BOOK REVIEW

Just like with the last "review", this is not really a review at all, not even a book summary, just a collection of ideas that I either didn't think about, or forgot, or needed to reemphasise for myself. But maybe this could be of any use to someone else too :)

Generally I enjoyed this book more than "raising a bilingual child", it is much less "academic", but it is better written, has a nice personal appeal and has lots of useful suggestions and ideas.

Jane Merrill: "Bilingual child-rearing is like breastfeeding: it is jiving your child a tender gift. It costs you nothing and fits in perfectly with everyday life"

Some people define the degree of bilingualism as the extent of usage of the two languages in their day to day life rather than the actual proficiency in these languages. For different people bilingualism means a different thing, and their definition of bilingualism is often reflected in their expectations for their bilingual children. For some this is merely understanding a second language, and for others it implies ambilinguity and biliteracy.

I simply loved Annika's comparison of children to sponges. Everyone says that children are like sponges and they absorb whatever is around them, so you don’t need to do anything special to "teach" them a second language, just speak it in everyday situations and watch them do the rest. However if you don’t expose them to a language enough or do so in an indirect manner (they learn best when they are talked to directly, so overhearing parental conversations or listening to foreign radio will not do the trick) you shouldn't be surprised when their skills are not up to the standard, just like dipping a sponge in a barely wet bowl - it will come out pretty dry.

You need to decide why you are trying to raise your children bilingual, the best motivation is being able to talk to the relatives in another country and share their culture, for most parents of bilingual children a boost in cognitive abilities is just a bonus.

Bilingual childrens' language develops differently and has different norms, see the book "Bilingual Communication Assessment Resource" by LJ Mattes and C Saldana-Illingworth for some guidelines. You can also get an e-consultation with speech therapists/language pathologists at thespeechstop.com and tinyeye.com.

Contrary to what I read before, the book states that the experts agree that early language mixing is not a problem but is rather a normal developmental stage, as the vocabulary is still very limited, children seek the most efficient route of communication and use all tools at their disposal. As always, instead of telling them that they've made a mistake try to repeat what they said correctly in one language and move on immediately.

Although many experts claim that children pick up the majority language very quickly and have comparable majority language scores to their monolingual peers within a very short time frame, Annika does not advise avoiding the majority language altogether until school age to preserve minority language. Conversational fluency establishes withing a couple of months however academic proficiency takes between 5 and 7 years to reach, and strict-mL@H children may fall behind in school programs even if their language excels.

Parents who adopted children from another country are quite often advised to speak to the child only in the new language to make their transition to the new culture and family as fast as possible. However research shoes that dropping the first language completely to start learning a new one before the first one had time to develop properly might not be beneficial and might stall the child's language development. Adoptive parents are now beginning to be advised to learn some of the minority language before the child's arrival, look for minority language friends, cultural groups, babysitters and churches.

If a child has a dominant language, then it is better to learn to read in that language first as it is more rewarding and opens the doors to the world of literacy. However if a child's minority language is of a comparable level to the majority one, it might be beneficial to teach them to read in it before the start of school. Parents find it especially useful if the alphabets are very different.

Books in minority language are even more important than those in majority one. Everyone tends to have a 'favourite' vocabulary that they use more often even if they know many more words. So if the child is only hearing the minority language from their parents, books are the key source of wider vocabulary and grammatical forms, since they do not hear it in the community.

Throughout the book Annuka emphasises that trips to the minority country are the best way to keep the language alive through creating a necessity to use it and building meaningful relationships in that language, both with relatives and other kids. It is suggested that the trip should be as untouristy as possible, and one should include as much kiddy entertainment as possible, but choose such entertainment where they would have to interact with local kids. "Just breathing air in another country does not count as language and culture immersion." It is suggested that the trips should lat for at least 2 weeks as it takes about a week to make a proper switch to the other language.

