Blog@Kimmba

Babies are the citizens of the world

Administrator — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 10:00:00 +1000

This is one of the most important discoveries on babies' early language learning abilities. I've watched the following video clip over and over again for several hours, I make sure that I understand it at the best of my abilities.

There are a few points that I've summarized here to share with you all, some of them can also be find form the film itself.

1. According to what this new research discovers, the sooner we create a secondforeign language interactive socially engaging learning environment for babiesinfants, the better it is to their later language development. This includes the faster and more complex first language acquisition at the later stage (24 months, this film refers to in their research).

2. From the recent new neuroscience (MEG) available, phonetic learning is a "Pathway" to language implications for reading and disabilities. the sooner we can identify that a child has the language learning disability, the sooner we can help to address the problem.

3. Babies learning depends a lot on the social interaction, therefore, a foreign language DVD or audio doesn't really help an infant younger than 12 months old. This doesn't mean that a 30 months old's toddler would have no benefit of watching a foreign language DVD whatsoever. This is because the way a 30 months old's learning is different to that of a 6 or 7.5 months old's infant. Again, the social interaction plays a vital tool to their early learning as well.

There is no argument about it. I have seen a few hundred Melbourne families in the past 3 years that tried to learn a second language (when both parents only have one, English), and, with a great % of them gave up in less than 6 months and a further few % of them gave up in less than 12 months. This is largely because parents couldn't see pass the point that babies and young toddlers learn more than what they can reproduce and lots of the 'hear says' of: 'bilingual babies are often slow talkers' or 'bilingual babies are more easily to develop language problems because they get confused by two or maybe three languages that's surrounding them', which is not what this video has shown us.

4. Bilingual babies love socializing with peers and love to be in a group of adults and babies company. They are learning from such a purposely organized social interaction gathering. My 19 months old, for example, is putting 6 Chinese words together, (she surprises us everyday, when I just made a statement of she was using 4 or 5 words two weeks ago, she has out grown my expectation, again) and she is making sentences since long before she was 16 months old. This is largely because she is in my Mandarin bilingual Toddler learning playgroups 4 times a week (I am running 21 bilingual learning playgroups weekly, offering 3 languages). When she was barely 11 months old, one day, in the class, she repeated out loud of what the teacher said, the whole group of mothers of 14 to 20 months old toddlers cheers, no one expects her to do so (she was the youngest one in the group, I moved her from baby class to toddler's before 11 months because she won't sit still for flash cards anymore, like most of the other babies would). Because of this surprise she made and got recognized, from that day onwards, she loves to make and repeats soundswords after everyone. Her counting skills in both Chinese and English follows a 'Yea' after '10'. I call her little parrot. She also recognizes Spanish flash cards and sounds, I never count how many Spanish words she learns during the weekly session, but she repeats after you as clear as she can be. English is the domain language at home because my husband speaks English ONLY until recently. He is now learning Mandarin with our third baby and he picks it up a lot more than in the past 9 years of our marriage all together.

5. From an individual's academic point of view to the benefit of a society, Early learning plays an important role. If we would like to see the preparation gap disappears maybe we have to make sure that the early learning stars really early.

Finally, I am very happy to say that all the way along, I've been doing the hard work of helping and promoting the early bilingual language learning, now, watching this DVD clip, has made me more strong at what I am doing and hope all of you out there who are not sure what to do or still not able to make up your mind of 'which' language to give it to your child other than English would stop wondering and gather all the act together, giving your child the best gift you can possible give it to himher, starting an early language learning soon.

Remember, up until the age of 7 still is a good start, although the sooner the better. Babies are the citizens of the world (the beginning of Prof. Patricia Kuhl's speech)

Regards to all and any discussions.

Marisha

Bilingual Education

Administrator — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:04:36 +1000

How do English speaking parents teach baby to learn a second language?

We all know that language is best taught from young. The younger you start the better the outcome is. There were a few babies that I taught last year who had absolutely no Chinese (a second language), neither the farther nor the mother came from any of the Chinese backgrounds. So how could the English speaking parent teach the baby, say, Chinese? How did we do it in our playroom on the weekly bases?

Well, you can spend lots of money buying all sorts of learning materials, DVDs Audio tapes and so on, or hiring a Chinese speaking nanny for their services. These are all high cost ways of helping your baby to be on the path to a second language learning. The result of DVDs and Audio tapes are pending for babies even though it might be a good idea for older children but it is not really the way to go about when you are raising babies up bilingually.

The best would be for a bilingual parent to speak to your child your home language. Unfortunately, this is not always possible for us all. Most of us have only got one language.

There were about 15 babies all together since my first Mandarin baby class in July, 08. These babies are ranging from 24 to 13 months old now. 99% of them talked very early, either starting with Chinese words or English. Once they are able to talk, their language ability just matured daily. They are much happier to be around new members of the community and they are much more friendly to other toddlers and adults. They are so confident at being with other adultsmums. Few months ago, I was telling a group of 8 toddlers (a few of them from our baby class last year) a story, suddenly, I realize that most of them are sitting with someone else's mum, not their own. But they were all so involved at the story that I was giving. I wish I had a camera to capture this moment, but I soon realized that this happens all the time with this particular group of baby then become toddler learners from our baby groups.

Compare this group of now toddlers to the other groups of toddlers that I have, which none of them were with us from babyhood, you can see the difference and teachers actually feel that it is harder to teach these new groups to the one baby (group) turn toddler group and I often have to help the other groups of new toddlers joining in.

This actually shows us that the new research finds Bilingual babies developing the ability of acceptance to others (people, language, cultural, foods,) more easily than Monolingual babies.

For this reason alone, we need to find ways to help our little babies and toddlers to learn a second language as soon as we can.

Low costs ways of helping your babytoddlerpreschooler to learn a second language are:
Organize visits and home plays with friends or community members that speaking the particular language that you would like your child to learn.

Join localstarting your own bilingual learning playgroup that is community minded and focus on children's language learning and aiming at providing the best outcome for families.
Using free on-line learning materials, and learn it with your child.
Install the cable TV system that provides 247 language access of programs that you can choose particular time frame to watch the TV show with your child. I don't suggest that you use TV as baby sitter while you get other house chores done. As some of the contents of the show may be ok to the culture background but not acceptable to you.
Songs is the best way of helping your child to learn a new language. Play song CDs in the car, at home, in the playroom, sing along with them. Don’t worry too much about how perfect your singing sounds, babies love motherfather’s voices, the important thing here is not how good your pronunciation is but the interaction you provide and the fun in doing so.

welcome to blog@kimmba

Administrator — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:48:00 +1000

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