(Applicable to French, Chinese, English and Any Other Language)

 

 

As promised in my previous blog post (please read it before this one), in my next few posts I am going to share with you my Number One practice for building proficiency 15 minutes at a time.

 

I will also share with you a few tips to improve your technique and get the most out of those precious 15-minute language sessions with your children (and please let me know how it’s going!).

 

 

Good painters prime the walls first in order to get the smoothest surface and the brightest colors. In the same way, in order to get the most of my Number One 15-minute practice, I’d like to tell you about (and help you prime) two enormous holes that are pretty common but unfortunately not very known by parents and teachers alike.

I can see your eyes rolling… Don’t worry! This time I will indeed tell you what the practice is (but don’t cheat and keep reading! And yes, this post is somewhat long, but very juicy :).

So let’s start by filling in those two large (and pretty common) holes in the early childhood language education wall so that you can get the very best of the 15 minute practice that I will soon (promise!) share with you:

Hole #1  – Teaching Your Child Just Words (e.g. Colors, Numbers, etc) or Flashcard Style Language

Priming this hole will consist in using fluent language from the get-go.

Unfortunately, the need to use fluent language from the beginner levels is not well understood in language education. This is why, even in the 21^st century, children can go through long years of study without mastering a language.

In many instances, they simply are not exposed enough to fluent language in context. All that they do is practice words and expressions.

In fact, your children may not be exposed to fluent language until they have taken several years of language instruction, which in my opinion is absolutely crazy.

We have become addicted to flashcards (colors, numbers, animals), greetings (¡Hola! Me llamo… / Hi, my name is…), basic pragmatic expressions (¿Dónde está el baño? / Where is the bathroom?), and other language sound-bites of the sort. There is also the trap of focusing to closely on grammar…

This focus on language sound-bites, be them vocabulary, expressions or grammar in isolation is especially sad in the case of young children, because young children have a special sense for language.

As I said in the introduction to this post series,

One thing that is very clear today that [Maria] Montessori stated quite brilliantly in her time is that the young child goes through a very powerful sensitive period for figuring out languages. There are lots of studies documenting this amazing ability.

For this reason, I believe that we would do well to subscribe to Montessori’s ideas and transform ourselves into facilitators whose role is to prepare “the environment” (as Montessori called it) in order to allow young children work their inner magic with languages. By “environment,” Montessori meant much more than the physical environment; the term referred to all sorts of relationships, practices, and materials.

We need to change this state of affairs and start offering the rich fluent language that our children need in order to activate their inner detective-like linguistic skills.

A few weeks of daily 15 minutes packed with carefully crafted fluent language in context can help your children advance more than a whole year of unfocused and random delivery of words and expressions.

In fact, 15 minutes of carefully crafted fluent language in context can be all that you need to outrun the hare (if you remember what I said about the turtle and the hare).

But, what do I mean by “fluent language in context?”

By FLUENT I mean the way that native speakers of the language talk to each other. Granted that native speakers also make modifications when talking to babies and young children, but they don’t chop the language to the extreme.

Yes, their children will hear plenty of colors, numbers, and “Hello, birdie!” or “Goodbye, doggy.”

However, native parents will also say, “Today is a beautiful day. Let’s go to the park!” and have a fluent conversation with their children, even if the children are very young and only smile back.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use sound-bytes – they do indeed serve an important purpose in early language education. What I am saying is that it should not be at the expense of fluent language, because – let me tell you – NOTHING will take your children farther than using fluent language.

Unfortunately, in the foreign language circles (specially in regards to young children) chopping the language has become the norm, with the result that children are rarely exposed to fluent language.

Instead, your children may be learning words such as “mano” (hand) or “baño” (bathroom), or sentences such as “¿Cómo te llamas?” (What’s your name?), but they are not really exposed to longer sequences of fluent language that they (the children) have to decipher and then figure out how to produce themselves.

A very common method in elementary school, for example, is called “TPRS. ” In a nutshell, students are given a few vocabulary words accompanied by gestures at a time and little by little they start making a story out of it.

Yes, TPRS is a valuable tool in a teacher’s toolbox and the students learn and make progress, but TPRS does not employ the powerful brain of young children effectively. There is simply not enough of a young child’s inner linguistic knack being employed here. Fluent language should be part of any teacher (or parent) toolbox from the very beginning.

