Comments on: Five Ways to Boost the Minority Language Outside the Home

By: 10 bloggers and a Carnival, on Bilingualism | Bilingual For Fun™

10 bloggers and a Carnival, on Bilingualism | Bilingual For Fun™ — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:40:43 +0000

[...] a child bilingual at home, that’s not enough, you need to give the child opportunities to speak the language also outside the house and manage carefully the child’s perception of the language status (or [...]

By: SpanglishBaby-OPOL Week: An In-depth Look at Most Popular Method of Raising Bilingual Kids

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:59:22 +0000

[...] with this concern and you can find that information in this Ask an Expert post, in this one about boosting the minority language and in this post about creative activities to help your children keep up with their [...]

By: Are playgroups really that important?

Are playgroups really that important? — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:11:27 +0000

[...] We’ve mentioned them in prior posts, the Multilingual Children’s Association recommends it as do our experts. Plus, the truth is [...]

By: Camila

Camila — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:38:34 +0000

I enjoyed this post, thank you for all the wonderful ideas. My daughter and I love our full immersion Spanish class, we like it so much that we attend twice a week! She is only 18 months, but she is sure learning quickly. I speak 100% in Spanish, we attend Spanish classes twice a week, and recently we started playing together in the computer http://www.foreignlanguagefriends.com for even more reinforcement. She cannot get enough of this site. She loves the song, animations, and games. She is able to play almost all by herself… I sure hope that she continues to show this much interest about the foreign language as she gets older.

By: Christina

Christina — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:13:13 +0000

I absolutely agree that children need to be connected with their cultural roots to learn to appreciate them. My children are Mexican, Chileian, Bolivian and Japanese. We attend events, festival, restaurants and a variety of family events where the language (spanish and english) will be the primary language that is spoken. The more exposure they have to the variety of languages the easier they grasp it.

By: Ana Lilian

Ana Lilian — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 21:20:09 +0000

@Thea-Thanks for bringing up such a great point! Any elementary school mothers out there want to share your tips? We´d LOVE to hear them.

By: Thea

Thea — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:11:48 +0000

These ideas are great, and we’ve used most of them when the kids were younger. But now they are in elementary school, and it’s difficult to keep language “cool’, and find the time to use it when there is so much competition from English – i.e. homework, sports teams, playdates with classmates. How do others keep the 2nd language when the kids reach elementary school and above?

By: AnaGloria Rodriguez

AnaGloria Rodriguez — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 05:24:33 +0000

Ok, this is not exactly “outside the home” but I find it helpful to hire childcare workers who speak Spanish to my children. Again, the more people they love who speak the language, the more they are likely to speak it.
Of course, finding good help is a challenge, but worth the effort.