code-switching

We often get asked about using the word Spanglish as part of our blog’s name. I’m sure it has to do with the negative connotation the word has. You see, a lot of people assume that those of us who use Spanglish do it because we don’t know either language well enough when, in reality, the exact opposite is true. Our definition of Spanglish is the ability to go back and forth between languages effortlessly because we can. One ofRead More ...

My wife, my son and I spent the weekend with my family. Along with my parents, some other relatives came and stayed as well. It was a great time filled with food, laughs and trips down memory lane. Naturally, questions arose about our son and how we speak to him in Spanish. One interesting question I was asked is stated was “What are you going to do when he speaks half English half Spanish sentences?” This caught me a littleRead More ...

My daughter has been attending her dual immersion school in Spanish for almost three months now and I can honestly say she’s made a lot of progress. I think the most noticeable improvement has been in her increased self-esteem and the value she’s now given to speaking Spanish.  She tries much harder to complete sentences in Spanish and doesn’t get frustrated when I nudge her to speak it. My husband keeps insisting that she’s speaking way too much English andRead More ...

With the rise of dual language education in the U.S., have bilingual children become a commodity? In other words, are children who walk into the dual language classroom already speaking two languages possessing a highly valued commodity: bilingualism? The question, though, still remains, whose bilingualism is valued? Is it the “middle class” students bilingualism or is it those students who come from “lower class” homes? To distinguish between “middle” and “lower” I’d like to clarify how I am referring toRead More ...

One of the the things that can put parents who are raising bilingual children off the most – aside from their kid not responding back in the target language – is when they start mixing languages. Our first thought is that our child is falling “behind” in terms of language acquisition, but nothing can be further from the truth. My girl is almost five years old now and is very aware that she’s about to start a new stage inRead More ...