The Bambino's nursery in Kuwait

So we decided not to enroll the Bambino in one of the nurseries frequented by expatriate children here in Kuwait.  We figured that while he is still so young and his mind like a sponge, why not put him in a nursery with Arabic speaking children instead?  So he goes to a private, upscale Kuwaiti nursery.  The children wear uniforms (they're only two years old!).  The teacher-child ratio is one teacher for six children.  The materials are from Neinhuis.  The languages of the classroom are English, Arabic and French.

The nursery being the most "authentic" Montessori nursery in Kuwait (other nurseries in Kuwait call themselves Montessori but are more "Montessori-inspired" than actual Montessori), there are very few "toys" in the classroom.  The closest thing you get to toys are stacking blocks, puzzles and an abacus.  This being the toddler class, these toys are acceptable.

There is a practical life section, which real glass pitchers of water and bowls to practice pouring and transferring with a spoon.

There are also the standard Montessori mathematic and sensorial materials, like the pink tower and the cylinders.  These materials are actually meant for age three and up but the school decided to put them in the toddler room as well.

And here is the Bambino during his adaptation period at the school (no uniform yet - that came a week later).

We recently had parent-teacher interviews.  You read it right - a parent-teacher interview regarding our two-year old child.  Never before have we encountered a nursery that gives parent-teacher interviews for toddlers.  Not that I'm complaining.  It's always fun to hear how my two-year old boy acts at his nursery when we're not there.   Oh, and this "interview" didn't take place at the school, in the classroom, as you would expect them to.  No no.  We received a formal invitation to a tea at the very chichi Le Notre Restaurant and had the interview there.

So far, we're happy with our decision to put him in the posh Kuwaiti nursery.  Now if only I could understand the Bambino when he tries to say something in Arabic!

Camping in the desert of Kuwait

It's certainly not one of the more beautiful deserts, but last week we decided to spend the night in the Kuwaiti desert with other members of the Amicale des Français au Kowëit (that's the association for French people living here, in case you didn't pick up on that).  Some observations:

- About three-quarters of the desert is covered in trash.  What the heck is with that?  I expect to litter in poor countries like Madagascar, where the government doesn't have the money to provide garbage collection services.  But a rich country like Kuwait?  Not only is there trash everywhere, there are no "Don't litter" propaganda campaigns in this country like they used to have in Canada in the 1970s.  In Canada, we don't need those ad campaigns anymore.  We stopped littering a long time ago.  The Kuwaitis need to get with the programme!

- On the way there, we drove by lots of tents where, presumably, Kuwaitis spend their weekends (the Canadian equivalent would be the cottage in Muskoka,  or the cabin in Waskesu).

- The wind was as strong as on a winter's day in Saskatchewan.  Try putting your tent up in that.

- There is about one dune in the entire desert.  That would be the one that we camped out in.  The rest of the place is entirely flat... like Saskatchewan.

- No toilets.

The Bambina railed against the idea of going.  Said she wanted her own bed.  But once she was climbing up and running down the sand dune, she was having a blast.  She also met some other French kids, which is good, because right now the only French speaking person she has to talk to in this country is the Frenchman and I worry that her French is going to deteriorate as a result.

The Bambino was happy sleeping with his parents and sister in one little tent.  He probably wishes every night could be like that.

Things that make my kids seem weird to North American kids

It occurred to me yesterday as we were eating breakfast that although my children have a Canadian mom and speak English, there are some things that North American kids would definitely find different about them:

- The Bambina's accent (when she speaks English - I think it's a mixture between Brooklyn and East London)

- The Bambina insists on wearing a dress or skirt every single day.  She hates jeans and all pants in general.   Even in winter in Europe, she will typically wear leotards and a dress rather than long pants.

- The Bambino typically wears a shirt with a collar and cotton shorts or pants.  His best American friend is always in a T-shirt and sweat-shorts.

- Neither of my kids has ever been to McDonalds (although there are plenty in Europe, there are none in Madagascar), nor have they heard of Burger King, Taco Bell, or KFC.

