Author Archive

Since we started Bilingual Readers in 2009 we have strived to publish original, high quality bilingual books for children. Up until now most of the books we’ve published at Bilingual Readers have been more geared toward younger children, but over the past two years we’ve had many requests from parents for books that would help older children and adults improve their language skills through reading. We agree that there is a need for bilingual books for older children and adults, which is why we’re thrilled to announce the recent publication of a new collection of classic bilingual books for readers aged 10 and up! Each book in the new Bilingual Classics collection includes the full bilingual text of a classic work of literature, as well as exercises and activities to reinforce vocabulary and sentence structures. You’ll also notice the gorgeous cover designs by designer/illustrator Mar Blanco. She’s an up and coming illustrator who we hope to work with on many projects in the future.

Last week we released the first two books in this collection, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow/La leyenda de Sleepy Hollow and The Canterville Ghost/El fantasma de Canterville. Each book contains the full text in the original English alongside the Spanish translation of the text, with highlighted vocabulary words and expressions. Games and activities at the end of the book help readers practice new vocabulary and sentence structures, and mp3 audio files of the original English text can be downloaded for free from our website.

Click here for more information on how you can buy these fantastic new books!

As you know, we at Bilingual Readers are huge fans of helping children learn a second language from an early age. That’s why we’re happy to pass along the following information about a new playgroup in Madrid organized by our friends at Sinews. This may be a great opportunity for those of you who are looking for an English language playgroup in Madrid.

New Playgroup in Madrid Led by Specialists
It is not impossible for your child to master English as a second language! In the global climate of today, it is essential that our children are well-equipped to succeed in a world that is rich in inter cultural communication. Many families who are planning on educating their children in English, or who are contemplating moving their children to a bilingual school, appreciate the opportunity to expose their children to a second language as soon as possible.
At Sinews we have designed a ‘Stimulating English Through Play’ group that allows you to familiarize your child with English and learn how you can support your child’s language development from as early as 18 months of age.
When it comes to bilingualism, you are in the best hands at Sinews; we are known for our expertise in bilingualism through our wealth of experience working with families of the international community.
The ‘Stimulating English Through Play’ groups are designed and run by our English Speech and Language Therapist, with the aim of stimulating English in children through the use of songs and stories to expose them to new vocabulary and phrases. Vocabulary is then reinforced through a variety of fun games and activities involving active participation to engage the children in listening and speaking English and provide ample opportunities to practice using new words in a variety of contexts within sessions.

The use of pictures, gestures and real objects provide a multi-sensory learning environment, making these groups highly accessible and captivating for all children, including those with speech and language difficulties, developmental disorders and hearing impairment.
‘Stimulating English through play’ is divided into two age groups:
18 months to 2 years and 11 months old (parents are welcome)
As parents, you know your child better than anyone else. This makes you the best people to nurture your child’s language skills. You are warmly invited to attend these sessions with your child, where the Speech and Language Therapist will share tips on how to support your child’s language development.
Time: 3 groups on Friday mornings from 10.00 to 11:00, 11:00 to 12:00 or 12:00 to 1:00 PM
3 to 5 years and 11 months old
At this age, when play begins to be shared, playing with children of the same age is really powerful for the development of the first and subsequent languages. The games will be especially designed to nurture your child’s communication skills.
Time: 3 groups on Friday afternoons from 4:30 to 5:30, 5:30 to 6:30 or 6:30 to 7:30 PM
Enrollment: First come first served basis via e-mail to talleres@sinews.es This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , indicating first and last names of the kids as well as his/her age and the day of the week you’d like to attend.
Place: SINEWS Multilingual Therapy Institute
C/ Zurbano 34 1º Izquierda CP 28010 Madrid.
If you have any questions please call 91 7001979.

