Feliz Cumpleaños Leilani!

Thursday was Leilani's birthday, and today after class we're having a big birthday party for her where all her family will be there.  Spanish and English will both be spoken liberally and my wife's family will expect the birthday girl (she's 3) to be able answer, but most of her family also speaks English and will understand if she answers in English.  I don't like this, so sometimes I tell a little white lie...

I will say they don't speak English.  Yeah I know it's cheating, and oftentimes Leilani is too smart for me and will know they actually do, but sometimes she plays along.  Probably for dada's benefit.

More Practice


I know I've been beating a drum here, but in my opinion home practice is the only way Leilani will eventually become a truly bi-lingual speaker.  Taking the opportunity to have her speak only Spanish to her family, well the family that speaks it anyway, is a vital part of her training.  She understands everything they say, but if she doesn't repeat back I believe she'll end up losing a lot of that knowledge.

Happy Birthday to You in Español


Speaking of practice I need to practice my Spanish "Happy Birthday" song in time for today's party.  Here's how we sing it:

Cumpleaños Feliz
Te deseamos a ti
Cumpleaños Felices
Te deseamos a ti


Of course this is from memory so all errors are my own.  Oftentimes that's followed by an extremely important song:

Queremos que partan la torta
Queremos que partan la torta
Queremos que partan la torta
Si No Nos Vamos De Aqui


Which means something like, "We want to cut the cake, we want to cut the cake, we want to cut the cake, or we are leaving from here."  It's sung to the tune of "For he's a jolly good fellow."  Now if you'll excuse me I have a cake to pickup.

Animales for Quinn?

Leili spent about two weeks doing animals in Spanish class, which may not have been very useful for her.  Since she was a little more than one year old we've been reading books before bed, and one of her favorites was a simple book called "Animales."  Dozens of pictures of conejos (rabbits), osos (bears) and of course dinosaurios.  There was no story, and when she was younger she was less opposed to me reading in Spanish, so this amounted to a vocabulary lesson at regular intervals.  I know I've mentioned practice before, and this was a great way to make practice fun.  She doesn't read that book anymore, at nearly three she wants more story, but this put her ahead of the game at a very young age.

This has me thinking about my youngest son Quinn and when he should start at Language Stars.  His verbal skills seem to be behind Leili's at a similar age, he's just past one, and he's definitely not ready yet.  Part of the reason we ended up taking these classes was that Leili spoke so much English that we were concerned her Spanish would never keep up.  That said I suspect at any moment he'll start saying more than "mama" and "dada" and move on to more important phrases like "Go Bears" and "Boo Packers."

What does this mean?  Well we're not gonna rush Quinn into language stars and make him sit on my lap while the other little ones can properly participate.  Every child is different and you know yours better than I do, but more than a few kids that were brought into the Language Stars parents and tots class couldn't say their own name and I don't see how you can possibly get your money's worth at that point.

Now what it means is that Crystina and my nights are about to get more hectic.  It's time for one of us to start reading to Quinn while the other puts to bed the increasingly difficult Leilani.  Both English and Spanish books should help give him the same head start that Leilani had, and maybe when he goes to class he'll know what a perro is too.  (It's a dog).

Immersion

I want the author Colin Baker to be this guy, but it's not.

Up until now I've been writing this from my own personal perspective.  While there's nothing wrong with that, today I thought I'd talk a little about what the Immersion in Language Stars Instant Immersion means and why it's beneficial.

Unfortunately actually finding legit research in this area is more than a little problematic.  It's easy to find assertions like, "The bilingual people can have some specific advantages in thinking." but with nothing to back it up.  The best research I've been able find, by way of wikipedia, is Colin Baker's book Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism is every bit the exciting thrill-a-minute read you'd expect it to be.

Mr. Baker identifies several different types of models of bilingual education such as submersion, dual language and heritage language but speaks extensively on the immersion approach that Language Stars uses.  If it's not obvious immersion, specifically early immersion in my younger daughter's case  is a teaching method where the teachers speak nothing but the language being taught.  In Leili's case this is vital because if she hears English, she'll speak it.  However there are criticisms of the approach, specifically that students may become worse at their "primary" language.

Fortunately there doesn't seem to be much evidence of that.  Many students studied did struggle early in other subjects, but those students were leraning English as their second language.  That said this gives me a warning, as Leili gets older we should spend more time with the other subjects.  While students typically caught up with their classmates, our school system can certainly penalize a slow starting child.  

On the other hand our society, and I say this without citation, certainly can reward a bilingual adult.  Learning that language is not easy once you reach adulthood, I assure you, and I think any possible difficulties with other subject (which is far from a guarantee anyway) is well worth it.