Bilingualism is good for children

Plimfix

As-salaamu alaykum

I thought this story might be of interest...

'Two languages are better than one'
Bringing up your children to be bilingual gives them all sorts of advantages, says Monica Porter

Wednesday March 3, 2004
The Guardian

http//www.guardian.co.uk/parents/story/0,3605,1160622,00.html

Wasalaam

Yakoub

khadija1

Salams,

Yes, it most certainly does. If you speak a language other than English at home, CONTINUE TO DO SO WITH YOUR KIDS! Please ignore your son/daughter's teacher if she tells you to speak to your child in only english at home. This is wrong!!

There are studies (Caplan, et al.) that prove bilingual children do much better in school, and transfer into other languages much more easily. Their cognitive abilities are enhanced substantially.

Maintain your languages!!

unknownuser

Peace be upon you,

I would imagine it helps children to think abstractly, thus helping to heal the divisions in life.

Haroon

i'd agree. teaching more than one language is important!

there is a huge thing now in the UK telling immigrants not to teach their kids their language because there is some myth that people do not teach their kids english.

palestina

yes i agree! i grew up speaking only arabic at home and i learned english at school - kids pick up language so quicky! it never affected my schoolwork at all - after all you pick up english everywhere - with friends, with teachers, on tv etc.. but your opportunities to learn your native language are limited! parents should make the effort to set down rules about language at home! my parents never spoke to us in english... and they expected us to talk to them in arabic too! i dont understand why teachers dont encourage this rather than tell parents to speak english at home too! i suppose people who make these rules are not bilingual and havent experienced it!

and england is rubbish for languages anyway - our european counterparts are amazing with other languages, many bi, tri or multi lingual because they start learning other languages at school from a young age, and they grow up surrounded by subtitled films etc...

SwedenMajidah

Salam,

In my Country Sweden kids are been taught in school Swedish and then also English.
And when you reach the 7th grade you can start to read some other common european language too ex. French, Spanish,German.

But we also have the ability to let kids from immigrant families study their own language.

My kids they study their fathers mother tongue, Malay once a week and that is better than nothing and they are mixed and can even that join this extra classes.

Sweden are amazing in many ways!!!

Peace Sis Majidah

Haroon

the swedish attitude is great!

it is only now the British are encouraging the children of immigrants to learn their language as it's better to learn that, than to not learn a language at all!

SwedenMajidah

Peace,

Well that sounds good! Better late than never so to speak.

Sis Majidah