fascinating when people know more than one language. Unfortunately neither I nor my husband is fluent in a second language. I grew up speaking Cantonese which is a dialect of Chinese. I can still speak Cantonese, but it is more of the "kitchen table" Cantonese. This means that I can understand and speak basic Cantonese involving experiences that occur everyday. I would not be able to speak in depth about poetry or anything like that in Cantonese. I took Spanish in high school so I have a working knowledge of it. My Spanish is rusty though since I have not used it in several years.
My husband has a working knowledge of Spanish as well from high school. I think these days that almost everybody in the US knows a few words in Spanish. My husband is also conversational in Japanese. He took Japanese in school as well.
We would like our children to be bilingual. We believe that this will open opportunities for them in the future in terms of career as well as make them more open-minded.
In the coming weeks, I plan to do the following:
1) Centralize several foreign language websites and resources by categorizing them so that parents will have a easier time finding what they need about children learning a foreign language.
2) We will also review and discuss some foreign language materials that my husband and I have used.
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