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 Although the suggested links are a bit outdated, the lesson material seems very interesting and engaging for high-level English language learners.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

Sesame Street for Parents

Sesame Workshop is a great web site, not only for kids, but also for parents! The parents section has sections called "Sesame Parents", "Fun to Go", and "TV Info". If you remember Sesame Street's Maria, you'll recall that her bilingualism in Spanish and English is featured on the show. Also, she has a column, "Talking Out Loud" on the Sesame Workshop web site where she writes parenting articles.

Her current featured article is "Childhood Echoes: Valuing your past while raising your child for the future." In this article, she challenges us to consider our parenting beliefs, and challenge ourselves to raise our children OUR way, instead of simply raising our children in the same way that we were raised.

But one of my favorite articles of hers is an older one entitled "Talking Out Loud: ¿CÓmo se dice?: Keeping your family's heritage strong." Manzanos lets us see how she struggled a bit to raise her daughter bilingually and biculturally and how the process evolved over the years. I especially enjoyed when she told how she often forgot words in Spanish:

"Other times when, say we were at the beach, I'd see a seagull and I'd say, "Mira la..." and then wrack my brain, trying to remember the Spanish word for seagull. (I'm afraid she'll have many memories of me starting a sentence and then staring off into space...)"

A feeling I'm sure many of us identify with! But she kept trying and finally realized that she was making a lot of progress:

"But I began to realize that she was getting it from all directions: from my self-conscious "Latin" home schooling as well as from all the usual ways. She was getting it from the food we ate, ... ; the music we listened to; a close relationship with her grandmother; and, finally, from seeing Latin culture reflected in the world."

Now we can see the Sesame Street website as a great resource not only for our children, but for us as parents! Finally, if you like the information there, I'd like to suggest their newsletter as well!