Unraveling how children become bilingual so easily - Yahoo! News: "The best time to learn a foreign language: Between birth and age 7. Missed that window?
New research is showing just how children's brains can become bilingual so easily, findings that scientists hope eventually could help the rest of us learn a new language a bit easier.
'We think the magic that kids apply to this learning situation, some of the principles, can be imported into learning programs for adults,' says Dr. Patricia Kuhl of the University of Washington, who is part of an international team now trying to turn those lessons into more teachable technology.
Each language uses a unique set of sounds. Scientists now know babies are born with the ability to distinguish all of them, but that ability starts weakening even before they start talking, by the first birthday.
Kuhl offers an example: Japanese doesn't distinguish between the 'L' and 'R' sounds of English — 'rake' and 'lake' would sound the same. Her team proved that a 7-month-old in Tokyo and a 7-month-old in Seattle respond equally well to those different sounds. But by 11 months, the Japanese infant had lost a lot of that ability."
Office Deport CONTEST: Project Backpack
Here's a great way to keep an artistic kid busy this summer: Office Depot just launched a competition to design a backpack using Sharpie Markers. The winning entry will be produced and sold and there will be $10,000 in prizes.
Customers can enter the contest by creating a design on one of four Office Depot canvas backpacks that can be purchased ($14.99 each; available in blue, pink, olive and green khaki, that will include two free individual Sharpie markers of your choice) from a participating Office Depot store, or by downloading an official contest template from www.myprojectbackpack.com. After designing the backpack using Sharpie markers, participants can upload a photo or scanned image of their backpack to www.myprojectbackpack.com along with their official entry form.The contest launches June 28th and all entries must be received by September 19, 2009.
VIDEO: Myths About Homeschoolers
Hilarious YouTube video put together by a couple homeschooled young ladies; very clever and entertaining AND definitely makes a good point! Nice job.
LD OnLine :: Making It Stick: Memorable Strategies to Enhance Learning
We all use strategies throughout our day to remember the variety of facts and ideas we need to retain. Strategy use forms a critical part of our learning experience. Strategies help us organize information into patterns and encourage purposeful learning. Our brains are selective. Brains tend to remember information that forms a memorable pattern.It is valuable for us, as teachers, therapists, and parents, to have a basic understanding of how we remember information so we better appreciate the need for strategies. As we understand the purpose, we become better equipped to help our students understand and use strategies.
How to Let Homeschooled Children Study Languages?
by Audrey Morales
Foreign language learning is considered to be one of the most important and advantageous endeavors that learners of any age can invest their time, money, and effort in. For families who are homeschooling their children, they are often asked about how they put foreign languages in their children’s curriculum. At this age of advanced technology, homeschooling parents don’t need to worry since there are many available tools online which they can easily choose from.
Homeschooled children have the advantage of choosing which languages to learn and they can choose the ones which are not commonly taught in regular schools. There is a growing need of learning Oriental and critical languages, why not let your children learn those languages?
Studying foreign languages at home could be challenging: children may have a hard time in learning pronunciation and accents unless the teacher of languages is a native speaker of the languages being taught. There are available downloadable software and educational sites on the internet which provide audio tools for language learning however; there are some feedback on some tools that say that some are not spoken by native speakers of the language being learned.
The good thing with learning foreign languages at home is that children can learn them at their own pace; they can progress to another level once they have covered all aspects and finished all lessons of the language on the level that they are in. They don’t have to worry about keeping up with their peers as how it usually happens in regular classrooms.
Another option for homeschooled children to improve their foreign language skills is to study languages abroad. This may literally take children away from home but this will give them an experience they will treasure for the rest of their lives. Having the opportunity to study languages abroad will help them build confidence within themselves as they tackle tasks in language learning in a different place, a place where the language they are learning is spoken as a native tongue by the people around them.Studying languages abroad will give young learners the chance to be immersed in the language they are learning, the culture and history of the city and country; as well as have the opportunity to meet new people both locals and foreigners who are also learning languages like them! They will be learning not only about the culture of the place but also of other nationalities.
The experience of studying language abroad will also help young students become independent; they will be living in a different place for a period of time and they will learn how to take care of themselves. Most programs offer homestay options where language learners will be living with host families while other programs offer dormitories where they will be staying with other language learners from different parts of the world.
Several researches have found that children are fast and efficient language learners and they become aware of more things and cultures if they learn foreign languages. Let your children study languages and help give them a better future and a better outlook towards the world.
