Tonight I had a fascinating discussion with a friend about our mutual passion about bilingual education. We were discussing the steps that he was taking to improve the quality of his child’s Dual Immersion program. For the first time in my life it struck me that I finally knew someone who was as much of a bilingual fanatic as me. I asked him if he remembered when he first fell in love with bilingualism. I suddenly started thinking about when my love affair with bilingualism began.

I can’t remember when I first developed such a strong passion for bilingualism. I was raised in an English-speaking home and I don’t remember any language diversity in my elementary school. My father’s mother and grandmother lived back East and spoke Italian. I can remember thinking that it was so cool to have a grandmother who couldn’t really speak English. In middle school I began to watch soap operas in Spanish and babble sounds that resembled Spanish. In eighth grade I lied and told my classmates that my dad didn’t speak English. I asked my friend’s mom to teach me Spanish and that’s when I became hooked on bilingualism.

Throughout high school and college I became obsessed with learning Spanish. I took classes, listened to music, and danced to music in Spanish. I read tons and tons of books in Spanish. I had a boyfriend that didn’t speak English and my private life became consumed with Spanish. I did everything I could to try to become completely proficient in Spanish.

In my senior year of college I took a class about diversity in education. My professor taught us about Dual Immersion, a bilingual education model that promotes bilingualism and biliteracy with English and Spanish speaking children. I was so jealous that I had never had the opportunity to participate in such a program. I vowed then and there that I would do everything in my power to work in a Dual Immersion program one day.

I became a transitional bilingual teacher and later a maintenance bilingual teacher. I had the opportunity to participate at the beginning stages of my school district’s first Dual Immersion program. We opened the Dual Immersion program in an urban school with a high population of African Americans. Everyone told us that our program wouldn’t work in such a diverse area with high mobility and low socioeconomic level. However, the program has created many biliterate students over the years-of all races, ethnicities and native languages.

I later moved on to become a bilingual program specialist at the school district level, and then later I became the bilingual coordinator of transitional bilingual education and Dual Immersion programs. I coordinated the expansion of the Dual Immersion program into the middle school and later high schools. I love everything that I do and I feel like I am bilingual heaven every day while I am at work, even though it is a never ending battle to fight for the implementation of quality bilingual programs. I hope that one day I see the first Dual Immersion cohort to return to us as teachers or to place their children in our program one day.

When I moved to the school district’s language learning department, one of the bilingual coordinators warned me to not get boxed into bilingual education. “People will only associate you with bilingual education and English language learners. You don’t want people to think that is all that you know”, she recommended. Someone recently suggested that I don’t limit myself to only talking about language learners. I don’t perceive that I’m limited by being able to talk about language and literacy all day. I am actually lucky.

I love bilingualism. I love trilingualism. I love multilingualism. I’m obsessed with bilingual education. And bilingual politics. And anything else that is remotely associated with bilingualism or language learning. Hell, I’m even obsessed with learning more English. I am hooked on bilingualism!

I feel really invigorated after thinking about my passion for bilingualism and bilingual education. Sometimes it’s easy to feel down and depressed because so many people out there are anti-bilingual and work against the bilingualism that I love so dearly. After I listened to my friend tell me his story, I finally felt as if I had found a like soul. I wish I could share it with you, but I would rather convince him to write about his own love affair with bilingualism that we can feature on the blog. And I would love to hear more stories about when people first fell in love with bilingualism!

Are you hooked on bilingualism? When did your love affair begin?

About the Author: Melanie D. McGrath is the founder and editor of Multilingual Mania. She provides professional development and technical assistance to parents, bilingual teachers and administrators in the areas of biliteracy development, bilingual program design and English language development. Melanie can also be found writing about second language acquisition on the Spanglishbaby and TeachELD websites.

Being able to speak two languages fluently is an incredible ability. When applying for jobs, it is a huge advantage – especially if one of your languages is English, seeing as it is often considered the international language of business. However, for bilingual speakers, sometimes one language can lie dormant for a long period of time. As a result many people find that their speech becomes less fluid and some of the vocabulary can be forgotten. Below are some handy tips for maintaining your bilingual ability.