By IN CONTEXT I mean that when using fluent language with young language learners there has to be a clear point of reference. Young children are not able to process abstract ideas. For example, they will have a hard time understanding subtle cultural differences, but you can expose them to child-friendly cultural practices such as eating with sticks.

Hole #2 – Sitting your children in front of the TV or just letting them use iPad apps, DVDs or other programs ALONE

Priming this wall will consist in interacting with your children in the language.

This is another factor that is not well known by the general public and even by many language professionals: young children do not learn much language by watching the TV or using gadgets on their own, no matter how fun and interactive they are.

As they grow up, they will be able to learn more language that way, but not when they are young.

During the last two decades there has been a lot of fascinating research on the young child’s brain and how it process language and other information and let me tell you, we could well say that the young child has a mind of his own!

Interestingly enough, Maria Montessori was also talking about this many decades ago. She compared the process of human development to that of the caterpillar. While most people think that humans develop in a linear way, she realized that young children are to adults what the caterpillar is to a butterfly. That is, human development is not linear, but rather metamorphic.

In humans, this radical change is not physical as in the caterpillar, but psychological. Just as the caterpillar looks and behaves very differently than the butterfly, the young child thinks, organizes, and processes information quite differently than an adult.

That is why we need to think differently.

So What Do We Know About These Major Differences or Holes?

In connection with hole #1 we know, for example, that babies are pros at detecting language patterns, including sounds and grammar (young children still have this faculty, although not as acute as that of babies). In contrast, adults are pretty bad at this, especially at detecting sounds. That’s why we want everything explained and sounded out for us.

In connection with hole #2 we know, for example, that babies and toddlers simply don’t learn ANY language by watching TV. NOT EVEN if you insert a video of their mommies talking to them. The same applies to other gadgets. For some reason, our human caterpillars need direct human interaction in order to learn language. This continues to be very strong during early childhood. In contrast, adults and older children can learn a lot of language by using a multiplicity of platforms on their own.

I’ll give you a second tip in reference to hole #2. Young children learn language best in one-on-one interactions with adults or older children. Obviously, if young children have very basic language, they will not learn as much language from each other as from a rich interaction with adults or older siblings/children.

Please note that I am not saying that young children should not interact with other children their age. NOT AT ALL! They will benefit greatly from that interaction as well. What I am saying is that all things being equal, young children will experience the most language growth when interacting with adults or older children. So make sure to dedicate some special time for that one-on-one interaction (the practice I am about to share is great for this).

That is why YOU, the parent or educator, are in a unique position to provide the best language education at the best time. All you need then is the how-to knowledge.

So Now that We Have Primed the Early Language Wall (at Least in Reference to Two Important Holes) … What Is the 15-Minute Golden Practice That Tops Any Other to Speed-Up Proficiency in Spanish or Other Language?

The answer is…

and I am sure this answer may surprise you…

READING ALOUD to/with your children

Truly? Reading aloud? To learn a new language in early childhood? How come?

Yes, if I only had 15 minutes of instruction or interaction with my children I would make absolutely sure to read aloud to them. I know that I would get the most bang for my time by doing that.

However, I told you that I would do it somewhat differently. Multilingual upbringing requires multilingual solutions.

But this blog is getting way too long and I want you to digest the tons of information that I just gave you. So let’s stop here for today. I will be back with some great tips to make the most of that reading aloud interaction next Saturday, March 3^rd.  Stay tuned or sign in to my list to receive a reminder! [To opt in to my list, just write your name and e-mail information on the right sidebar where it says, “Sign Up for Language Learning Tips”]

To be continued on 3/3…

Best,

Ana Lomba

P. S. In the meantime, you may want to take a look at the “Language Challenge 180” hosted by Multilingual Living. Better to learn in company, don’t you think? At this point there are over 350 families that have joined the challenge. Why not join the fun!

P. S. S. Talking about reading aloud, make sure to check my collection of bilingual e-storybooks in Spanish, French, and Chinese with English on this website (also available as iPad apps from the iPad App Store).

P. S. S. S. And if you are interested in other languages, check out the Language Lizard website for fantastic bilingual books in many languages.

 

 

 

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Time is one of our worst enemies in language learning. Foreign language teachers typically have very short periods of instruction, sometimes as short as 15 minutes.

Parents wanting to introduce a language at home don’t have it easy either, with millions of things competing for their parenting attention.

The constant bombardment of information doesn’t facilitate things either. So many things we could be doing to help our children or students learn languages, but are they truly effective? Where is the truth in all this fog?

