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In This Issue:
• Feature Article:
Twelve Common Myths And Misconceptions About Bilingual Children
• Language Lizard Update:
New Books, New Lesson Plans
• Product Review: Keeping Up With Cheetah
• *Subscriber Special Offer*: Discount on Keeping Up With Cheetah
• Lizard Recommends: Raising a Bilingual Child
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Language Lizard Update
Dear Reader:
Spring is finally here!
To celebrate the new season, we have added some wonderful books for you to enjoy with your children and/or students. One of our new books, Listen Listen, helps children learn about and discover the sights and sounds of the seasons. Another new book, Keeping Up with Cheetah, provides important lessons about true friendship. Read more about this story in our Book Review below.
One of Language Lizard's primary goals has been to provide resources that will help parents and educators teach children about cultures and languages around the world. A great way for children to expand this knowledge is by learning about holidays and festivals. To that end, we are thrilled to announce the expansion of our Celebrations Series. In addition to Samira's Eid, about the Ramadan/Eid holidays, we recently added titles related to Diwali (the Festival of Lights) and Polish Christmas. We will continue to add additional celebration stories throughout the year.
We also have added more lesson plans for teachers. One new unit, which focuses on Ramadan/Eid, provides exercises to help children compare and contrast holidays they know with those that are unfamiliar to them. Another new unit teaches children about Romania, and gives them exposure to a new language. As always, the lesson plans can be downloaded from our website at: http://www.languagelizard.com/lessonplans.htm.
With all the research about the benefits of learning a new language, many of our readers raising bilingual children continue to face questions and concerns from well-meaning family members and friends. There are many misconceptions about early language learning. Fortunately, bilingualism expert Dr. Barbara Zurer Pearson has tried to set the record straight in her recently published book, Raising a Bilingual Child. Read on to learn more about this informative book and to learn about "12 Common Myths and Misconceptions About Bilingual Children.”
Happy reading!
Anneke Forzani
Founder and President
Language Lizard, LLC |
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 Book Review: Keeping Up with Cheetah
Written by Lindsay Camp
Illustrated by Jill Newton
Ages 2-7
Format: Paperback
Review by Maureen Pugh
Cheetah loves telling jokes and Hippopotamus loves to listen and laugh at Cheetah’s jokes – even when they aren’t very funny! This synergy makes them the best of friends. There is only one problem: Hippopotamus can’t run very fast, so he can’t keep up with Cheetah.
Cheetah goes in search of a better friend, one who will appreciate his jokes and be able to run with him. Hippopotamus is so sad, and tries to practice running, but eventually realizes he will never be able to keep up with Cheetah. He decides to do what he loves best, and goes for a “good, long, deep, muddy, wallow.”
Cheetah makes friends with fast-running Ostrich, but Ostrich doesn’t like jokes. Next Cheetah tries Giraffe, who is too tall to hear his jokes. Hyena just laughs at Cheetah’s jokes, without even listening to them!
Cheetah recognizes that he really needs a “different sort of friend” - one who appreciates his humor – one like Hippopotamus. But when he goes looking for Hippopotamus, he can’t find him. Cheetah realizes “how silly he had been to lose such a good friend” as Hippopotamus. In his search for speedier friends, he had sacrificed something he realized was even more important to him.
Suddenly Cheetah sees Hippopotamus in the river. He approaches and delivers a knock-knock joke. As Hippopotamus laughs and laughs, we understand that Cheetah has learned an important lesson about friendship: friends should be cherished and appreciated for what they are, not criticized for what they aren’t. This charming story delivers an important lesson in a compelling and winning manner, and its bright illustrations and understandable message is sure to please young readers.
Keeping Up With Cheetah is available in English with Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Czech, Farsi, French, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Hungarian, Irish, Kurdish, Lithuanian, Nepali, Panjabi, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovakian, Somali, Spanish, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Welsh.
If you’re interested in purchasing this book, please visit the Keeping Up With Cheetah webpage at: http://www.languagelizard.com/Keeping_Up_with_Cheetah_p/cheet.htm
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Special Subscriber Offer: 10% Discount on Keeping Up with Cheetah:
Through December 5, 2008 we are offering a 10% discount on the following book:
Simply apply Coupon Code
CCS-CHEET upon checkout to receive the discount.
