Multi-Language – Expat Since Birth – A Life spent "abroad" https://expatsincebirth.com a blog by a multilingual lifelong expat/international, linguist, researcher, speaker, mother of three, living in the Netherlands and writing about raising children with multiple languages, multiculturalism, parenting abroad, international life... Fri, 27 Sep 2013 09:23:06 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://expatsincebirth.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/expatsincebirthlogo2018.png Multi-Language – Expat Since Birth – A Life spent "abroad" https://expatsincebirth.com 32 32 When there’s a will there’s a way to become a multilingual https://expatsincebirth.com/2013/06/25/when-theres-a-will-theres-a-way-to-become-multilingual/ https://expatsincebirth.com/2013/06/25/when-theres-a-will-theres-a-way-to-become-multilingual/#comments Tue, 25 Jun 2013 08:36:22 +0000 http://expatsincebirth.com/?p=1908 If you really want to become a multilingual, you will succeed. You probably know about the girl (Mabou Loiseau) who speaks 7 languages. This case did provoke all sorts of reactions from linguists, parents etc. who were questioning the way this child is acquiring all those languages and if this is “healthy” for her or not. I don’t think that I’m entitled to judge if this child is happy or not, but she surely is enthusiastic about learning the languages, otherwise she would refuse to do so. Like lovinglanguage said in a comment to my former post “How many languages are too many for a child?” : “children will [always!] question the utility of the language immediately”. In fact, teaching children “a bunch of languages is great, but recognizing that they will resist is a dose of reality”. I totally agree with this and can confirm by my own experience, that if a child doesn’t see the utility of a language, he will stop talking it. Therefore the “necessity of the languages [need to be] brutally clear” at any time.

I found this video about the twenty year old Alex Rawlings, explaining how and why he learned 11 languages. – I hope you’ll get inspired too!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQettw8c9BY]

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]]> https://expatsincebirth.com/2013/06/25/when-theres-a-will-theres-a-way-to-become-multilingual/feed/ 19 European Day of Languages https://expatsincebirth.com/2012/09/27/european-day-of-languages/ https://expatsincebirth.com/2012/09/27/european-day-of-languages/#comments Thu, 27 Sep 2012 11:26:56 +0000 http://expatsincebirth.com/?p=178

For the second time I played an active part at the European Day of Languages ( see about this here) at my childrens’ school.

12 Languages were represented in a sort of Language Village and children from the whole Senior School had the opportunity to walk around and taste these languages.

They were prepared to say several sentences in all these languages and I was amazed on how engaged they were and how brilliant they did their tasks.

They had to order food in italian, french and spanish. They booked a trainticket in rumanian and a camping in portuguese. They designed a hotel in spanish. They could rent a boat in danish and they visited a polish postoffice, a greek museum, a german visitors center, a dutch bicylce shop, a russian travel agency, an english border agency.

This day gave me (once again!) such a wonderful insight into how much motivating such an opportunity can be for children. These over 800 children had no fear to approach these languages and did it in an amazing way. I would just like to tell all the parents who worry about the language proficiency of their children: there is no thing more powerful than dedication and passion!

These children did brilliant performances and with a little bit of positive reinforcement, also the shyest child can talk all these languages with a smile!

I’m proud to be part of this community and will always do my best to support all those children in their linguistic journey.

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