It is easy to give up after trying many things that seem to not lead anywhere. But what if we could isolate the practices that bring the best results for young children?

What if instead of loosing steam with things that don’t lead anywhere we could apply laser-like focus on efforts or practices that bring the most proficiency for the least amount of time?

Beware of False Promises that Will Curtail Your Kid’s Fluency

Sadly, teachers and parents alike spend tons of time in the least effective ways. Since most people out there do not know what practices are or are not effective in language learning they are easily tricked into doing more of the least effective ones.

This is not surprising – the market is saturated with products that offer very little value but are presented as if they could do magical things for you –

“Learn a language in 10 days” or “The only way to learn a foreign language,” claim two of the most famous language learning companies (Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone), and there are TONS of other misleading nonsense like that out there.

In the case of young children, not a day passes by that you don’t hear about a new application, toy or other product aimed at teaching young children the colors, numbers and animals in Spanish or other languages.

But seriously, do your kids need so many products to teach them the same words? And what are they supposed to do with those words? Will they ever use them to talk about something? Will they even recognize those words when a native speaker talks to them at a normal fluent speed?

Songs are fun and definitely much better than learning isolated words, but they will not have a significant impact in your children’s fluency either.

Having been in the field for many years and knowing what is behind the linguistic brain engines of young children, I can tell you the sad truth: if all that you do with your 15 minutes is this (memorizing words or expressions), you are absolutely wasting your time.

15 Minutes of Spanish (French, Chinese…) Requires a Focused Strategy

When you only have 15 minutes, you have to be highly selective and learn to sift the gold from the gravel. Learning words or isolated sentences will not do.

But the question is: Can a child learn a language 15 minutes at a time?

The answer: It depends.

Having all the time in the world is not always the best thing…

Neither is having many other great advantages such as being a native mom or teacher…

It all comes down to TACTICS.

Are you familiar with the fable of the turtle and the hare? The turtle wins the race because she keeps the finish line in mind and keeps walking slowly but surely towards it.

In contrast, the hare, that could have won the race in a snap, is too unfocused and self-confident of his abilities in the matter and wastes tons of time doing the wrong things along the way.

15 minutes several times a week will add up and take you through the finish line – as long as you are selective with what you do and don’t goof around like the hare.

Just as the turtle, you can outrun the hare if you keep your focus on the finish line and stay on course.

In Fact Having Only 15 Minutes to Do Spanish May Be an Advantage

Many people think, “I only have 15 minutes, so why bother. I’ll just do a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and I’ll be done. The kids can’t truly learn much language in 15 minutes anyway.”

Now, what a losing train of thoughts! Unfortunately, a lot of people fall for this.

Well, let me tell you a secret…

15 minutes can indeed COUNT A LOT in language learning, depending on what you do with them. Again, it all comes down to TACTICS.

So, I invite you to think differently and treat those 15 minutes as a golden opportunity to introduce your kids to a new language.

Here is the new you speaking again:

• “Since I only have 15 minutes, I am going to learn to think strategically about language learning and get the most out of it.”

• “I do not speak Spanish (or French, German, etc), but I can manage 15 minutes of Spanish with my kids. I am sure it will get easier with practice and, who knows! soon I may be able to do 60 minutes or the whole morning.”

See how having only 15 minutes can be seen as an advantage? 15 minutes can turn you into a tactical thinker. Also, if you are a non-native parent or an inexperienced teacher, 15 minutes of Spanish will probably sound much feasible than 60 minutes.

So What Would You, Ana Lomba, Do if You Only Had 15 Minutes?

In my opinion, there is ONE practice that tops all others to help young children learn languages gain higher fluency in less time.

If I only had 15 minutes of class instruction or if I was too tired or busy to do more than 15 minutes of Spanish with my children at home, this is the one practice I would use the most.

Is the 15-Minute Practice that You Are Talking About Backed by Research?

There is ample research to back up the fundamental premise. In fact, the practice that I am talking about is one of the most researched practices in education and it is considered a crucial threshold in the path to getting a good education.

That being said, the angle in which I will present it to you is not the traditional way of using this practice. This new angle is based on my two-decade experience as a language educator and entrepreneur specialized in young children learning languages.

If you are familiar with my work then you know that I am on a mission to change the stagnant condition of the early language-learning field and I am always trying new things that I think are promising.

