Bilingual Learning - Aprendizaje bilingüe

I came across this video thanks to Marcela Summerville from Spanish Workshop for Children in Philadelphia. It is a video made by 89.3 KPCC: "The science, options, and dilemma of dual language education" related to the many bilingual schools in Los Angeles.

The video is powerful in the images it shows of kids having fun learning a new language and of the science behind the bilingual brain.

In the "dilemma" part two Latino families talk about their experiences about sending the kids to Bilingual schools: one was successful, the other one, a failure. And I add that the same experience have the families who want to implement the language at home, because just the fact that the parents speak the language is not a guarantee for success.To be successful there is the need of a plan: who and when will speak the language to the baby, and for how long? All of those are questions that parents need to face if they are serious about bringing up the baby to be bilingual. If you don't put the time and energy to the task, it won't happen.

Encontré este video gracias a Marcela Summerville de Spanish Workshop for Children en Philadelphia. Es un video hecho por 89.3 KPCC: "La ciencia, las opciones y el dilema de la educación dual" relacionado con las muchas escuelas bilingües en Los Ángeles.

El video posee imágenes poderosas de niños divirtiéndose mientras aprenden una nueva lengua y de la ciencia que hay detrás del cerebro bilingüe.

En la parte llamada "Dilema" se muestran dos familias latinas que hablan de sus experiencias en mandar a los chicos a las escuelas bilingües. Una tuvo una buena experiencia, la otra no. Yo agregaría que la misma experiencia van a tener las familias que quieren implementar el español en casa, porque el hecho de que los padres hablen la lengua no garantiza el éxito. Para tener éxito hay que planear: quién (o quiénes) y cuándo se comunicarán en español con el bebé, y por cuánto tiempo. Todas estas preguntas necesitan respuestas si la familia es seria en su intención de criar chicos bilingües. Si no se pone el tiempo y se dedica energía a la tarea, lamentablemente no va a suceder.

Foto: Cortesía de Javier Franzony en Flicker, bajo una licencia de Creative Commons.

If you are Latino you speak Spanish, right? Wrong!

I want to have a garden. Every winter I fantasize in all the carrots, beans, and eggplants I will tend during spring and summer. Truth is I barely manage to get some decent tomatoes in a big pot. I know why my returns are so paltry: I don't plan in advance preparing the soil, getting the seeds, watering as needed. Fortunately, I did plan my kids path to bilingualism so in that respect I was able to get a good harvest.

Ana Lomba, Spanish teacher, advocate, and instruction material creator, wrote a list of obstacles Native speakers parents meet when trying to pass their language along to their children. According to the article, every parent and even parents with an Ivy-league degree make the following mistakes:

1. Lack of planning.

2. False assumptions.

3. Unrealistic expectations.

You can read the article here.

In the article, Ana explains how to avoid those mistakes. I would like to add my piece of advice.

How to achieve success.

I define success as having children who are able to communicate fluently in Spanish, with different degrees of proficiency in their four abilities: talking, listening, writing and reading. In my experience as a bilingual parent and a Spanish teacher, the most successful parents are the parents who speak in the language to their children. Excuse me, I made a mistake, a BIG mistake, let me rephrase the previous sentence: Success come to the parents who speak WITH their children in their native language. What I mean is that being able to have a meaningful interaction is key. And here we get into a delicate path. We are entering in the parenting-in-general realm, not just passing-along-a-language zone. I have seen many parents who talk in Spanish to their kids but do not engage them into a conversation. They just tell them to do something, ask them questions, give them orders in Spanish, or try to teach them colors, numbers, body parts with no context al all. It looks like their kids is a tabula rasa, an empty vessel in which we pour our wisdom. It is a one way conversation, if at all, because there is no communication. This is a parenting style that is not conducive to learning a language. What helps the kids to learn a language is to be engaged in an activity, in a game, when there is dialogue (and you can have a dialogue even if the baby doesn't talk back.) Real communication entails at least two people actively listening and talking with each other.

Now, if these families were living in a Spanish speaking country, the environment would take care of the kids learning to communicate in Spanish: family, friends, school, the media, all that surrounds the child is in Spanish, the language stimuli come from many sources, the need to communicate permeates their world. The Spanish speaking families living in an English environment will have to double their efforts to get their kids to be fluent in Spanish. So, when Ana Lomba talks about planning, sometimes this planning has to do with changing parental habits.

This is why I created the Bilingual Mamis y Papis Meet Up a year ago. It is important that parents realize that they have to make an extra effort in getting their kids to speak Spanish. The group provides them with a place to voice their concerns, to practice their Spanish, to share what they are doing to maintain the language at home and to receive information about what others have done and worked.

Families need to know that they are not alone in their path to bilingualism.

La ventaja de formar un grupo de padres bilingües

Acabo de leer esta entrada excelente de Eve Bodeux sobre los diferentes recursos lingüísticos que los padres poseen para fomentar el uso de la lengua minoritaria. Algunos de los mencionados son: 1. La lectura, ya que permite el aumento del vocabulario y la captación de las sutilezas del lenguaje. 2. La tarea escolar como medio para utilizar ambas lenguas, y de esta manera incrementar la flexibilidad lingüística de padres e hijos. 3. Y esto fue lo que más me llamó la atención: La importancia de que los padres mantengan sus propias habilidades bilingües en buena forma. Ya se trate de que la lengua minoritaria sea la lengua nativa de los padres o una segunda lengua que se quiera transmitir a los hijos, es imprecindible mantenerla corriente por medio de la lectura, las películas, y agrego yo, la charla con otros padres. Y aquí es donde veo lo esencial de los grupos de padres. Los grupos abren un espacio de conversación adulta que retroalimenta a los participantes, y las mamás coinciden en que luego de participar en el grupo, es más natural y fluido seguir hablando con los niños en español.