- The Bambino asks for "mano" with his pasta (mano = parmagiano, Italian for parmesan cheese).

- At age 6, the Bambina knows how to write in cursive but doesn't really know how to print!

- Neither of my kids drinks cow's milk - ever!

This is not to say that my kids are purely European.  In fact, when European kids (and adults) hear my kids speaking to me in English, they assume that my kids are American.  When my kids ask for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or drown their French fries in ketchup, this is more of the North American coming through.

And then the Bambina turns to her father and speaks a perfect, accentless, Parisien French, and people get really confused.  :-)

English class at the French school

I've already posted once about the Bambina's English class at school.  She is in "CP" (first grade) at the French primary school here in Antananarivo and her class has "anglais" twice a week - English for French kids.

I stated in my previous post that I believed that this class would be, at best, a complete waste of time for the Bambina and at worst, harmful to the Bambina's French-English bilingualism.

So now I'm reporting back.  The times that the Bambina has talked about her English class at school, she has said that it is very very boring.   That was to be expected. But she has also said that the teacher makes mistakes.  Last week, she said that the teacher, a Malagasy who almost certainly learnt to speak English at a French school, is teaching the students the parts of the body in English.  In doing so, she points to her head and says "ED".  "Repetez, les enfants : ED".

So the teacher is telling the children that the word for "tête" in English is "ed".  Not "head" - "ed".  And she is getting the children to repeat this word over and over, thereby engraining this hideously incorrect pronunciation into each child's brain.

Ever wonder why the French speak English so poorly?  Now we know.

But not only does this teacher drop her "h's" when she shouldn't, she adds one when there isn't any.  The Bambina has an Australian classmate, Ella.  The English teacher calls her.... you guessed it... "Hella".  What the hell?

All of which leads me to conclude that these English lessons aren't just harmful for my little Bambina's bilingual capacities.  They're not doing the other kids any good either.  The children are learning some English, yes, but bad English.  English that later on will cause listeners to think, "this person doesn't speak English very well."

You know you live in a developing country when

1.  You pay top dollar for bottom of the barrel no-name imported brand canned and packaged food at the grocery store - when you can get them.

2.  Your tap water is so full of chlorine that the kids' bath has a light green tint to it.

3. Your kid speaks at least two languages, and sometimes three, depending on what country you're living in at the time.

4. You have grown an affection for scenery filled with dirt roads, gutters and rice paddies.

5. You never walk anywhere anymore and you're no longer used to driving in vehicles that are not 4x4.

6.  You expect to get a stomach bug about once every three to four months.

7. You buy meat the same day that the animal was killed and you age it in your refrigerator.

8. Your definition of a "really good restaurant" has evolved to being a restaurant whose food doesn't make you sick.

9. A chauffeur drives your kids to school every day.

10.  You count down the days to Christmas vacation months ahead of time and can't wait to experience cold and snow.

Bilingual babies are less easily confused

BBC news recently posted an article about a study showing that bilingual children are less likely to get mixed up when forced to multitask.

The original study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  The abstract describes the study as follows:

7-month-old infants, raised with 2 languages from birth, display improved cognitive control abilities compared with matched monolinguals. Whereas both monolinguals and bilinguals learned to respond to a speech or visual cue to anticipate a reward on one side of a screen, only bilinguals succeeded in redirecting their anticipatory looks when the cue began signaling the reward on the opposite side. Bilingual infants rapidly suppressed their looks to the first location and learned the new response. These findings show that processing representations from 2 languages leads to a domain-general enhancement of the cognitive control system well before the onset of speech.

Of course, the study only dealt with bilingual children who were exposed to two languages from birth, in a one-parent, one language environment.  It would be interesting to study children who were exposed first to one language from zero to three years and then to a second language from age three, as a result of language immersion at school, for example.