The Most Important Muscle
As with any muscle, the brain needs to be exercised. The brain tends to ignore certain bits of information that are not being used to make room for the more urgent issues. For example, a person who has a career in science may have forgotten much of the ancient history they learned in school if it has never been revisited since the exam they took a decade ago.

When someone has been brought up with two languages, these languages are not stored in the brain as information – they become reflexes. This means someone will never stop understanding the language if they hear it spoken. However, the ability to use it in oral or written communication depends on making sure the brain remembers how to utilize what it already knows.

Keep It Fresh
If there is no opportunity in day-to-day life to speak the language, watching TV or listening to the radio is a great way to keep it fresh in your mind. The internet has great resources for learning languages, especially for learning English – head to websites such as the BBC and you’ll find audio and video downloads as well as vocabulary and grammar practice. There is really no excuse for not practicing listening and reading in the language you are learning, even if you do not have the chance to speak it.

Start Speaking
As children we tend to associate languages with people, so if our parents or siblings have always spoken to us in one language, it can feel strange to suddenly speak in a different tongue. However, if you are intent on practicing a language and you have people around you who speak it, it is worth making the most of it. The awkwardness does not last very long and the benefits can be tremendous.

Socialize
If you do not have family members or friends with whom you can practice the language, you can search for expat communities in your local area where people meet up and chat over food or drinks in their native language. They tend to be welcoming events and a chance to make new friends as well as practice the language.

Making sure your second language doesn’t get rusty may not seem important to you, but being bilingual is a great skill and definitely one worth maintaining – you never know when it could come in handy.

About the Author: Sirena Bergman writes extensively on language acquisition. If you would like to learn English in London, the city is home to a number of excellent learning centres such as St Georges English school, which offers flexible options for a variety of different needs.

We are seriously, seriously behind schedule for the voting for our Hispanic Heritage student writing contest. We beg your forgiveness, but life just happened and it got a little overwhelming so we had to cut back on the blogging. We’re literally months behind schedule, but we are ready to move forward now!

The following essays were chosen by our committee to be featured on the website. Please look over the following essays and vote on which essay you think should win first place! In order to vote, please leave a comment at the bottom of the essay that you think should win first place. Voting will take place starting today until Sunday, May 6, 2012.

Please vote for which essay you think should win first place:
Julia de Burgos by Kaylee Dunnigan
Eddy Trujillo: A Kind Man by Andrew Berthelson
A Latino Person That is Important to Me by Diana Vargas
Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court Justice by Priscilla Dueñas

We wanted to take the opportunity to extend a gracias, or thank you, to all of the dual language teachers who attended our Effective SLD Strategies workshop held on March 10th. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy Saturday to focus on Spanish language development in Dual Immersion classrooms.

It’s always a pleasure to provide a workshop that is filled to the brim with dual language educators. We love bilingual educators! We aim to provide additional follow-up workshops soon based on your unique needs and feedback. Please feel free to let us know how we can best meet your needs!

¡Gracias! Thank you! We look forward to spending the day with you again!

Fluency in more than one language is considered to benefit the overall development of an individual. There has been a lot of debate on this issue but finally, bilingualism has been proven to improve the cognitive and mental abilities of a person. Nevertheless, there is still confusion among people if bilingualism actually provides young children with an extra edge or it hampers with the learning process. Let us know a bit more about bilingualism and its effects, to be confident enough to support it.

1. Break the myth
One of the reasons behind the confusion regarding bilingualism is an age old theory that established the restricted capacity of the brain. This meant that the brain is not adept in acquiring the knowledge of various languages. Hence, it creates difficulty for a person to handle two or more languages perfectly. The theory further said that the knowledge gained in one language is not transferred or generalized to the other. However, experts have proven that learning two or more languages benefits the brain by making it more nimble. As a result, bilinguals can multitask and prioritize easily. It is extremely important to dispel the fear and myths surrounding bilingualism to be able to accept it.

2. Enhances cognitive traits
People with bilingual skills have been seen to foster a greater amount of cognitive abilities such as analogical reasoning, classification skills, visual-spatial abilities and concept formation. Experiments performed on children have shown that knowledge of more than a word for an idea or object has increased their concept about the thing. In addition to this, the creativity of children is also enhanced when they are bilingual. For instance, story-telling abilities are found to be stronger in children who speak more than one language. Cognitive flexibility, which happens due to bilingualism, helps in acquiring a wide range of thoughts, thus widening the horizons.

