Review: The Bilingual Edge

When The Parent Bloggers Network asked me to review, The Bilingual Edge: Why, When, and How to Teach Your Child a Second Language, I jumped at the chance. Recently, I've been thinking a lot about teaching our kids to speak Spanish. This may seem like a strange choice since all the Spanish I know I learned from the first seven episodes of the podcast, Coffee Break Spanish. But I think learning a language makes kids appreciate other cultures. Plus, I don't want my kids to have the same struggle I did, postponing their first experience with another language until high school.

The Why

I had mixed feelings about the reasons the authors give for teaching your children another language. I really liked the emphasis they put on how learning another language helps promote cross-cultural understanding. At the same time, even the title of the book ("The Bilingual Edge") implies that I want to teach my child another language so that they have an edge against other children. To me this is part of the same trend I wrote about last month, when parents send their kids to kindergarten later so they're more advanced and have an "edge" against other kids. To be fair, the writers also stress many other reasons to teach your child another language. And I don't blame them for the today's competitive parenting.

The How

The Bilingual Edge is written by Kendall King and Alison Mackey, who are both are Ph.Ds in linguistics. They're also the parents of young children themselves. They know how busy families can be and they offer second language-learning strategies for parents that are both useful and practical.

They emphasize that learning a new language must be fun. Sing songs, read books, or count in another language each time you walk up the stairs. I tried this by saying "uno, dos, tres" before I gave my boys a big giant push on the swings. They were counting to three in Spanish after the third time. I'm not even sure they know how to count to three in English. The words stuck with them too. The next time we went to the park they said, "Let's do 'uno, dos, tres'."

King and Mackey's strategies are also already working for me, even though I'm still learning Spanish. They write, "Children have an amazing ability to learn language, and acquisition occurs even though adults do not always speak perfectly or do not actively teach them a language."

Yet, some of the examples they give make learning a second language venture into the territory of the over-scheduled child. Consider the example they give of the two year old whose parents want her to learn Japanese and Spanish. The two year old takes music and movement classes in Spanish, gets a Spanish lesson once a week, has a Japanese night once a week where they speak only in Japanese, and her parents have a Japanese student come over once a week to play with her. I feel pretty strongly about the fact that as parents it is not our job to constantly entertain or educate our children. I have a strict "one extra-curricular activity at a time" rule for my kids, so an example like this one kind of turns me off.

The Myths

The authors of The Bilingual Edge also do a great job of addressing the myths and realities of teaching a child another language. When I've told people that I'm trying to teach my kids Spanish, the response I often get is, "They don't even know how to speak English." King and Mackey have lots of research to back up their claim that kids don't mix up languages as their learning them.

The authors also clear up a common misconception about how kids learn language. King and Mackey must recognize that if they'd come out with "The Bilingual Edge Video series" complete with puppets and pictures of farm scenes they probably could have made themselves a lot of cash. But they debunk the popular theory that young kids can learn another language by watching videos, TV programs, or by playing with bilingual toys. The authors insist that kids need to try out their new language skills on someone who will respond to them.

If you've ever given any thought to teaching your child or children another language, but you don't know where to start, I definitely suggest you grab a copy of the Bilingual Edge. For more information, also see the Bilingual Edge Web site.

This review was sponsored in part by The Parent Bloggers Network. They send me free copies of the books, but I choose which books I'd like to review based on what interests me and what I think might interest you. For more information, see this post. If you have any feedback about these reviews, please post in the comment section or e-mail me.

Comments

[Kendall King]

Thanks so much for your review and insight here. I'm glad you found the simple counting fun!

I share your concerns about 'the over-scheduled child' and hyper-parenting in general. This is one of th reasons we stress that language learning happens best when it is interactive, engaging, child-centered, and NOT formally taught. This is easier of course for parents who speak some of the language already and can use the language naturally in everyday interactions with their children.

For parents who don't speak much else than English (like my co-author Alison) more is sometimes involved. In the case you mention, her daughter is doing the things she'd normally do (music class, having a babysitter over so her parent can work, eating dinner) BUT doing them in another language (so the idea is it is not adding too much extra --- except for Alison who is coordinating everything, but she'd be doing that anyways in any language!)

And yes, too bad we can't come out with the Bilingual Edge video series --- as we say in the book, we were super disappointed with the research results on that one! Who wouldn't love to read the paper while your two-year-old learned fluent French?

[Megan]

Thanks so much for the response, Kendall. Your book gave me so many great ideas, not only about teaching them Spanish, but also about the way they're learning English!

[Liz]

I'm an interpreter for the deaf and a grandmother of an 18 month old girl. From the time she was about seven months old, we've been teaching her sign language. I know from working with young deaf children that when it comes to language, little one's are sponges. Yes, they can learn more than one language and understand both incredibly well. The sign language is so helpful for a little one. Lorelai was asking for milk and telling us she was hungry long before she could have verbalized those messages. I really do believe it lessens the frustrations of trying to be understood for a toddler.

Now, of course, when she tells you, "I poop", she accompanies that with the appropriate sign. It's great.

Love your blog, Megan. I'm so glad you're able to post more and the stories of the children's misadventures are a delight.

[Nathalie Jorge]

I am eager to pick up a copy of the book because this is a topic I hold near and dear. My husband (who was born in Dominican Republic and hence speaks Spanish fluently) and I are raising our children bilingually (Spanish/English). I did not learn Spanish as a child and struggled to learn it as an adult. I have had the benefit of learning the language with my kids and know that their brains are much more receptive to picking up Spanish than mine.

When we need a babysitter, we try to hire Spanish-speaking sitters. We also speak Spanish at the dinner table as often as possible and we alternate reading Spanish books to them at bedtime. We weave the Spanish language into our lives as much as possible.

I too do not believe in "over-scheduling" my kids in extracurricular activities. It's tiring for them and for me. Knowing that I didn't want to sit my kids in front of videos to assist in the language learning process, my sister-in-law and I started a company (www.professorpocket.com) with the goal of exposing more children AND parents to Spanish by producing entertaining, adult-friendly musical CDs. We combined Spanish and English storytelling and songs so that parents could learn alongside their kids and be able to answer questions their kids might have about the CD.

Our CDs don't claim to teach kids fluent Spanish, but they do empower more families to bring a new language into their home/car and have fun in the process. Isn't that what's important?