Editor’s note: This post was originally published on Dec. 7, 2009. On occasion, we re-publish older posts that we deem are still relevant to ensure our new readers are exposed to all of our content. 

Although sometimes I long for a few minutes of silence, the reality is that I love the fact that my three-year-old daughter, Vanessa, talks non-stop. Her vocabulary in Spanish is extensive and I know it has to do with the fact that I’ve talked to her since she was in my belly.

In fact, many studies show that the amount of conversations and the variety of words that children listen to have a direct influence on the pace at which they develop language skills. Children that are exposed to both more words and uncommon words in their conversations with adults tend to develop broader vocabularies.

So, how do you do this? Expose your children to a vast variety of experiences making sure you turn them into an opportunity for them to learn:

MEAL TIME

From cooking terms to the origin of a specif dish, the chances to teach your children tons of vocabulary abound in the kitchen. Just the other day, after Vanessa finished eating ice cream with her new-found-love, cajeta, she asked me to please wipe her hands with a wet towel because she hates being sticky. So I did and we went finger by finger saying their name in Spanish a couple of times for each hand.

PLAY TIME

Some children are more prone to have a conversation if they have something concrete to talk about, such as a toy or another material thing. Vanessa makes up all kinds of stories about her plush animals and she loves to tell me all about them. I encourage her to do so by asking probing questions and making relevant comments.

TRAVEL TIME

Oh, how I love to travel! I think there’s no better way to learn than this one. When traveling with children, it’s a good idea to learn about the place you’ll be going to before the actual trip. This will probably make them more eager to get there and will make them pay better attention to their surroundings once there. We recently took a road trip about six hours southwest of Denver to a spot famed for it’s healing hot springs. A few days before the trip, I showed Vanessa the route we were going to take on a big map I have hanging in my office and we talked about what we would find there. She was fascinated before we even got there and now, a few weeks later, she still talks about the trip.

ROUTINE TIME

As you probably know by now, children crave routines and I do too because they offer great opportunities for interaction. Every afternoon, after I pick up my daughter from preschool and we’re in the car ready to go home, I ask her about her day. We have great conversations and she’s come to expect them by now. Some times she has a funny story to tell me about what happened, other times she shares a song she learned in music class, and still others she has a question about something one of her teachers said. And, as we talk about all these things, her vocabulary continues to expand.

What are some of the experiences you like to turn into learning opportunities?

My second child is approaching his first birthday, and with this milestone comes the excitement of new words spoken and understood. Also, as it relates to our bilingual ambitions, this age is my favorite because success is defined in a measure that is achievable for our monolingual household. It’s cheating, I know, but at almost one year old, my hijo is completely bilingual! Actually, just today, he said “más” and used the sign for more. I was ecstatic! I continued to ask him, “¿quieres más plátano?” and he continued to use sign language to reinforce his baby talk, which clearly was the word más.

My child understands Spanish! He speaks Spanish! That feeling of success never gets old. As a parent who strives for moderately achievable, highly ambitious language goals, hearing my kids speak Spanish is more than a simple pleasure.

I remember that exhilaration when my oldest was his age. The excitement of hearing her speak simple words in Spanish has since been overcome with the challenge to immerse her in environments where dialogue is conducted in Spanish — not just simple words or directives from Mom. I want her to engage in Spanish; to hear words combined into a sentence and for her to understand. I’m not even asking for her to respond in Spanish, but I very much expect her to comprehend. At the very least, to understand the love of her great grandmother as I did when I was in young – in Spanish.

As Sebastian grows, I’m sure we will continue this uphill battle of language immersion and comprehension. As his communication improves, and he becomes conscious of the world around, I know that the challenges will also grow. But, for now, I am enjoying this milestone of bilingual success.

We always want more; to understand more, comprehend more, and engage more. I am constantly asking myself if I am doing enough to celebrate the culture of my heritage and language with my children. But, for today, Sebastian’s más is enough for me.

{Photo courtesy of Vanessa Bell}

I have nothing against technology when raising bilingual children. Apps, online games and movies in Spanish are a great supplement in this journey — but they’re just that, a supplement. It is a mistake to think that just sitting your child in front of the television set to watch a show in Spanish or to let them mouse around with a bilingual computer game will expose them to the kind of vocabulary needed to become proficient in the minority language.