Price: 25 euros per session or 80 euros per month (4 sessions).

image credit: padre e hijos, by jclabbe, via flickr

Hello, I’ve been reading about OPOL (One Parent One Language) and I found this page, which is very interesting by the way. I’m from Argentina and I’m married to a Dutch woman. We live in Holland with our children. I speak to them in Spanish, my wife speaks in Dutch and we speak English to each other. My oldest son is 3 and a half years old, and he understands everything I say to him in Spanish but he answers me in Spanish mixed with Dutch. Sometimes he begins to ask me something in Dutch until I correct him. He goes to preschool three times a week where they only speak to him in Dutch. How can I get my son to speak to me in Spanish? Should I ignore him when he speaks to me in Dutch or is it normal for him to go through a phase of mixing languages?

Thank you,
Marcos

Dear Marcos,

Your question is very, very common in bilingual families.
In your case, first I should clarify that mixing languages is a normal phase and can even be good for bilingual development. At this point you shouldn’t be worried. With regard to your main concern, it’s very common for children to respond in their stronger language (normally the language of the community they live in, since they receive much more stimulation in that language) when their mother or father speaks to them in another native language, regardless of how well they understand that language.
This is due to a very positive reason: your son is learning about communication and he has discerned two fundamental things about learning to communicate all by himself:
-He knows you understand Dutch because he has seen you speak to other people in Dutch and can tell that you understand what others say to you.
-He knows that sometimes it’s quicker and easier to use Dutch if he wants you to give him something or let him do something.

The trick of pretending not to pay attention to him when he speaks to you in Dutch can be useful only sometimes if you don’t use it too much. Use this only to let him know that you prefer for him to speak to you in Spanish because there is no way you are going to fool him. He’s small, but he’s smart!

So, what can you do? I would say the most important thing is to be aware that even if he doesn’t always respond to you in your language, he is learning Spanish in a much more active way (though it may seem more passive) than he would learn in a conventional language class. With a small push towards a ”need” to speak Spanish, he could go from not speaking much to speaking volumes.

The truth is that there is no easy and perfect trick but the following strategies might be helpful:
-The most important thing is to provide stimulation in the minority language so that it won’t be seen as a tool that doesn’t work as well as Dutch (see other responses to Ask Sinews to read about strategies for stimulating the minority language).
-It’s also important for your son to see you speaking Spanish to other people in Holland. This way he will see Spanish as a “priveleged” language for communicating with you. For example, speak with your family via Skype so that both you and your son can speak with each other and your family in Spanish. In any case, he should be present when you speak to your family and should have the opportunity to contribute from time to time.
-Buy games and books in the language you want to stimulate and make sure they are appropriate for his level so that he doesn’t find the experience frustrating.
-Travel with your son to Spanish speaking countries so that he can see how useful Spanish is and can see that Spanish is your strongest language. There it will be much more likely for him to speak to you in Spanish and he may just continue to do so when you get home. Visits from family members who only speak Spanish are almost as useful.

It’s truly important for you not to give up or get too frustrated, since what may seem like it’s not working now can change very quickly with the right kind of stimulation. In any case, your son’s linguistic background in Spanish from hearing you speak to him in Spanish will provide enough input for him to use it easily when he needs it, unlike those of us who learned languages later on in life. The same thing goes for the English he hears his parents speaking at home. Though the active development of this language may be less, an invaluable amount of passive learning is going on and this will be very useful later in life.

Best of luck with your trilingual family project!

Dr. Orlanda Varela
Child Psychiatrist at SINEWS Multilingual Therapy Institute
Dr. Orlanda Varela is a Child Psychiatrist and the Coordinator of the educational project for Bilingual Families at SINEWS Multilingual Therapy Institute in Madrid. SINEWS organizes bilingualism workshops for parents in Madrid, as well as personalized speech therapy sessions to bilingual families with specific language development problems. For more information, please visit sinews.es

image credit: direction, by ramkarthikblogger, via flickr

Hello!

First I’d like to congratulate you on your website. It’s a very interesting site about a subject which matters to us all.

Our case is as follows: we are both Spanish and we live in Spain. We both speak English and German well because we studied at a German school as children and we have lived in England.