6 Things Every Globetrotter Parent Should Know

A couple of years back, PhD in Parenting posted on 10 Things All New Parents Should Know.  I thought her advice was really helpful and I even sent the link to a newly pregnant friend just last week.

As I pondered PhD in Parenting's post, I thought of my own globetrotter version.  People tend to rely on their relatives, friends and doctors for advice on coping with parenting questions.  Not all the information they get is accurate and some of it is harmful.  So here is my top 6 list ('cause 10 would be way too long!) of what all parents trying to raise their children in a global culture should know:

6 Things Every Globetrotter Parent Should Know:

1.  Baby care norms differ radically from one continent and even country to the next one.

Moreover, what's considered the norm where YOU live is not necessarily the objectively right way.

My favourite example:  In Canada and the States, the health industry tells us not to share a bed with our infant, because it can lead to smothering, SIDS, baby falling off the bed, etc.

Yet, here in Madagascar, most moms sleep with their baby.  They don't do cribs here.  And I don't ever hear or read about any babies dying of SIDS or getting smothered here.  Funny that.

The point is, never assume that information from doctors and well-meaning friends where you live right or even mostly right.  Indeed, there are a lot of things not right about modern conventional western parenting ideas.  Babies have not always drunk cow's milk (whether or not adapted into formula), and still don't in many places in the world.  Newborns are not wired to sleep in little cages far away from their moms, and don't in many (most) places in the world.  Most baby boys in the world do not get the tips of their penises cut off.  The list goes on...

2.  Contrary to what many "granola" mamas seems to think, Europeans are not necessarily more into "natural family living" than North Americans.  If you've ever been on the discussion forums of mothering.com, you'll know what I mean.  "I wish I lived in Europe.  The breastfeeding rate is much higher there.  And everyone gives birth with a midwife.  And you get one year's maternity leave!"

Allow me to set the record straight about Europe:

Europe is not a monolith.  When you hear granola moms going on about how much more enlightened Europeans are, they're usually talking about Scandinavians.   The Dutch and the Germans are nearly as "crunchy" but only in certain respects.  Maternity leave is only about 12 to 16 weeks long in Germany, for example.

As for the French, well, don't be surprised to see a French maman smoking and drinking during pregnancy, formula feeding by choice (40 percent do) and sending her baby to daycare at the age of three months without so much as wincing because "baby needs to learn to become autonomous".

The Italians have a higher neonatal breastfeeding rate but 90 percent have weaned by the time baby is four months old.  Italians typically start baby on solids consisting of pasta and parmesan cheese at the age of four months.

As for the midwives, they are a highly medicalized profession in Europe.  In France, they even have to attend medical school for a year.  Most European midwives will not allow you to birth in anything but the gynecological position, i.e., lying flat on your back with your legs in stirrups so that they can perform  a routine episiotomy.  You might as well have an OB.

And forget about home birth (except in the Netherlands, and the home birth rate is dropping there).  The home birth rates in European countries hover at around one percent.

3. Your child will not become confused or speech-delayed because you speak to him in another language.  I've already written about this but let me reiterate: there is no evidence whatsoever that bilingual children have a higher rate of speech/language delay or any other speech or language disorder than monolingual children.

4.  Bilingualism is not an automatic fact resulting from a parent who speaks another language.  It takes work.  Yep.  The fact that you speak English or Spanish or French does not automatically mean that your little one will grow up speaking it.  In fact, your child will need about 24 hours per week of exposure to your language in order to speak it like a native.

5.  There are NO required vaccines for international travel - other than yellow fever in some countries in central Africa.  Polio is not a required vaccine for travel in any part of the world, neither is the vaccine against typhoid, tuberculosis, or any other disease.

6.  A global child starts with the parents who have a global mindset.   Children learn from the attitudes of their parents.  Open-minded parents who are interested in learning about other cultures, who are willing to try speaking the foreign language that they're a little rusty in, and who like meeting and talking to people from other parts of the world are more likely to have children with a similar mindset.

On the other hand, it's hard to expect a child to be interested in learning French or Spanish when the parent won't even consider watching a foreign film.