More than one study has proven that the best way for children to develop their language and reading skills is through dialogue. This is particularly important for bilingual children. So motivate your child to interact verbally with you and you’ll be teaching him the basics of language: phonetics, vocabulary and grammar. These will eventually help him develop more complex skills such as reading and writing.

6 Ways to Improve Your Child’s Vocabulary:

1) Read, read and then read some more — Nothing is better for boosting your child’s vocabulary than reading. Read to them out loud. Read to them often. And it doesn’t have to be just books. You can read everything from labels to billboards to them!

2) Don’t change the way you normally speak — You don’t have to simplify your vocabulary when you talk to your children. They will get what you’re trying to say even when they don’t understand every single word. I’m pretty sure part of the reason why my daughter’s vocabulary is so extensive for her age is because I always speak to her the way I would if I were talking to, say, my husband.

3) Expand on the conversation — You can do this by responding to your child using longer sentences based on his simple phrases. When my 3-year-old son, Santiago, says something like: “Me encantan mis carritos.” I say something like: “Sí, tus carritos son muy divertidos porque van muy rápido. ¿Cuál es tu favorito?” I also do this a lot when I read him a book and he points to something in particular. I expand on what he’s saying by asking him to describe the object in more detail or relating it to something we did or saw recently. That always gets him going.

4) Understand that her mistakes are part of her progress — Grammar and pronunciation errors will happen as your child establishes her own knowledge of the language. Maybe she understands the rule about conjugating certain verbs, for example, but she’s not aware of the exceptions — and if you know anything about Spanish, then you know those abound. Just give her the correct response, but don’t make a big deal out of it. Vanessa used to do this constantly with the verb poner. She would say, “¿Por qué papito ponió su mochila ahí?” And I would respond, “Papito puso su mochila ahí para no olvidársela“. Eventually, she got it.

5) Turn everything into a topic of conversation — Try to provide your children with all kinds of experiences in as many different places as possible and as often as possible. I love taking walks around our neighborhood with my kids because just about anything going on out there becomes a topic of conversation and helps expand their vocabulary: children playing basketball, Easter decorations, the mailman delivering a package, etc.  In fact, it was thanks to one of our walks that Vanessa learned the phrase “darle la vuelta a la manzana” which translates as a walk around the block.

6) Learn to listen — Being a good listener is such an essential trait, yet not everybody possesses it. My father used to say: “Calla y escucha”. Roughly translated into: “Shut up and listen.” The truth is that you learn a lot more from listening than from talking — especially when it comes to helping your child enrich his vocabulary. It’s absolutely normal for little ones to go off on a tangent when verbalizing an idea or sharing a story with you. Just listen without interrupting and then you’ll be better equipped to ask the kind of questions that will lead to even more conversations.

What are some strategies you use to boost your child’s vocabulary?

{Photo by runintherain}

January is over and Valentine’s is right around the corner. As I’ve said before I’m not a huge fan of this celebration, but I do think it’s a great time to do fun things with my kids. So I loved the idea of creating our own messages in Spanish on the large conversation hearts by Brach’s pictured above.

I figured that it’d be not only fun, but it’d be a great Spanish vocabulary lesson for my kids.

First, I showed them the idea concept behind the conversation hearts and I gave them an example by writing the word AMOR on one of them with the red food-safe pen that comes in the box. Then, I told them that before we got started we had to come up with a list of words related to love, friendship and Valentine’s Day in Spanish. We had so much fun coming up with words!

In all honesty, I figured most of them would come from Vanessa, since she’s the eldest. But boy was I in for a big surprise! It was actually my 3.5-year-old son who came up with the majority of the words on our list. Check them out:

Vanessa wasn’t too thrilled, but then she came up with a few phrases herself (such as ¿me quieres? and eres mi amor) and we were ready to get started. My first-grader did an amazing job writing these words onto the conversation hearts. (And her little brother has fun scribbling on them too!) So not only did we get to brainstorm some vocabulary, but Vanessa had a chance to practice writing all these words in Spanish too.

I must say I that my favorite part of Brach’s Conversation Hearts, which are available exclusively at your local Walmart, is their large size — perfect for little hands with plenty of space for those just learning to write. ¡Quedaron súper lindos!

Check out all the Valentine’s goodies we have for you here and our Valentine’s Pinterest board is really cute too!

