*Bilingual Children*

In my wonderful class of Educational Psychology our text book is "Educational Psychology" written by Anita Woolfolk. In this week, chapter 5, I am reading about Bilingual Children. Having all of this language diversity in my house, along with observing some in the community that seem to be so resistant to what bilingual children and immersion schools and what they can do for children. Here are some objective and interesting facts to keep in mind as this country of ours is changing and so many languages are joining English. We need to support these children and these families. Encourage them to learn English but always support them in keeping their heritage and language. Communities, schools and families need to come together with the focus of benefiting all who live and attend school in the area. Whether bilingualism is something that is chosen by a family or not is not the point. ALL children need and have the right to the best environment we can provide for them. Please find all of the facts, research, and studies you can. Remember lives, learning, and self-esteem are all on the line for the rest of these children's lives.  

“If they are exposed to two languages from birth, bilingual children reach the language milestones in both languages on the same schedule as monolingual children.” Page 175

“Later bilingual exposure DOES change the typical pattern of the brain’s neutral organization for language processing, but early bilingual exposure does NOT.” Page 175

“So the best time to acquire two languages on your own through exposure is early childhood.” Page 176

“Higher degrees of bilingualism are correlated with the increased cognitive abilities in such areas as concept formation, creativity, theory of mind, cognitive flexibility, and understanding that printed words are symbols for language.” Page 176

“Even more impressive, children from monolingual English-speaking families who attended bilingual schools and learned Spanish had better phoneme awareness and reading comprehension than their peers who were educated in an English-only program.” Page 176

“These conclusions hold as long as there is no stigma attached to be bilingual and as long as children are not expected to abandon their first language in order to learn a second.” Page 176

Even as a mother of immersion school children some of these quotes and facts blew me away. A lot of these quotes people try to discredit and cover up. They are true and not only sited here in this book. Look up Hammer, Lawrence, & Miccio, 2007 Head start program. Or Anderson & Graham, 1994 and Au, Knightly, Jun, & Oh 2002, and Au, Knightly, Jun, Au, & Romo, 2008. These are just a few. I have more but you get the idea of the names and the research that is out there.

I hope this helps in understanding a bit into the lives of those who have multiple languages and cultures in their lives. Let's enjoy each other, appreciate each other, help and encourage each other, and except each other. Not to the point that we has Americans need to drop who we are, but enough to get us through this though thing called life that we all have to work through.