Do your kids a favour: make sure they learn how to ski (well)

My parents didn't get to ski when they were young. They were too busy with the Great Depression, the Second World War, and then with moving to the New World. My siblings and I bore the direct consequences of their ski-free childhood by having our own almost-ski-free childhood. I say "almost" because at the age of nine, I did get to spend three days on a class ski-trip. The ski-trip didn't turn me into a slalom queen, but I managed to learn some basics of downhill skiing.

I was 19 years old the next time I got to go skiing, and 25 years old the third time I got to go. Since meeting the Frenchman 13 years ago, I've had to opportunity to downhill ski a few more times; yet even after six years of consistent practice, I'm a competent skier but I will never be a great one or even a very good one. 

Great skiers start when they're young. Small children seem to know intuitively how to ski from the second they stand up on their skis and you push them gently down the bunny hill. They bend their little legs, spread them wide apart and away they go. They're not afraid. They might not know how to stop (at least until they learn how to do a proper snow plough) but even then, they're not scared. And they're close to the ground so if they fall, they don't fall far.

The inchoate sense of balance and confidence on skis never leaves a small child who's been skiing a few times, and children who learn to ski early on become excellent skiers later on.

Well, better skiers than their mom, anyway.

Is skiing an essential skill? No. It's probably not as important to learn how to ski as it is to learn how to swim. Swimming is an important - maybe even an essential - life skill. 

Skiing on the other hand is what I call an "upward mobility skill". Why? Because skiing is expensive. You have to rent or buy skis and boots. You have to buy your lift passes. You have to take lessons if you haven't skied before. And if you don't live close enough to the mountains to go just for the day, you'll either need access to a ski chalet or a hotel. Skiing is for the upper middle class and the upwardly mobile. And one day, your child will be (you hope, anyway) upwardly mobile.

If you think your child might get a university degree one day, maybe even a masters or a doctorate or a professional degree, you should make sure she learns how to ski while she is still young.  

What's so special about skiing? When your globetrotter adolescent spends a year in Europe on a Rotary Exchange or for his Junior Year Abroad, what will happen when his host family invites him for a weekend of skiing in the Alps? One of two things: if he already knows how to ski he'll be glad and relieved that he does. At worst, he'll take this fact for granted. On the other hand, if he doesn't know how to ski and he finds himself on the bunny hill all weekend while the rest of the family (including their teenage kids) is enjoying the real pistes, he'll almost certainly be asking himself, "How come I never got to learn this when I was a kid? Why didn't we ever do this?"

When your daughter is in college in Colorado or Utah and her group of friends decides to go skiing for the weekend, you may be glad to see her home from the weekend, but she'll resent and regret the fact that she missed a ski trip with her friends. 

But it doesn't stop at superficial college outings.  That job that your son will land when he's 25 years old in that international accounting firm, or advertising company in London? Well, they'll be having an office ski trip in the south of France every year. And guess who'll be cursing you for not making sure he learned how to ski? 

When your daughter is on the partnership track in a law firm in Paris, and wants to network with the senior partner (who grew up in Upper Savoy and was on the national ski team for a while), it will really really help if she knows how to ski. 

Do your kids a favour. If you have the money and the vacation time, take them skiing. If you can't ski, do what my friends Cécile and Guy do (because they can't stand skiing but they realise that it will offer a certain social value to their kids): send your kids to ski camp for a week or two every winter.  

Those ten years of violin lessons my mother forced me to take? A complete waste. It was obvious from year three that I was hopeless.  Forget the music lessons unless your kid enjoys it or has an obvious talent for it, of course. Teach her how to ski. Her business and social network will care very little about how well she plays violin, unless she does it for a living. On the other hand, if your child attends university, the chances that there will be a ski outing at some point in your child's future professional or social life is fairly high.

And if you can't appreciate the idea that skiing will be a good skill for your kids to have in the long run, just enjoy the smile that you'll see on your kids' faces when they get their achievement medals at the end of the week. This year, it was a "flocon" (snowflake) badge for the Bambino and a bronze star (étoile bronze) for the Bambina.

Other upward mobility sports are golf and tennis. It's good to know how to play these, too. I can remember our office having a golf and tennis day. Guess who had never played a game of golf in her life? So I signed up for tennis instead (which I also had never played). Also a disaster. 

Any TEFL teachers out there?

Since January, I've been teaching English in our home to French and Malagasy people. I've also been teaching English to a group of grade 10 students at the Lycée Français here in Tananarive.

This is the first time I've tried teaching since I obtained my Certificate for English Language Teaching to Adults from Cambridge University (CELTA) at International House in Rome, back in 2008 (I got pregnant after that and no one would hire me, and then I had the baby and we moved to Madagascar, so it took me a while to get back into teaching).

Some observations:

1. ) I try to use the communicative approach but students really resist this method. They want me to stand up in front of the class and just talk and explain to them. They don't want to try to speak the language themselves. I find it especially a challenge to use this approach when students share a common language (usually French, in my students' case) because as soon as you tell them to talk about something in pairs or to the class, they start off in their common language! Grrrr.  What's more, since they know that I speak French, they often will try to speak to me in French instead of trying to say it in English.  Grrr.

2.) The teenagers at the lycée have a decent to good speaking level.  In many cases, their English is better than their parents' English. Now, I am dealing with the more advanced students but nonetheless I am impressed when I think back to my level of French back in grade 10.  One of my students has read the Twilight series three times, in English. 

On the other hand, their written English is not so good. Their regular English teachers also use the communicative approach for teaching, so maybe the poor writing skills is evidence that this approach is good for learning to speak but not for learning to write.

3.) The present perfect tense is perhaps the hardest grammatical concept in English to learn.  Even my teenagers at the lycée don't seem to fully "get it" and I am becoming persuaded that unless you have grown up with English or have moved to an English-speaking country for good (see, I've just used it twice, no make that three times!), you will never fully "get it" as a non-native speaker (unless you're Spanish-speaking, 'cause apparently Spanish has the same thing).   

Actually, there is one thing harder than understanding the present perfect - undertanding when to use the present perfect tense (e.g. I've gone) and when to use the present perfect continuous (e.g., I've been going).  It might seem obvious to you as a native speaker but to a non-native speaker who hasn't been immersed in English and who is learning the concept as part of an English lesson, this is tedious and complicated stuff.

4. ) I'm not in the right market. I have been trained to teach adults. In fact, adults don't care too much about their level of English anymore. But they really really really care about their kids being able to speak English fluently. I've been asked again and again and again to start a class for kids but the thing is,

• teaching children is not the same as teaching adults, and I haven't been trained to teach kids;

• teaching children would mean that I would have to give lessons when those children, and therefore my children, are not in school, meaning when my own daughter was home and I had things to do with her; and

• I honestly don't think that language lessons are that much use to a child under seven years of age. As small children have minds of sponges, they get much more from the immersion approach, not the lesson approach, and the immersion approach requires more than one or two hours per weeks with a "teacher" for the child to get anything out of it.  Proof: Dutch people my age speak pretty good English, yet they only started learning it formally when they were around eleven or twelve years of age.  Their advantage comes not from taking lessons when they were only five years old but rather from watching television shows and movies in their original language version (no dubbing!).

But I will be the first to admit that I could make much more money out of teaching English if I taught children!

Any other TEFL teachers out there?  I would love to hear what you think and how your experiences compare with mine.

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.

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.