I can’t wait for the day that she talks back to me…in French
Come September, Julia will be starting Junior Kindergarten at an all-French school. Dave and I aren’t French and our combined knowledge of the language is minimal but we strongly feel that enrolling her in the French system will be a huge asset for her.
Naturally, when Kendall King and Alison Mackey’s book The Bilingual Edge – Why, When and How to Teach Your Child a Second Language came up for review, I wanted to check it out. Linguistics professors at Georgetown University with a wealth of knowledge between the two of them, King and Mackey have compiled a book that offers parents facts, references, statistics, tips and suggestions about introducing a second language into your home.
A lot of people are surprised when we tell them Julia is going to an all-French school. Knowing that we speak very little of the language, the question we get most often is “How will you help her with her homework?” and I must admit, that was a concern of ours when we first started toying with the French school idea. Yet we’re confident we’ll be able to raise a bilingual child even though we’re not ourselves, a thought that King and Mackey support. Myth #1 in Chapter Two’s list of Top Ten Myths About Second Language Learning: Only bilingual parents can raise bilingual children. They note that although “raising a bilingual child takes planning, effort, and dedication, even for parents who are bilingual themselves”, in today’s day and age, bilingualism is on the rise and that “with the right foundation of knowledge, any parent can raise a child who knows more than one language, even if that parent is monolingual.” They’re right, and I happen to have living, breathing proof: my brothers. My father and stepmother speak only English but sent my brothers to the same school Julia is going to, and both of my brothers went on to speak fluent French despite not hearing it at home.
One chapter that really spoke to me was Chapter Six: How Can You Best Promote Language Learning At Home? Dave and I only speak English yet we want to incorporate French into our home. In this chapter King and Mackey offer suggestions on how to introduce and incorporate language into day to day activities, such as counting the stairs in Spanish, reading books in French or singing a lullaby in Korean, ideas that resonate with young children and are easy for parents like Dave and I, who struggle with anything more advanced than “Bonjour! Je suis un anana.” (Hello! I am a pineapple.)
King and Mackey tackle the issue of language learning through ‘edutainment’ in Chapter Seven, a chapter that I found quite interesting. I make no bones about the fact that all the Spanish Julia has picked up has been courtesy of Dora the Explorer yet I have always believed that if she wanted to learn Spanish further, she’d need more than a cartoon character to teach her – a sentiment that King and Mackey seem to share. Their research showed that babies and young children don’t learn language through television; instead, they respond to and learn the most from interaction with other humans. Language-based television shows and DVD’s are readily available and can be used to support language learning, but have no merit when used as the main teacher. (A related aside: I read an interesting article today that supports this argument, reporting on how ‘edutainment’ videos actually delay language developments in babies and toddlers.)
Mama Says: By the time I got my copy of The Bilingual Edge I didn’t need any convincing – I knew that I wanted my kids to learn a second language. If, however, you’re on the fence about it, grab a copy of this book. It’s not a gripping read – for lack of a better way to put it, it’s a textbook read that can be repetitive at times, but it’s packed with solid information about the benefits of bilingualism.