Disclosure: As a participant in the Walmart Moms Program, I’ve received product samples and compensation for my time and efforts in creating this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Handy Manny was the first to render me speechless. My twins were toddlers, and my mother-in-law had given them a Handy Manny tool box for Christmas. Awesome gift, hours of play time ensured. We ripped it open, started in with all of Manny’s tools, his martillo, his…his…. A whole set of toys were splayed before me and I didn’t know the Spanish word for any of them. El serrucho y el destornillador - somehow those words never made it into the Spanish classes I’d taken since I started learning the language in seventh grade.

Vocab lists for the countless types of trucks and tractors in this world? They didn’t exist either. I realized that over the years I’d gathered an extensive knowledge of Spanish, yet I was missing the vocabulary of childhood. As we began to read more books, explore more imaginary worlds, I needed a virtual dictionary or at least my husband, a native Spanish speaker, nearby to pinch hit. With time, though, my vocabulary blossomed, and each new word gave me that sense of discovery kids have when they learn something new. I played with each word as it rolled off my tongue, and tried to figure out how to weave my new expressions into more conversations and stories. Soon we were flying a cohete to the moon,

 fighting Capitan Garfio with the help of Campanita,

and learning about the licks and love of a newborn cachorrito. As my littlest learned to neigh and growl, screech, squawk and hiss, so did I.

When we first decided to raise our kids bilingual, I lamented that I’d never get to use the witty English-language sayings parents use to keep their kids in line – stored up over more than three decades of listening to my and other moms. I still have a hard time with the fact that some of my favorite children’s books aren’t translated into Spanish.

I try not to sweat it though. Truth is, I wouldn’t trade my new words for the world.

{first photo by Loren Javier , photo of puppy by  justmakeit }

Have you ever looked at a foreign language textbook and not known where to begin? All those pages of vocabulary…

A great app by Noyo is helping us avoid the symptoms of Overwhelming Textbook Syndrome. This iPad app is overflowing with useful Spanish vocabulary – over 1800 words! Each of the eight themed sections has over 20 pages of labeled pictures with written vocabulary (in Spanish and English) that can be shown or hidden so that you can test yourself about the items in the picture. For further support, turn on the audio feature to hear each word pronounced. Then, complete the multiple-choice assessment at the end of each section to track your progress.

While it looks like a middle-school Spanish textbook, the vocabulary is extensive enough for adults who are still learning or brushing up on spelling and pronunciation. Review categories like “Los viajes” or “Las estaciones.” The kids will especially love “Los animales” and “Los deportes.”

The most appealing thing about this app is that it can be used for entertainment (what child doesn’t love tapping and interacting with colorful pictures?) and education. It truly lives up to Noyo’s slogan: “Picture-Perfect Language Learning.”

Find Noyo Spanish Vocab Builder – Beginner in iTunes

Available for iPad and Android

Recommended for Spanish learners in the first 3 years of language acquisition

Price: $7.99

Check out Noyo on Facebook

While the majority of children in the United States will be going back to school this week, Vanessa just finished her third week in first grade. Recently, my husband and I were invited to a sort of parent/teacher conference so Vanessa could get an assessment in terms of her reading, writing and math skills. It was an opportunity for us to let her teacher know about Vanessa’s learning style, her likes and dislikes, and also for us to get to know her teaching style.

Vanessa was acting really shy when we entered her classroom and sat across from her first grade teacher. Mrs. R started by asking her a few questions about her reading, but  my daughter barely looked at her, and kind of hid behind my arm. I know Vanessa can be shy when she first meets somebody, but this was different since she’d been in Mrs. R’s classroom for nearly two weeks. Prior to the assessment, I had explained to Vanessa what we were going to be doing and how she’d be asked a few questions. So when she started acting like that in her classroom, I gently reminded her the purpose of the meeting and asked her to please answer her teacher’s questions.

Vanessa then started to nod “yes” and “no” as her teacher continued with her questions and gave barely audible answers to simple questions. Honestly, I was pretty confused because Vanessa is so talkative and she loves school. My husband kept making faces at me to leave her alone as I desperately prodded her to answer in full sentences. (By the way, Mrs. R didn’t seemed fazed by any of it. I guess that comes with 21 years of experience!).

