english

Last week I picked up Enzo at daycare and he ran to me with arms open wide. “Mommy!”  he said. I said no, “Yo soy mama, abuela es mami.” He started to giggle and pointed his finger at me, “no tú mommy.” Only four months into daycare and Enzo’s English is flourishing. At home, sometimes we hear him playing by himself and he is playing en inglés! His Papa swears English has already become his first language. Enzo hears his otherRead More ...

“They put me in special ed when I started school. They thought I couldn’t learn, but it was because I didn’t speak English.” During a conversation with a friend, he shared with me his experience 30+ years ago in kindergarten. During the first week of school, my friend was taken out of his regular class and placed in a separate, segregated class for students with special needs. As an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher and a parent ofRead More ...

Last week, I shared a link to an EFE story I was interviewed for regarding the current state of the Spanish language in the United States. One of the other people interviewed is a woman who runs a language school for children here in Denver and one of her quotes caught my attention. She said: “Bilingual people must possess a certain mastery of both their languages… speaking them is not enough. Writing, reading and comprehension are integral parts of learningRead More ...

This September Enzo started in the pre-nursery school classroom. I was very excited when I got the supply list and I saw that Enzo would be having “homework” — until I got the first worksheets and I sat down to do them with him. The worksheet had a big picture of an apple: A is for Apple. Well… hhhmmmm. OK. So I went ahead and did the worksheets the best way I knew how, I just translated the sheets asRead More ...

Some parents stop speaking to their children in their second language when the child seems “confused” because they use both languages simultaneously. The fact of the matter is that this is the way languages evolve when they come into contact. In fact, I have been meaning to record my 3-year-old’s colorful use of two languages. Just the other day she said, “Rafa (her older cousin), do you want to comer?” Another example is when she was asking me to buyRead More ...