My goals with re-purposing the practice are two-fold:

• To target the specific needs of young children learning languages, which are not a priority or even a consideration of this practice in the current monolingual state of affairs.
• To make great strides in language proficiency in situations that are otherwise not ideal for mastering a new language, such as when time is at a prime (e.g. when you only have 15 minutes) or when the adults do not speak the target language.

Why Should You Try a New Way of Learning Language?

Many of the greatest advances in education have come from shaking and turning things around.

Remember Maria Montessori? She was not a teacher, but a medical doctor on a mission to discover how to educate children with special needs. In the process, she developed a very innovative sensorial and child-centered approach that has revolutionized the world of education and helped millions of children around the world (and not only children with disabilities).

Dr. Montessori had a hunch that there was a full universe inside each child waiting to be unraveled. Up until that time, teaching had always traveled one way: from the teacher to the child.

Montessori flipped the (until then) unquestioned teacher-centered model 180 degrees around. In her ingenious method, the teacher becomes a facilitator whose main role is to help the child unwrap the learning compass that is already inside of him or her and become the motor of his or her own progress. The results were (and are) extraordinary.

We have learned quite a lot about the young multilingual mind since Maria Montessori’s death but…

One thing that is very clear today that Montessori stated quite brilliantly in her time is that the young child goes through a very powerful sensitive period for figuring out languages. There are lots of studies documenting this amazing ability.

For this reason, I believe that we would do well to subscribe to Montessori’s ideas and transform ourselves into facilitators whose role is to prepare “the environment” (as Montessori called it) in order to allow young children work their inner magic with languages. By “environment,” Montessori meant much more than the physical environment; the term referred to all sorts of relationships, practices, and materials.

[Please note that the ideas that I will share with you for those precious 15 minutes are my own. I am not trained in the Montessori method and my system is quite different to hers. However, I am a great believer in the potential of young children and for this reason I am on my own quest to facilitate their spontaneous learning one modified practice at a time.]

I’ll Show You How to Unwrap the Children’s Inner Language Learning Mechanism 15 Minutes at a Time

So here is the thing:

If you don’t try new things, you will never discover anything significant –

That is why I try plenty of new things even at the risk of being disappointed. I know that this is how I will discover the gold nuggets hidden in the sand.

And now I invite you to jump in and try this practice at home or in your class – again, the practice refers to what I would do if I only had 15 minutes a day to help my children or students learn a language.

But you will have be patient like the turtle and wait for the continuation to this blog (I have written it as a series – I won’t only tell you what practice this is, but also tips to get the most out of it). So come back on February 28^th and keep reading… or opt in to my list and I will send you a reminder to keep reading next week. [To opt in to my list, just write your name and e-mail information on the right sidebar where it says, “Sign Up for Language Learning Tips”]

To be continued on 2/28… [Note: The next issue is now available. Click here to continue reading: Part 2: Only 15 Minutes for Spanish? Then Be Aware of THIS]

Best,

Ana Lomba

P. S. You may want to take a look at the “Language Challenge 180” hosted by Multilingual Living. Better to learn in company, don’t you think? At this point there are over 325 families that have joined the challenge. Why not join the fun!

 

 

 

After watching this fantastic video with tips to advance the language skills of young children (based on research), a teacher asked me “Isn’t this more a video more for parents? [Sic] What are the ramifications for modern language teachers?”

 

 

My response was, “substitute the word ‘parent’ by ‘modern language teacher,’” but that’s an easy answer.  Let me elaborate a little more.

Foreign language teachers understand that helping our students reach high levels of proficiency is the ultimate goal in our profession. Obviously, bilingual parents share this goal as well (at least many).

But the question is, do world language teachers use proficiency-building strategies like the ones on the video on a consistent basis and from early childhood?

Or do they use activities mostly targeted to learning limited vocabulary and expressions?

Judging by the fact that most students in the US never pass the Novice High level and only some reach the Intermediate levels (even fewer get to Advanced) and seeing what I see around, I suspect that more needs to be done to advance the language skills of our students.

By the way, what does it mean to graduate with a Novice High level? It means that after years spent in foreign language classes the majority of US students out there can’t communicate much further than a simple “Hi, my name is… What is your name?” and highly scripted exchanges of the sort. The moment a native speaker starts talking to them in fluent conversation, they are completely lost.

 

So going back to the video, I believe that this video is specially well-suited for foreign or modern language teachers because it points very clearly to the things that are missing in today’s foreign language classrooms and it provides great examples of how to tackle the problem in early childhood.