English as a foreign language

The Bambina had her first day of school last week.  She's in grade one, or I should say cours préparatoire, as it is called in the French system - CP for short.

She attends one of the French primary schools here in Tananarive.  The school is pretty much like any public school in France, with a few bells and whistles added to make it adapted to Madagascar, including one to two hours of Malagasy lessons per week at school.  That's something that the expat parents don't like at all.  They're only here for a short time and what use will the Malagasy language be to their child once they have left Madagascar?  Why can't the kids learn another language instead, say the expat parents. English for example.  And they would like the kids to start the foreign language ASAP, in CP (grade one).

So after much pressure from the parents' assocation, this year, for the first time, all the kids in CP will be getting English twice a weeks, 45 minutes each time.  The parents are thrilled.

Except me.

My daughter is already bilingual.  At best, English lessons at school will be a Complete Waste Of Time for her.  At worst, she will learn English as a foreigner would learn it - bad accent, bad grammar, and outdated vocabulary.  I was happy with her learning some Malagasy.  

Which brings me to another point.  I am pretty much convinced that introducing English lessons twice a week will not put a dent in the kids' English speaking abilities later on in life.  If you want your kid to speak good English, try immersion.  Or at least put the cartoons on in English at home.  45 minute lessons on colours and numbers won't do much.  They'll learn colours and numbers anyway when the serious lessons begin in at around age 11.

Proof of this point of view:  just look at the Dutch or the Scandinavians.  Dutch and Scandinavian people my age had no English in school until age eleven or twelve - yet they are almost all bilingual.  The difference is that their parents watched TV in English and read books in English - something that the French are reluctant to do.

Language Etiquette

I come across a lot of two-language families.  For example, the mother is Italian and the father is American, or the mother is Australian and the father is German, or there is our case - I'm English-speaking Canadian and I have a French husband. 

The question always arises - which language should we speak to our children in?  For me, the answer was and is simple - English, English and English.  I speak to my children in English, read to them in English, sing to them in English, play with them in English, and listen to the radio and watch television with them...in English!  Call me stubborn but they don't get much English exposure anywhere else - I'm basically IT - so I do everything with them in English.

So far (knock on wood), I've been lucky.  The Bambina speaks to me exclusively in English, this despite the fact that she has a French father and is in a French school. 

Some people are taken aback that I speak to my kids in English even when we are with other non-English speaking people.  I attend a playgroup twice a week, once with my daughter and once with my son.  Both playgroups are francophone.  No matter to me.  When I am speaking to my child, it's in English.  We often have people over here for lunch on the weekends and the conversation with them tends to be in French.  Any discourse with my children remains nevertheless in English. 

If the Bambina has a friend over, I still speak to her in English.  If I am talking to both of them, I say it in English and then in French.  (Actually, the parents of the child are inevitably thrilled that I am speaking English to their child so there is no objection from them there).

I may be in the minority on this one.  I've talked to other moms in two-language families and have discovered that they are reluctant to speak to their children in their own language when they are around other people.  One Italian mother told me that she simply refused to speak Italian to her children at (French) playgroup because it would exclude others from the conversation.  Um, you're talking to your son about his lego tower.  What makes you think we need to be included in this conversation??

Another (once again Italian!) mother told me that she thought it would be rude (gasp!) to talk to her children in Italian when they were with other people.

Well, you know what?  It might be rude but my answer is that my children's bilingual ability takes precedence over showing good manners.  Call me rude, I don't care.  In ALL the cases I have encountered where the parent in a two language family switches languages when around others, the child ends up speaking to the parent in the dominant language rather than in the parent's minority language.

Here is a typical discussion that takes place on this matter:

Other mom: I speak to him in Italian but he'll only answer me in French.
Me: But I just heard you speaking to him in French.
Other mom: Well, yeah but when we're with other people, I speak French.  Otherwise the other person won't understand what I'm saying.
Me: Hmmm. I don't think he'll speak to you in Italian unless you speak to him exclusively in the language.
Other mum: Well, he understands everything I say and I guess that's good enough.