And then, Mrs. R asked Vanessa a question about a math problem they had done in class a couple of days before. She told us Vanessa was very good at math — no idea who she got that from! — and asked her to explain to us how she came up with the solution to the problem. Vanessa just kind of looked at us and then Mrs. R said, “Go ahead! You can tell them in Spanish if you want.” Vanessa turned to look at me and told me exactly step by step what she had done to solve the math problem… in Spanish!

Long story short, when we left the assessment, I couldn’t help but ask my husband if he thought Vanessa had acted like that because she lacks the vocabulary necessary to communicate in English. He, of course, thought I was absolutely out of my mind. “She’s just shy,” he assured me. “You know how she gets.” But I’m not so sure and I’ve been left wondering if we need to change our bilingual strategy a bit.

Could it be that Vanessa is not as bilingual as I thought? To be sure, she excelled in kindergarten and is currently reading above grade level. I’ve heard her interact in English without issues when I’ve volunteered in her classroom, and with her little friends during playdates and birthday parties. I know she can obviously communicate in English, but I also know her Spanish vocabulary is way more extensive.

I probably shouldn’t worry about this, and I know lots of parents raising bilingual children wish they could say the same about their children’s vocabulary in Spanish. But I’m not going to lie, I am a bit concerned. I’m thinking I need to do something about it, but what? Should I start speaking English to her? Or am I worried for no reason? What would you do?

I have a bright 7 year old son. I’ve spoken to him since infancy in Spanish (OPOL). He used to speak only in Spanish to me, but now speaks and responds in English 90% of the time (this began in Kindergarten).

He is really quite bright and just started 3rd grade (he skipped 1st). He has a hunger to learn and to communicate. And the things he wants to talk about are getting more complex than my Spanish can handle! When he was under age 5, short simple phrases were fine, the topics were nature and home and love and names of things, and my Spanish was perfectly sufficient. Now, I need to use nuance and lots of vocab about castles, historical periods, math, conservation of endangered animals, orchestra and music terms, the subjects go one and on! I can speak in a basic way in Spanish but to get into great detail I need to mix in English. I hate it.

As an OPOL parent, what do I do when the minority language is getting more difficult for me as my son’s education advances? I feel that sticking to Spanish that lacks the depth and vocab of English prevents me from properly educating him about so many things that are important now that he’s older! He wants me to teach him about so many things, but I am missing the fluidity in Spanish. My responses to him are a bit choppy and less colorful while he goes on and on expressive, descriptive English!

Do I need to transition to another method? And how do I explain it to him?

Carla

Dear Carla,

I think it would be a shame if you stopped speaking Spanish with your son and threw away what you have been building for the past seven years. It appears that his current preference for and proficiency in English has already made him a passive bilingual (he can understand Spanish but really has difficulty or no motivation to speak it). So, at this point, if you give up Spanish, his odds of becoming a productive bilingual will really be low. Is this what you want?

I understand that he is a very bright child whose command of English might be beyond most average children. If this is the case, why don’t you exploit his talent and ‘his hunger to communicate’ to make him fluent in Spanish? Let school, books, and the environment teach him everything he wants to know about castles, historical periods, and music terms (living in the US will easily provide these opportunities). But let him further develop his cognitive skills by learning to speak another language. In fact, while the majority of monolingual children will eventually learn the vocabulary associated with all the ‘complex’ topics you mention, very few might be fortunate to learn another language in childhood.

So my suggestion is that not only you continue to provide Spanish input to your child but that you encourage him and socialize him into speaking only Spanish with you. Challenge him to use Spanish-only sentences (no mixing to English!) and to learn even simple words that he might have forgotten or never have learned. Introduce him to the complexities of Spanish literacy and challenge him to become not only bilingual but also bi-literate (even if his Spanish skills will not be as high as in English). At the same time, work on improving your Spanish skills by taking an advanced Spanish course, and use books and media to teach yourself and your child vocabulary in a wide range of topics. This is no easy feat as you will need to put in a lot of time, effort and motivation. But if you succeed, you will not only have a quite common child with a single, well-developed language but a special child who can navigate between languages and cultures and who possesses all the skills necessary to live in the 21^st century.

Simona Montanari, Ph.D.- – Assistant Professor of Child and Family Studies at California State University in Los Angeles. She is the department’s expert in early multilingual development and has a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Southern California. Simona is Italian and she’s also a mommy to trilingual daughters aged 3 and 4 1/2. In addition, she conducts a workshop titled: “How to Raise a Bilingual Child” in the LA area. You can read her answers here.