We speak Spanish with our children (a two year old and a three year old), since that is our native language. Both children go to a German preschool. Now we are planning to hire a nanny and we are doubting as to whether to hire a German or an English speaking nanny. On the one hand, a German nanny would reinforce their German, which is the language they speak at school. On the other hand, since we know that children can learn languages very easily, we thought that an English speaking nanny would help them to learn a third language. Would it be better to reinforce their German or to introduce a third language? We could speak with the nanny either in German or English.

Thank you!
Manuela

Dear Manuela,

Congratulations on your multilingual family project.

As you have seen for yourself, both options have advantages and disadvatages but they will both provide very positive results: your children will be fluent in two or more languages from the time they are small! Both options are fantastic opportunities for your kids. As you and your partner were both educated in German schools, you already know the advantages and limitations of studying in another language.

Reinforcing German at home with a German nanny would have the following advantages:
-It would provide a less academic stimulation in which your children will learn those popular expressions that distinguish late language learners from native speakers (things like “that’s cool!” which aren’t typically taught at school).
-Creating a connection between the child and German culture, in addition to the language. A German nanny could sing your child songs from her country and teach them traditional games, which vary from place to place.
-The nanny would be a resource for helping with homework if necessary when you and your partner aren’t available.
-I understand that you and your partner speak more fluent German than English, so listening to you speak with the nanny would be useful and stimulating for your children and would help them to identify you as German speakers. And it will make them see that everyone speaks to the nanny in German because she can communicate most easily in that language.

Introducing English as a third language would have other advantages:
-Early learning allows for a much greater phonetic adaptation and reduces the probability that your children will speak the language with a foreign accent in the future.
-At this time in their lives, your children won’t experience the stress and prejudices of learning a new language which they might experience later. They learn without realizing it. Obviously, this would mean a change and an effort, so it may not be a good idea to do this at the same time as another important change (like starting school, having a little brother or sister, etc).
-Your children will be trilingual! That is, if they receive enough stimulation in each of their three languages (when your dealing with three langauges, you will need to try to maintain at least two hours per day of exposure to each language).

That said, you would need to evaluate the amount of effort (work and money) each option would entail and you would also need to study the children’s linguistic development and the amount of opportunities you would be able to provide in each language.

If you are ever interested, I remind you that in Sinews we do provide counseling for bilingual families on a deeper level, in which we do a more in-depth study of your case through an on-line questionnaire followed by an hour and a half long session in which we’ll ask you for more information and give you a personalized plan, specifically tailored for your family and each child’s needs (total cost: 60 euros) You can find more information on our website: www.sinews.es

Best of luck!

Dr. Orlanda Varela
Child Psychiatrist at SINEWS Multilingual Therapy Institute
Dr. Orlanda Varela is a Child Psychiatrist and the Coordinator of the educational project for Bilingual Families at SINEWS Multilingual Therapy Institute in Madrid. SINEWS organizes bilingualism workshops for parents in Madrid, as well as personalized speech therapy sessions to bilingual families with specific language development problems. For more information, please visit sinews.es

image: vacation, by jstar1223, via flickr

It seemed like it’d never come, but vacation time (at least for us) is finally here! Bilingual Readers is going on vacation until the end of August, but we’ll be back in September with more blog posts and new books! In the meantime, we may be tweeting and facebooking some interesting links, so please stay in touch! See you in September!

image credit: strong as a bull, by irene nobrega, via flickr

Hi!

First I’d like to congratulate you on the link in El País digital about your work, which was very interesting. Now I’d like to tell you about my son’s case. I’m Spanish and my husband is English. We live in Sweden. Our son is four and a half years old and I believe that he is now basically trilingual. I always speak to him in Spanish and my husband always speaks to him in English. At home we all speak in English. My son goes to a Swedish school and speaks Swedish there.

I find it interesting that he had never mixed languages and he actually immediately changes languages if he is going to speak to me or his father. One thing that is surely helping him to learn is the fact that his father and I don’t speak Swedish (we understand some but not much), so our son knows he can only communicate with us in Spanish or English. When we go to the UK, he speaks in English with his family, but even when I speak to him in English out of respect for those who are listening to us, he scolds me and tells me to speak to him in Spanish, not English. In Spain, of course, he speaks in Spanish with no problems. When he’s playing in his room at home, sometimes I hear him speaking in Swedish or occasionally in Spanish, but never in English.

