Saturday, September 15, 2007

Learning About Bilingualism

At the end of last semester, I was involved in a week-long teacher training session, and facilitated a course for Japanese teachers of English. When prepping the lessons, I found a wealth of resources on the British Council teacher's site for both teachers and students.

And now, I've even found themed materials on bilingualism at the British Council Learn English site! It includes some information, a story, and several games. Although the suggested links are a bit outdated, the lesson material seems very interesting and engaging for high-level English language learners. Sometimes university students ask me if we're teaching our daughter to speak both English and Japanese, and I've found that some students express strong opinions about the issue of bilingualism. As most of these students are English majors, I would like for them to think about their opinions dealing with language issues, such as when the schools should start teaching English and how parents can support second language development at home. The more educated about bilingualism, the better decisions we can make!

Resources:
British Council
British Council (resources for teachers)
Bilingualism theme
Languages theme

4 comments:

Dorinda said...

This is so cool Mary, and congrats on your opportunity too. I hope you enjoyed it. The information you have given us will give us great resources. Thanks. As I prepare to teach here in Argentina, I am so glad to have this resources. Thanks for taking the time to post them. HUGS Dorinda

Mary H said...

You're welcome, Dorinda. Teacher training was an awesome opportunity because as I prepared the materials, I really had to think about my teaching, and what kinds of resources would be useful for others.

mbi said...

Hi, Dorinda and Mary:

I am A Canadian married to a Japanese man and mother of a 9 year-old bilingual daughter. I am taking the TESOL EVO course, Blogging 4 Educators with Mary and am just learning about RSS feeding. I have just set up my Google Reader and have added this blog to it.

I look forward to keeping up with what you are both doing with your kids and taking more time to look at the resources you have posted about.

Yoroshiku onegaishimasu,

Alison Miyake
http://unschooling teacher@blogspot.com/

Santi D said...

Hi Mary!
Looking forward for some updates on you guys!
Santi
http://trilingual.livejournal.com