Fair enough.  If bilingual comprehension is your goal, then that's all you need.  But if your goal is for your children to be bilingual and you are in a two-language family, you need to keep it exclusive in your language when you talk to your children - no matter where you are.

No, he won't take longer to learn to talk.

Raising bilingual children is sometimes believed to cause language delay, though evidence does not support this position.  Raising children bilingually neither increases nor reduces the chance of language disorder or delay.

I read this in this article on Multilingual Living today, an internet resource site for bilingual and multilingual families, and I couldn't help nodding in agreement.  For both my children, people would tell me that of course, my children would start talking later because they were being exposed to two languages (or in the case of the Bambino, THREE languages) simultaneously and it would take longer for them to absorb it all. 

This supposition is, in a fact, nothing more than a supposition.  It sounds logical but there is simply no evidence that supports this conclusion.  It certainly didn't hold true for my kids.  The Bambina was using around six to ten obvious words at 17 months (more, if you consider all those babytalk words that we might not understand) and was talking in complete sentences at age two years - well within the norm. 

The Bambino said mama at six months, papa (bahbah, in fact) at seven months, and now, at 13 months, says bah (ball), dide (outside) baba (baby) and some others.  In addition to mama, he says maman (French version) and mummy (anglo version).  The nanny says that he says some words in Malagasy as well (the nanny speaks Malagasy to the Bambino).  And to think that I know monolingual kids who started talking only at two or even three years of age!

The difference is that, while little monolingual Mikey might know 50 words in the one language he knows, Bilingual Beatrice will more likely know 25 words in each language.  She may seem like she's behind because you only recognize the words she says in your language, but in fact, she's not.

Which School?

I get a lot of emails from people asking me which school they should send their child to.  Usually, the person is considering between two schools that teach in different languages.  The latest email comes from Erin, an American mom in Rome who wants to know if she should take her kids out of the private American school that they currently attend to put them in the French school that French kids in Rome attend.

It's hard for me to answer such questions without knowing all the family circumstances and the language abilities of the kids, so I ask parents to consider the following factors in making their decision.

Location: One of the most important considerations in deciding on which school your child will attend is where you live, where the school is and what methods of transport you have at your disposal.  The school you have chosen could be Montessori, have Chinese language immersion and serve organic lunches.  If it's across the city, then it won't be much use to you unless you own a helicopter.

Is there any connection with your family or with where you  are living?: As an expatriate, would I ever send my children to the school where the Spanish kids go?  Not unless we were expatriates in Spain or another Spanish-speaking country.  I'm not Spanish or even Hispanic and neither is my partner.  We don't speak the language, don't know the culture and wouldn't be able to offer an iota of help to our kids.   There is simply no family connection to the Spanish language or culture.  I would rather send my kids to an English school and get them really good in their mother-tongue than put them in a school where they have no connection with home or where they live. 

Keep in mind that I am not talking about language immersion schools that are AIMED at non-native speakers, such as French immersion schools in Canada.  I am talking about sending your kids to the French school where the French kids go or the Spanish school where the Hispanic kids go or the Japanese school where the Japanese kids go.  Your child will suffer unless there is some kind of, well, reason to send them there, like that you happen to live in France or Spain or Japan, or you used to live there and you don't want your child to lose the language that they have learned, or that you are French or Spanish or Japanese.

If your family is bilingual, which school will maintain the weaker language the best?  I speak only English with the kids and my partner speaks only French with them.  The Bambina is in the French system because, without the support of school, French would be her weaker language.  Papa is simply not home enough to ensure that she is is getting sufficient exposure to French.

Considering choosing a local school if you speak another language at home and if you are going to be living in the country for a long time.  Why not?  You live there. Your child might as well learn the language of the street. 