We have also noticed that, compared wiht other children his age, he speaks with less fluency or concordance, but we understand that this is not really a problem but rather that he is learning a bit more slowly because he is learning three languages simultaneously.

We might be wrong, I don’t know. My main concern now is reading and writing. He is beginning to come into contact with letters at school and my question is this: should we be doing something with English and Spanish at home? The alphabet is the same with the exception of the three extra Swedish letters Å - Ä -Ö, but the pronunciation is different and he won’t be learning that at school. What is your opinion? Could you please recommend a book about this?

Thank you!
Carmen

Dear Carmen,

First I’d like to thank you for your interest in our work. I’d also like to say that I love how your son “scolds you and tells you to speak in Spanish not English”. This shows just how connected languages are with emotions in relationships. And your son understands this perfectly!

And now on to your question. Learning to read and write.

From my point of view, you can begin this process simultaneously and your child can begin to have contact with the written word in all three languages at once. Of course, this does not mean that he needs to start learning to read and write or that you have to sit down with him to “teach him” to read and write in Spanish, English and Swedish. It just means that you should begin showing him the written word and allowing him to create hypotheses. Just like each language is pronounced differently, each language is also written differently.

One very useful resource are bilingual books, and there are many bilingual books available in Spanish and English. They are great for helping small children to begin to differentiate illustrations from letters and they show both languages in their written form with the same drawing which will help them identify the meaning of the written symbols.

Card games like Memory or Pairs are also an option. Here, instead of just pairing up images, children can also begin to match up written words. One card is written in English and the other in Spanish. Or they may be some pairs in English and some in Spanish. Here you can take advantage of the fact that your son does a great job of differentiating and identifying which language each parent speaks. So the pairs in English are for Dad and the Spanish ones are for Mom. In this way, you can all play together and differentiate each language.

At Bilingual Readers you can find many resources.

There are many ways to naturally and simultaneously introduce the concept of the written word in both languages.

The process is just like when a monolingual child learns to read. First he tries to differentiate the drawing of “something” on paper that is not a drawing. Then he begins to understand that that “something” is different if it pertains to Mom’s language or Dad’s language. Then he will begin to act like he’s reading and speak words in English or Spanish according to the kind of writing he sees. Finally, he will begin to apply the different rules for reading and writing. At first he may mix things up, there may be interferences between one language and the other, but he will begin to read and write without realizing it.

So my advice would be to begin to introduce your son to the written word in stories and games so that he will begin to differentiate between the written word in Swedish, Spanish and English.

Best of luck,

Mariana Lombardo is an experienced children speech therapist. She does clinical work at SINEWS with bilingual families in the expat community in Madrid. Mariana is in charge of the workshops for bilingual families offered by SINEWS and she also gives personalized speech therapy sessions to bilingual families. For more information, please visit www.sinews.es.

With all the craziness surrounding the Madrid book fair, we have somehow waited entirely too long to announce the publication of two gorgeous new books by Javier Muñoz. So with no further ado, we are thrilled to introduce you to the two newest books our Cuentos del mundo collection. In Aprende inglés con los cuentos de Hans Christian Andersen and Aprende inglés con los cuentos de los hermanos Grimm, fabulous illustrator Javier Muñoz brings new life to some of the most treasured classic stories by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. Our bilingual adaptations of these favorite tales are sure to keep readers of all ages entertained, and like the other books in this collection, we’ve also included exercises to practice the vocabulary highlighted in each story. Check out these images from both books:

The Princess and the Pea / La princesa y el guisante (Aprende inglés con los cuentos de Hans Christian Andersen)

Hansel and Gretel / Hansel y Gretel (Aprende inglés con los cuentos de los hermanos Grimm)

As always, both books can be purchased either at our on-line shop or in bookshops and specialty shops throughout Spain.