Thank you,

Persis”

Dear Persis,

What you describe is very typical in bilingual development.  Research shows that children’s output is driven by their input.  Typically, if they hear one language more, they will use that language more.  We also know that children learn to understand before they speak, for the most part. It is a good sign that she appears to understand everything you say to her.

I haven’t met any 18-month-olds who can have “normal conversations” by my definition.  It is common that they have a set of words in one language and another set of words in their other language with a little bit of overlap. In fact, research shows that children her age who are raised in bilingual settings typically express 70% of their concepts in one language or the other and only 30% in both languages.

I encourage you to continue to use both languages with your daughter.  Before you know it, she will converse with you and your husband in English and Spanish.

Best,

Ellen Kester, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

Ellen Stubbe Kester, Ph.D, CCS-LLP – A bilingual (English/Spanish) speech language professional who earned her Ph.D. in Communication Sciences and Disorders from The University of Texas at Austin. She has provided bilingual Spanish/English speech-language services in schools, hospitals, and early intervention settings. Her research focus is on the acquisition of semantic language skills in bilingual children, with emphasis on assessment practices for the bilingual population. She is the President of Bilinguistics, which is “dedicated to enhancing speech and language services for Spanish-English bilingual children, enabling those children to achieve their highest communicative and academic potential.” You can read her answers here.

Photo credit: tajai

The other night, my husband and I were having a pretty “heated” discussion about the right Spanish word for earring. Pretty lame, huh? But I’ve always had a fascination with words – it’s not for nothing that I chose journalism as a career path – in both English and Spanish. Anyhow, for my husband, who hails from Puerto Rico, an earring is una pantalla. To me, una pantalla means a screen or lampshade. So there we were right before bedtime going back and forth about who was right (me) and who was wrong (him). Until finally, he took out his iPhone, clicked on the dictionary app from the Real Academia Española, and proved me wrong. (If you’d like to see the definition of the word pantalla, go here.)

The main thing to point out here, though, is that according to RAE’s definition, only Puerto Ricans use this word for earring. Everyone else uses arete. (What word do you use?). I only mention this because when speaking to our daughter, Vanessa, my husband always prefaces certain words by saying its popular name and then emphasizing that it’s also called something else, but only in Perú.

For example:

- Vanessa, ¿quieres batata? (sweet potato)

- ¿Qué es batata?

- Batata es lo mismo que camote, solo que el único país en el mundo donde se le dice camote es en el Perú.

As you might remember, this is not the first time I write about our amazingly varied vocabulary in which one word can have several meanings or one object can have several names, depending on the country, and many times, even the region within just one country. Not to mention how some words, meaningless to some, can be actual insults or vulgaridades to others. Take, for example, the word papaya. To me—and to most of you out there—it’s just the word for a delicious tropical fruit which I could eat every single day. But brace yourself if you something like this to a Cuban: “Me acabo de comer tremenda papaya!” because you’d actually be saying something nasty about a female’s genitals using a pretty dirty word. ¡Qué locura! Some of this nuances, I actually learned the hard way while living more than 20 years in Miami where you can find people who hail from all over Latin America.

Recently, my husband and I attended an award ceremony, and sitting at our table there were people from various Spanish-speaking countries, including Colombia, México, Spain, Puerto Rico and Perú. For some unknown reason, the conversation turned to hair (which, by the way, is pelo for lots of us, but for others only the word cabello should be used) and I said to one of the woman at the table, “me gusta como te queda tu cerquillo“, and a whole discussion ensued about what each one of us calls bangs.

Check out what they are (and try to guess which country they hail from or add your own if it’s missing):

bangs=cerquillo, copete, flequillo, pollina, fleco, chapul, china

And, just for fun, here’s a few more objects which can be called a lot of different ways:

lollipop=chupete, chupetín, paleta

cake=torta, queque, pastel, bizcocho

bottle=biberón, botella, mamadera

pacifier=chupón, chupete, tete, chupo, bobo

Next time, I promise I’ll write something about all the different names we have for fruits, vegetables and food in general. A translator friend of mine tells me there’s nothing more difficult to translate into Spanish than recipes. I promise to pick her brain and come back with a fun list. In the meantime, feel free to leave some suggestions!