Language immersion schools work best when there is support at home. If you are just a North American family living in North America and want to put your child in a French or Spanish immersion school that is aimed at non-native speakers, consider how much support you will be able to offer your child.  My experience with language immersion kids is that, without the support of a family member who speaks the language, these children end up not being able to speak the immersion language well and, worse, not being able to read or write their native language well.  In the absence of a good support system at home, I would choose a plain old good quality traditional school over a language immersion school.

Moving on...

It's been a while since I last posted! Lots has been happening in our little globetrotter family since then. For one, we have a globetrotter baby on the way this May! Baby might not get much of a chance to experience Italy, however, as it is entirely possible that we'll move to another destination before the end of this summer. On the other hand, my four-year old will have had her fill of Italy. In addition to expecting pasta at every meal, she now speaks Italian fairly fluently, albeit with an anglo accent. She will likely forget most of her Italian once we move from here but I am told that she will retain a predisposition for it later in life, should she choose to learn the language again.

In other moving on news, our friends Steve and Linda, an American couple living in Rome and parents to three girls, have announced that they are moving to Bali, Indonesia for a year. They aren't moving there for the beaches or the weather. They're going for the schools! Or should I say, one school in particular. Meet The Green School. Providing a holistic education for children from pre-school to year 8, this school combines ecological awareness and the pedogogy of Rudolph Steiner with the academically rigourous international baccalaureate programme. And the school is built almost entirely of bamboo!

The Green School has been making waves in the mainstream press. CNN International recently did a report on The Green School in its program Eco Solutions. The New York Times mentioned it in its travel section in September 2008. And a recent issue of Conde Nast magazine even recommends to its readers to visit the school as a tourest destination, stating "Harvest lemongrass, rambutan and tapioca alongside students in the garden, milk goats for the school's own organic ice cream, and enjoy a gourmet lunch plucked straight from the surrounding fields." I think I'll skip on the goat's milk ice cream and continue enjoying my gelato for the time being. But the rest of the school sure sounds good to me.

I'm just wondering if there are other families out there who have changed cities or countries principally for a school that they have chosen for their kids. Anyone?

Can monolingual parents teach their children another language?

No. If you do not speak Spanish fluently, you cannot teach your child Spanish. Any attempt to speak to your child in Spanish will, in addition to feeling wholly unnatural, end up in conveying a bad accent and lots of mistakes, to boot. Don't even try. Your job is to pass YOUR mother tongue on to your child, not a tongue that is foreign to you.

But here's what you can do. Tell your little one that YOU want to learn Spanish and invite him to learn it with you. Listen to Spanish songs (and later on, stories) on CD together. Look at photo books with Spanish words in them and try to say them together (ideally, in conjunction with a CD or tape providing the proper pronunciation as a reference). Watch Spanish Sesame Street together. Attend Spanish playgroups together. All of these activities will give you and your child a basic vocabulary. (I should add that you should take this route even if YOU already have this basic vocabulary but do not speak fluently).

Beyond the foregoing, you need outside help. Do you have Spanish speaking neighbours? Employees? A relative? Is there a bilingual or Spanish preschool near you? You will not be able to teach your child a language that you don't speak fluently but you can find the outside resources that will allow your child to learn the language.

Remember, a child needs between 20 and 24 hours a week of a language in order to speak at a "native" level. But even if his exposure doesn't add up to that many hours, your child has a good chance of obtaining fluent comprehension and/or a disposition for the language. And that's good, too!

Can TV teach your child a second language?

I met 8-year old Dalia at a birthday party that my daughter was attending. Dalia was doing handsprings on the front lawn and when I caught a glimpse of her tumbling, I said my 4-year old daughter “Look at what that girl is doing! Would you like to try gymnastics one day? Doesn’t it look like fun?” (The alpha mom in me never takes a break…).

“I can do other stuff, too!” Dalia said, when she overheard me.

Now, this party was in an Italian home for a girl in my daughter’s French kindergarten, so I was a little surprised to hear Dalia speak to me in English. I knew that her family had just moved here from Egypt but I also knew that in Egypt, she had attended the French school, so how was it that she spoke almost fluent English?