It’s not just a video for bilingual (or monolingual) parents!

 

Let’s review what the video says:

 

“A child isn’t born with a language ready to go.” It is all about the early experiences.

“The role of experience in shaping the brain systems [that are] important for language starts very early.” Actually, it starts from the womb.

Young children do not zero in to recordings, DVDs, etc. Social interaction is critical.

“The changes in the brain do not happen automatically when they reach a certain age. They only happen when children actually learn more words and more complex sentences.”

So what the researcher in the video highlights is the importance of “the right kind of experiences.”

***These experiences are indeed so critical in the case of language development that, as expressed in the last bullet point, the changes in the brain will not happen just because a child reaches a certain age. They will only happen if he or she receives the right type of language stimulus.***

Are we providing the “right kind of experiences” that will lead to a change in the brain and high levels of language proficiency in the target language in the current early language classrooms?

Those of you who believe with me that we are not quite there yet, may want to reexamine the video and self-apply some of the great advice there.

We, teachers of young children, together with the bilingual (or monolingual) parents shown in the video can help by:

• Talking a lot and using more complex language than our students are using.
• Taking turns in our conversations with them, not just doing all the talking.
• Providing full explanations to our students’ questions and asking questions to them as well.
• Reading to and sharing books with our students every day.

If we believe that we are incredibly fortunate to be working with children at the best time to learn languages (the “sensitive period” that the researcher mentions), then we have an equal responsibility to make sure that we provide the best possible language experiences for our students.

Let’s start the conversation, and let’s keep learning from bilingual parents (that is, let’s realize that the same advice geared to them applies to us, language teachers!).

Best,

Ana Lomba

 

 

Once upon a time, I was a young Spanish teacher in a beautiful private school in Princeton, NJ, called the Chapin School. Chapin had just finished building an amazing new addition and – lucky me – I was assigned a huge classroom with big windows to the well-cared grounds.

There I was, in a wonderful empty space full of possibilities. I could do anything I wanted with my classroom – what an amazing opportunity, ah? So I, being the novice teacher that I was and not knowing any better, quickly crowded the empty space with desks, chairs, file cabinets, and posters and banners in Spanish about the colors, numbers, etc.  Not only that, I spent the next few months making hundreds of flashcards to fill up those cabinets… quite something if you know what I think about flashcards today!

In my defense I will say that it probably works like this in any profession – you first have to walk the beaten path for a while before you blaze your own trail.

My perspective about the ideal language learning space has changed 360° ever since. Or rather, I have a perspective today while back then I didn’t have any – I simply didn’t even think in terms of learning space design, period. Having taught in many different types of settings afterwards (mostly rented space in schools and churches) has probably contributed a great deal to my way of thinking today.

I invite you to look at this “Play and Learn Spaces” pin board where I have posted some pictures with play design ideas I find intriguing.

Of course it depends on what space you have available as a teacher, but if I could go back to ’97 and be the space designer of that glorious Spanish classroom, I would:

• Think in terms of a theater stage. That is, part of the classroom would essentially be used as a stage to be redecorated according to the lesson’s theme. For example, if we were working on a story, the classroom would be decorated for that particular story. Everything would be movable and storage-friendly.

• Depending on the age of the students, I would enlist their help in creating the decorations and integrate this as one more component of the language instruction (in parent-child classes, the parents can be the helpers).

• Also depending on the age of the students, the decorations would be more realistic (for young children) or more symbolic (for older children). For older children that can understand symbolic representation, something as simple as the mirror in this picture would do.

 

 

• The younger the children the more realistic the props should be, such as this tractor.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/109493834663233977/

• I like this picture because it shows how even lines with black tape on the walls can be quite creative and suggestive.

 

 

• And what about using sturdy room dividers made out of cork, flannel, cloth, cardboard or other materials? These panels could also serve as additional boards to hang, pin or draw scene images. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a good picture to show what I have in mind, but I think you’ll get the idea.

The possibilities are endless once you start exploring, and even in situations where you do not have your own classroom or playroom you can be inventive and create small theatrical stages or play centers. Take a look at this picture of the three little pigs houses that I used on a simple flannel board.

What are your ideas about fun spaces for language learning? Any pictures that you would like to share?

BTW, there are more pictures on the Play and Learn Spaces board that I mentioned, not only the ones above.

Best,

Ana Lomba