Going to school in another country may not be as dramatic as it sounds, schools in different countries have vocations at different times and enrolling your child for the two weeks that you are visiting grandparents might be an amazing experience. You can prime your child and the other kids in the class by sending a couple of letters first, so that the kids look forward to meeting the international student and your child knows something about them and has a couple of 'friends' when they arrive.

Note that there might not be an immediate improvement in your child's language skills right after the trip, sometimes the new knowledge takes a couple of weeks to consolidate.

Making all cultural events from minority country really over the top and even inviting majority language kids will make your kids associate minority culture with something fun and attractive. Seeing other kids enjoying and admiring their traditional holiday will make them enjoy it that much more themselves.

If you act ashamed to speak in minority language in public, for example by speaking quieter when there are other people around, the child will quickly pick up on that and associate minority language with something bad and shameful.

Dont take OPOL too far, dont try to talk to your children in  mixed company in a minority language, it a typical example of putting bilingual goals above being able to communicate easily - the very thing bilingualism is supposed to promote.

Ideas for minority language usage:

- have a mailbox inside the house and send your child daily letters

- make place-mats (like in a restaurant) with fun tasks in minority language

- read in minority language for at least 30 minutes a day - research shows that this is the threshold for making a real impact

- scavenger hunt, preferably with other kids at a minority language party

- family blog, involve grandparents from minority country (blogger.com, worldpress.com)

- get the grandparents to Skype children one-on-one

- get the kids to write emails to their future selves (futureme.org) in minority language

- teen magazine subscription in minority language

- use newly expat teenagers as baby sitters - teenagers are considered cool by younger kids, they will want to imitate them (for example by talking the same language)

- make use of comedy and jokes in minority language. "Laughter is the shortest distance between two people" - Victor Borge

- have a monolingual toy, persuade your child that your pet or the new baby only speaks the minority language

- dress up and act out stories

- competition between kids -make them race to get a requested object from the table

- supermarket scavenger hunt (my personal favourite, might be obvious for those who have older kids already though...)

- make a tradition of using minority language for specific weekend activities

- play "fill the gaps" in a sentence, "disgusting food restaurant", try having a dialogue using only questions

- write poems and songs together - you can prepare a list of rhymes in advance

- organize a minority language camp with other families, each parent can prepare a fun activity

Other souses of minority language:

- International organization of X language speakers

- DVDs

- CDs with childrens songs and pop culture

- Slingbox - not free - accesses an actual physical TV in another country and streams all channels remotely!

- Board games

- Recently arrived families from minority country - Embassy, Facebook groups

Ways to react if the child is speaking to you in the wrong language:

- pretend not to understand

- be annoyingly slow to respond

- act surprised and offended

- make them repeat everything twice

- rephrase in the desirable language

- ignore and move on in desirable language

Online resources:

- multilingualliving.com

- www.facebook.com/bebilingual.net

- The Mixer

- mylanguageexchange.com

- aupairworld.net

- epals.com

- studentsoftheworld.info - families who host exchange students from target country

- bookmooch.com - international book swap

- bongous.com myus.com - creates a fake address in the country where delivery of items is available, receives all your packages, repackages them into one and posts them anywhere in the world

- earwormslearning.com

- Tunein.com - childrens radio from all over the world

- bookbox.com - animated books with subtitles in many languages

- kideos.com - same, but mainly in English

- Children TV app (CyberWalkAbout.com) - rates YouTube videos for children and ranks them by language and age

- mindmyhouse.com and trustedhousesitters.com - free accommodation in return for watching pets, collecting mail and watering gardens

- kayak.com and travelocity.com - might have cheaper air-plane ticket deals than major websites

- priceline.com and biddingfortravel.com, flylowcostairlines.org - you can offer a price that you are willing to pay to travel from point A to point B with X number of stops (offer to buy ridiculously cheap), if your bid is accepted - you get the details after you pay, the tickets are non refundable, all tickets are considered separately, so you do need to re-check in your luggage at each stop and if you miss your connecting flight - there is no refund.

- discoveryeducation.com/free-puzzlemaker

- print-bingo.com