After talking to Dalia about gymnastics, I asked, “And tell me, where did you learn English, Dalia? You speak it so well, just like an American.”

“In Egypt!”, she replied, as if this was obvious. I looked at her quizzically.

“But in Egypt, people speak Arabic,” I replied, scratching my head.

“Yeah, but whenever we watched TV or DVDs, it was in English.”

That would explain why Dalia not only spoke with an almost perfect American accent, but seemed to have all the current expressions down pat. But I was still incredulous.

“You’re telling me that you learned English just from watching TV and that’s it??”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” she replied, with a shrug.

Now, Dalia’s parents are diplomats, so that probably is not “pretty much it”. She has likely been in many social gatherings where she has heard English being spoken (this birthday party being just one example). And although her mom speaks to her exclusively in Arabic, Dalia has probably heard her mother speaking English (albeit with a slight Arabic accent) to other diplomats and expats, in Egypt and here in Rome.

Nevertheless, it sounds like television has played a big role in transmitting language comprehension and (surprise!) even speaking ability to Dalia.

I still don’t advocate letting children watch unlimited television, but Dalia’s case just goes to show, if they’re going to watch it, why not get them to watch in another language?

Bilingual children do better!

You may already know that bilingual schoolchildren perform significantly better on standardized tests, are better at problem solving, are better at mathematics and, of course, language. But did you know that bilingual children also tend to read earlier?

Dr. Ellen Bialystok, a York University linguist, concluded from her studies that children who are exposed to a second language early in life learn to read at a younger age than their monolingual peers. In her study, preschool children were tested on their understanding of letters as symbols. The children who spoke English only could recite the letters but could not read without the help of pictures. On the other hand, the bilingual preschoolers understood written language without the use of pictures. The bilingual children scored twice as high on language tests as the monolingual children. Dr. Bialystok concluded that the bilingual children were simply better prepared to tie symbols to words and words to meaning!

Language Immersion - Can it work?

Language immersion is getting popular these days. Mandarin immersion schools are popping up everywhere between San Diego and Vancouver. French immersion schools are available for children throughout English-speaking Canada. And of course, more and more Spanish immersion schools are appearing everywhere in the United States. But here is the 60,ooo Dollar (or is that Euro, nowadays?) question: does language immersion work?

Here in Rome, Italian parents are so eager for their children to speak another language that I often have the opportunity to meet Italian children who attend the French school or one of the English schools. The results are...not stunning. Most of the kids can understand the immersion language fine but their speaking ability remains limited.

This is not surprising. Even at a French or English school in Rome, the classrooms are filled with...other Italian children... who speak...you guessed it, Italian with one another. So the children are getting exposure to the immersion language exclusively from their teachers. In that environment, it is unlikely that the child will ever become bilingual as a result of immersion alone. He or she may eventually be able to speak the language somewhat fluently but even there, there are many, many cases where this simply does not happen.

Another risk of immersion is that the child learns to read and write neither the immersion language, nor his or her mother tongue very well...

My advice for those considering immersion education for their children is this: unless you can offer additional support for your child in that language either at home or in the local environment, don't expect your child to become bilingual!

Who can provide additional language-support to a child who attends an immersion school? Any mother tongue-speaker you can find. A parent or grandparent who speaks the language (as a mother tongue, mind you), an au-pair, a babysitter or a nanny. What is crucial is that there be someone in addition to just the teachers at school, either in family life or in the local environment (for example, if your child is in Spanish immersion AND you live in a predominantly hispanic neighbourhood where your child hears Spanish spoken every day), who speaks to your child in that language on a frequent and regular basis.

Why won't my child speak to me in English?

Over the years, I have had the opportunity to meet many "transplanted" moms. Unlike "expat" moms who are just in a foreign country for a defined term, transplanted moms have effectively immigrated to the country and adopted it as their new home. Often, a transplanted mom's husband is a "local".

