brain research and language acquisition.

This is really cool. I don't have much time, and not sure what if any the applications are, but it's really cool. Basically the brain learns nouns and verbs differently and in different parts of the brain. Follow the link!

building blocks

I have an image in my mind of language as building blocks. Maybe it's because my own kids love building towers, castles, and race tracks with these brightly colored and oddly shaped pieces of wood. There are squares, rectangles, triangles, arches, cylinders and quarter circles of various sizes and colors. Depending on a person's creativity and skill, a person can build many things. We have had towers that have reached as tall as fingertips stretched over head. We have also had race tracks that have been half an inch high. "Don't knock over my castle" I am told as I walk into the bedroom and see an outcropping of blocks. A few minutes later, the castle is a jail for misbehaving race cars. So much of what my kids create is based on what they can imagine. But there are also very strict rules governing their creations. For instance, no matter how hard they try, they cannot reach above their own height to place blocks, unless they use a tool. So, the height is limited. Even stricter (since there are chairs and step stools) are other laws of physics. Balance and placement become so important.

But, I never sat down with my boys and explained these laws of physics, balance, proportion, placement... I never told them, practice stacking two blocks together until you get them perfect, and then practice with three... No, their understanding of the rules of building blocks has come about through play. They have built, and toppled, and built again.

I never told them that before building we had to take an inventory of every block and study its characteristics. Although, the grammarian in me has taken inventory, and does want to organize the blocks into nice neat categories...

Teaching a language is a lot like playing with the blocks. I can teach my students to inventory all the blocks - the words, the morphemes, the grammar... We can study the characteristics of each one. And then we can practice putting two blocks together. Once we get that right, we can move on to two new blocks, or string three blocks together. Or, we can just build. Yes, we will make mistakes. The blocks will fall down. But, when we let creativity take over, the things we can build if we just try!

Playing with language

A few weeks ago my four year old was practicing new and unique nicknames/gentle insults. I had explained to him that we sometimes make up names for people we like and it's ok. He decided to practice on me.

A few names in, he called me a "CarHead." Wow. I couldn't pass that one up. We stopped then and there and I "parked".

What does a CarHead look like? Do they walk or do they drive around on their heads? How do they see?

Pretty soon we came up with a visual image. A CarHead is a person but they have an upside down car for a head. When they get tired of walking, they stand on their heads and drive around. Can't you just see that imagery there?

A few days after that I was struggling with angst - lots of decisions to be made in a very short time frame. This same kid of the CarHead fame looked at me and said, "Mommy, you're a "Conundrum Head." I had to laugh, because no other word or combination of words could possibly draw a better picture of me in that moment, and it took a four year old (albeit with a precocious vocabulary) to be able to create that image so well.

English -> Spanish -> Persian?

I have posted before that some of my students are endeavoring to teach me Mandarin in exchange for my Spanish lessons. And I am loving it. I treasure the CD one child gave me of pop Chinese music.

I have another student who has not chosen to share her first language with me. That is, until recently. She is Persian. And she has not fallen in love with my class. Again, at least until recently. She is in the 8th grade, which means this is her second year with me.

Suddenly two weeks ago she exclaimed in the middle of class, "What did they just say?" I showed the video clip again and was met with incredulity. "Did they say 'bale'? That's Persian and means OK"

No, the characters had said "vale" which is Spanish for OK. So, I promised her I would find out if the two words had any common ancestry - we have discussed the Arabic influence in Spanish before, so it was a possibility. They don't. At least, not unless you go back to proto-Indoeuropean languages. Vale in Spanish comes from the Latin.

She also asked me about the word basta. Again, no apparent connection between the Persian and the Spanish.

But, that's not the point. The point is: She is noticing. She is caring. She is drawing comparisons between now three languages and cultures. And she trusts me to find out information for her. :)

It's not always about having the right answer. Sometimes, it is all about how we see the world and how we interact with our fellow human beings.

context is so helpful...

Last week I gave a pop quiz that had 5 sentences in Spanish and asked students to translate the sentences to English. The average score was an A, out of 119 students only one student got less than a C.

Now, compare this to our average quizzes where I have short phrases orindividual words - on those I do not always make the 80% - 80%.

I am thinking that the difference is from the added context carried ineach sentence.

comprehension before production

We recently made friends with a family that doesn't speak much English. The 5 year old and my 3 year old son are having a lot of fun playing. He speaks about as much English as my son does Spanish, but because each of them understands more of the other language than they are able to produce, the two languages have not seemed to interfere with their ability to play together.

Yesterday we were out and my son was introducing his friend to another bilingual adult we know. He said, "This is my friend, ____" My friend turned to the other child and said, "Y cómo se llama tu amigo? My son answered, "My name is _____" We were all shocked. None of us expected him to understand the question - he is not being raised bilingually.