Posted in book reviews

The Bilingual Edge: Why, When, and How to Teach Your Child a Second Language by Kendall King and Alison Mackey is a useful guide for parents who are interested in raising bilingual children.  Rereading it the last few days has helped me get over my meltdown of a few days ago.  The book is clearly organized and written by two mothers who also happen to have PhDs in Linguistics and are professors at Georgetown.  They noticed that many parents these days are interested in raising their children to speak more than one language, but worried that the research about how children actually learn languages was not getting through to them.  One of the best aspects of the book is the little sections where they highlight a study and present its findings.

Most of the information in the book I already knew, but it was great to read it all in one place and written so well.  While reading through this time, I highlighted some parts that stood out to me. 

Section 1 discusses why two languages are better than one. Chapter 1 begins with advantages of bilingualism: "advanced knowledge of two languages has been shown to result in specific brain benefits, like enhanced creativity and flexibility, increased test scores, and improved literacy skills, as well as social advantages such as great cross-cultural understanding, adaptability, and increased competitiveness on the job market down the line."  It's important to note that they are talking about advanced knowledge, not just being able to count or say a couple phrases. Chapter 2 deals with myths and misconceptions about language learning. 

Section 2 answers "Which Language and When?" Chapter 3 is about choosing which language.  Chapter 4 discusses when to start (in a word, now!) and addresses specific concerns with different ages of children, along with tips. Chapter 5 talks about birth order, gender, personality and aptitude and how they affect language learning.

Section 3 is "How?"  Chapter 6 is particularly relevant for my situation.  "Children who hear more language and more complex language in everyday interactions tend to produce more language themselves" and "Children learn their first, second, and third languages best by being exposed to rich, dynamic, engaging interaction in each of those languages.  The best way to get your children talking is to surround them with language."  This is definitely something I need to work on.  I started actively memorizing more of those Fingerspiele (scroll down for the part about fingerplay) and the twins love them!  Kendall and Mackey also reminded me that "it's less important for your child to hear, for instance, perfect Korean than it is to have some early and meaningful exposure to Korean."

In Chapter 6 they present a study which shows that "reading aloud clearly seemed to affect these toddlers' language skills."  When two languages are involved, the same holds true. "In fact, the frequency with which children were read to in a foreign language had more of an impact than even the total exposure they had to the language."  Wow!  Reading this made me realize that I read to the twins in German and nobody reads to them in English, so that will definitely be a part of this coming school year for my daughters.  Reading aloud to the twins will benefit Gabrielle as well.  I also may try to work in reading out loud to all of them in English as part of our school day.

They also answer how much of a language is enough for the child to actively speak it.  Research shows that the minimum exposure necessary is one-fifth of the child's waking hours.  In order to help families determine what exposure their child is getting and whether it is active or passive, they designed a "Family Language Audit" that looks helpful.

Now, here comes the part of the book that is confusing to me.  While discussing minority language at home families (for example, a Russian couple who move to the US and want to continue Russian at home), they present a study that links home language use and academic performance.  The researcher studied 3 kinds of families:  English speaking families who only spoke English at home, minority language families who regularly used the minority language, and minority language families where the adults spoke English.  Scores from groups 1 and 2 were similar, but "children whose parents spoke their non-native language, English, at home (group 3) fared considerably worse.   As an explanation, [the researcher] suggests that the parents' 'use of their native language was beneficial because it provided rich, complex language input for the children.'"

If earlier in the book they were saying that language input need not be perfect, and then now they are saying that children do better when parents speak their native language, which is it?  Is it just that the parent must make sure to provide good input?  Or are they really saying that parents shouldn't speak a non-native language to their children?

The next chapter is about the whole "edutainment" business and presents some shocking findings.  In a study of 9 month old babies, one group got one-on-one reading and play sessions with native speakers of Chinese, while the other group watched videos of the same speakers doing the same things.  "The researchers found that the babies who watched and listened to the very high-quality videos did not learn any  Chinese sounds. In fact, they seemed no better off than a comparison group who had been exposed to no Chinese at all."  The same holds true for toddlers - they basically will not learn language from a DVD. 

Instead, Kendall and Mackey recommend doing something I started doing a while back.  I only have one video in German (Bilingual Baby).  I haven't wanted to hassle with DVD region codes and buy expensive German DVDs and now I am glad I didn't.  What I decided to do was to comment in German about what's happening in the English DVDs they are watching.  I figured they may be watching in English, but I could at least provide some commentary in German.  Whatever language is on the DVD, the authors suggest pausing it and discussing, asking questions or simply repeating things the characters say.  As they clearly state, "it is human interaction itself that is crucial for language development."  However, there is a place for foreign language DVDs for school-age children.

Chapter 8 talks about various kinds of schools: immersion programs, private classes, classes for heritage speakers, private tutors, etc. 

Section 4 is called "What If...?" and talks about various situations or problems that families may have along the way: language mixing, language delay, so-called expert advice (just like when you have problems breastfeeding, the advice is usually "Stop nursing", when bilingual families have problems, the advice is often "Stop being bilingual"), special needs, and apparent lack of progress.   Chapter 11 discusses trilingualism and dialects, and point out that knowing a second language makes learning a third even easier.  Chapter 12 focuses on family problems, like children resisting the language, problems with extended family, and divorce. 

There is an interesting section about bilingualism making your family stand out.  "Only 9.3 percent of Americans speak both their native language and another language fluently (compare this with 52.7 percent of Europeans!) In real life, these statistics mean that there will probably be times when you or your child feel a bit odd...about using a language other than English."  I know that when I take the twins out somewhere, I do feel strange speaking to them in German.

The book can be summed up well by this quote from the conclusion: "the most important thing parents can do to promote language learning is to talk to their child as much as possible in the languages they want them to learn.  Both quantity and quality of talk are important here!"

I was so inspired by writing this review I took an hour break in the middle to sit on the floor and play with the little ones in German and read to them (when they let me - Alexander has confiscated "Das magische Baumhaus" so he can read it himself).  It was fun!