To see the difficulty level of these and other Language Lizard books, please visit our “Book Suggestions” page at http://www.languagelizard.com/images/Childrens_Bilingual_Books.pdf
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Twelve Common Myths And Misconceptions About Bilingual Children
MYTHS OR MISCONCEPTION |
WHAT WE ACTUALLY KNOW |
1. Bilingual children start to speak later than monolinguals. |
There is no scientific evidence supporting this. Bilinguals and monolinguals share the same wide window for normal development. |
2. Bilinguals start out school behind monolinguals and they never catch up. |
In fact, bilingual children tend to have faster growth curves than monolingual children. |
3. Young children soak up languages like sponges. |
Children seem to have an easier time learning languages than adults, but we should not underestimate the effort it takes and should not expect them to learn perfectly from the beginning. |
4. Bilinguals are just like two monolinguals in one person. |
There are special capabilities that bilinguals have that monolinguals do not. Bilinguals very often have one (dominant) language that is comparable to that of a monolingual and another, weaker one, which they use less often. In any conversation, bilinguals choose whether to operate in a monolingual mode or a bilingual mode |
5. You have to be gifted in languages in order to learn two languages at once. |
Early language learning is not like a talent and does not require a special gift. It’s part of being human, like walking or seeing with two eyes. |
6. If bilinguals score lower on standardized language tests, it shows they have lower aptitude than the average monolingual child. |
Standardized tests examine just a part of a bilingual’s language aptitude (i.e, just one language) and compare it to a monolingual’s entire language aptitude. Average scores for bilinguals do not take into account different patterns of language dominance. There are, as of this writing, no standardized tests that are appropriate for use with bilingual children. |
7. Latino immigrants in the U.S. resist learning English and want everyone to learn to speak Spanish. |
Very few Latino immigrants do not speak English; there are not enough programs that teach English to accommodate the demand for them. Programs that use Spanish as well as English do so in part because it helps children learn English faster and better. |
8. Some languages are more primitive than others and are therefore easier to learn. The reason so many people can speak English is that English has less grammar than other languages. |
There is no such thing as a primitive language or a language without “grammar.” All languages are infinitely complex and yet learnable. |
9. Speaking a second language is its own reward. |
This might be true, but we cannot expect children to see it that way. We must make it meaningful for them to know the language by providing contact with interesting people doing fascinating things in the second language. |
10. Parents who do not speak a language perfectly will pass their errors and their accent on to their children. |
This might be true only if the child never heard any other speakers, which is unlikely to happen with parents who are nonnative speakers of either a majority or a minority language. |
11. If a bilingual child experiences any language problems in one or both languages, dropping one of the languages will fix the situation. |
There is no evidence that this is so. Children who have problems with two languages generally also have them with one. |
12. There’s only one right way to raise a bilingual child. |
Parents are the experts in this field. The only wrong way to raise a bilingual child is not to do it. if you haven’t already, now is the time to start. |
From: Raising a Bilingual Child, by Barbara Zurer Pearson, PhD., p300. Also appeared in the Sept/Oct issue of Multilingual Living Magazine.
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A Favorite Quote
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
- Marcel Proust, French Writer |
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About Language Lizard
Language Lizard, LLC aims to enrich children's lives with language and culture. The Company believes that children will be inspired to learn languages and connect with other cultures if they are exposed to fun and creative learning materials early in their lives.
Language Lizard currently offers award-winning dual-language children's products in over 40 languages. To find out more about our company and products, or to sign up for this free e-newsletter, please visit www.LanguageLizard.com.
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Raising a Bilingual Child
Review by Alice Lapuerta (excerpted with permission from the September/October 2008 issue of Multilingual Living Magazine)
Raising a Bilingual Child: A step-by-step guide for parents, by Barbara Zurer Pearson, is a comprehensive and versatile handbook with depth and zest.
Whether it is a reference book that you seek, or a bag of practical tips and tricks to put to immediate action, or comprehensive information on theory and research, this book covers it all. As a guidebook for parents it presents the nuts and bolts of raising a child in two or more languages. Yet in its holistic approach towards bilingualism, this book is more than a manual. It goes well beyond general background information and addresses issues of universal bilingualism, bilingual identity, school matters, research controversies and much more.
This book has one of the best summaries and discussions on bilingual research I have come across so far. What Raising a Bilingual Child does so successfully is to explain in down-to-earth language why these studies are relevant to (parents) and how they play out in our everyday lives.
Grounded in scientific research and backed up with case studies, you get everything served on a silver platter. If you are going to read only one book on multilingualism, we suggest that you let this be the one!
Multilingual Living Magazine
Since 2006, The Bilingual/Bicultural Family Network has published this fantastic e-magazine jam-packed with valuable information for families trying to raise bilingual children. At only $12 per year for the 50+ page magazine, this is truly a great deal. To see a sample issue for free, go to their website at: http://www.biculturalfamily.org/magazine.html.
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