Of all the challenges that transplanted moms face, getting their kids to speak English often is the most difficult one to surmount.Take Andrea. She is from the United Kingdom, married to a French guy and lives in France. They have two school-aged daughters.

"I thought raising my kids in English would be automatic," Andrea says. "It never occurred to me when they were born that they might not be bilingual."But at age 12 and 10, Andrea's girls are nowhere near bilingual. While Andrea has consistently spoken to her daughters in English from the day they were born, her daughters, from their first word, have always spoken to their mom in French. Attempting to read an English book is too much of a chore to even bother and watching movies in anything but the dubbed "version française" is a challenge for them.

"Friends said that I should refuse to answer my girls when they asked me a question in French," Andrea says. "I called that 'language blackmail' and I refused to engage in it. Now I regret not having taken that approach."

Andrea is one of many transplanted moms who just can't get her kids to bother with English. They understand when their mom talks to them and that's about the extent of their fluency.

Here are some tips for avoiding this situation.

1. Recognize that your child needs a minimum amount of time per week exposed to English if she is going to learn to understand and speak the language fluently. Your child is not going absorb the English language by osmosis just because one of her parents happens to be an English speaker. Most experts in multilingualism say that a child needs about 20 to 24 hours per week of exposure to English to gain true fluency. Exposure, for this purpose, includes listening to a person talk to the child in that language, listening to people talk to each other in English, hearing it on television or radio, and the child herself speaking English.

Lots of moms complain that their child does not speak English but when you get the details of the exposure the child gets, it looks something like this: the minority language parent works full time and the child is in the local school or daycare where he hears the local language all day. He only sees the minority parent a couple of hours per weekday. Part of the time at home, the minority parent is talking to his or her spouse, in the local language of course. Then on the weekend, the family is with friends and relatives and of course the local parent has to speak the local language with the friends and relatives. Then there is the TV, which broadcasts in the local language... You get the picture.

If you want your child to learn your language, you are going to have to make an effort to make it happen. This may mean ensuring that you talk to your child as much as possible when you are home (more than you normally talk), getting a English-mother-tongue babysitter to pick your child up from daycare early and spend a couple of hours with her, and/or avoiding the relatives on weekends and getting together with other English-speaking families. Bilingualism is not going to happen if you are not ensuring adequate exposure in some way.

2. Always speak to your child in English. This piece of advice sounds self-evident, yet how often I heard my Anglo-saxon mommy friends in France tell their little one to "get into the poussette" (the stroller) or that it was "time for their afternoon gouter" (snack).It is easy to fall into the trap of using local language words for certain items but whenever you do that, you 1) send the message that using the local language with you is acceptable and 2) deny your child an important piece of vocabulary in English. Imagine your child showing up in your home country when he is older and not knowing the English word for "snack"!

3. Original version only! In our home, we have a rule that when we watch a film or television show, it has to be in original version. We watch French films in French, English films in English and Italian films in Italian. Dubbing is something you have to get used to as a child to like. Adults who watch dubbed movies do so because they grew up with dubbed movies. If your child does not grow up watching dubbed versions, there is a good chance that he or she will always prefer watching the original English version of movies and shows when he is older, even if another language is his dominant language.

4. Books, radio, DVDs...in English! Spend at least half an hour reading to your small child in English. And make it a rule that all animated DVDs are to be watched in the English version (all non-animated stuff in the original version, of course!). You don't need to iterate this rule to your child. Just make it so. He wants a DVD? It gets put on in English. If you have access to an English radio station, tune into it! And don't forget to watch the news on CNN or BBC in addition to the local news that your partner insists on watching at 20h00 every evening!

5. If your spouse understands English, consider speaking to him in English if you do not already (at least when your child is with you). It might feel artificial at first but switching to English when talking to your spouse can ramp up the English exposure for your child significantly. Remember, your spouse can still talk to you in his language. This tactic also reinforces that association your child draws between you and your mother tongue.