3. Some other benefits
If children get an exposure of more than one language, they tend to show early signs of reading. They also demonstrate better perception in listening and recognition skills as compared to monolingual kids. In fact, bilingual children are more skilled in interpreting grammar and using it in various ways. Speaking two languages or more enable children to absorb the different structures and meanings of the languages. This helps them to think in a complicated manner too. In fact, bilingual kids exhibit an improved problem solving attitude and tend to score better in math. Contrary to fears, bilingualism improves communication skills in persons adopting it.

Bilinguals possess the quality to ignore irrelevant information of perceptions and focusing on the needed one. The practice of inhibition required in handling multiple languages benefit them in other fields of education as well. In a survey, it has also been found that normally, bilingual elderly people possess better cognitive functioning than the monolingual ones. Bilingualism in fact, is also considered to ward off the early signs of Alzheimer’s disease in aged people.

Many parents fear that practice of bilingualism in children will affect their healthy academic learning and progress. However, based on scientific studies it can be said to be untrue. The fact is that learning a second language in childhood brings about many cognitive gains which impact life positively.

About the Author: Ellen Spencer is a blogger and writer. She is a health freak and very environmentally aware. These days she is busy in writing an article on Inflammatory bowel disease. Beside this she loves reading. She is also a big fan of Bugaboo Strollers.

The ability to speak multiple languages is considered an advantage throughout the world. Studies show learning a foreign language correlates with higher scores on assessment tests, including the standardized college admissions test used in the US, the SAT. Historically less concerned with foreign language instruction, the United States is increasingly aware of the need to reform its approach to education as American students consistently rank below the global average in assessment tests and the nation finds itself faced with challenging economic and foreign policy issues.

Speaking a foreign language is an important trait employers often seek in their staff. “Being able to communicate in a colleague’s native tongue helps business negotiations as well as social interactions with that colleague go much more smoothly than does working through a translator. There are just some cultural aspects of communication that do not translate well,” says Kathy Mahnke of the University of Denver. Simply put, the face of business is changing. As companies in every nation and industry find global competition, they are forced to rely on those most capable of communicating with the world.

While multilingual college students may have advantages over monolingual peers, challenges remain. Before students even arrive on campus, they must demonstrate proficiency in the dominant language of study. In the US the TOEFL is the standardized evaluation used to ensure immigrant or international students can adequately perform with English-language instruction. Even with high test scores, students may feel socially isolated as they find everyday idioms used in the classroom setting intimidating since mastery of a language does not necessitate a seamless cultural integration.

Students face increased competition when navigating the college application process in a foreign language. With a growing number of foreign language applicants, schools are able to be more selective. In turn, students may find language ability alone may be insufficient when measured against more culturally robust candidates.

Addressing the needs of a student body that speaks multiple languages, colleges offer a range of assistance programs. Multilingual staff may be available to assist foreign language students in completing application materials, and multicultural organizations or language conversation clubs can help students acclimate. Some universities connect instructors with experts to understand the specific challenges multilingual students face.

To address the needs of globalization, colleges will find it necessary to support multilingual students. A better understanding of foreign cultures and the importance of knowing multiple languages can direct schools’ efforts. Personalized services such as cultural mentors could help students adjust to foreign language environments, as well as more formal assistance programs.

College students who want to be competitive upon graduation face many challenges, but command of a foreign language goes far to bridge the gap between cultures and offer a unique vantage point. By simply knowing another language, students distinguish themselves from their monolingual peers. As colleges realize the importance of a more global approach to education and adjust their curricula and course offerings, multilingual students will gradually find the college environment becoming less one of extra challenge and more one in which they’re poised to succeed.

About the Author: Marina Salsbury planned on becoming a teacher since high school, but found her way instead into online writing after college. She writes around the Web about everything from education to exercise.

English is a tough language to learn. With thousands of immigrants moving into the United States each year, learning to speak English has become a major concern for millions of Americans.

Believe it or not, learning to speak English is more than simply learning to conjugate verbs and memorizing vocabulary. Learning any language is more of a social experience than it is a textbook experience. Here are a few principles you will need in order to learn English (or any other language).

Don’t be afraid to sound silly:

English is a tricky language to pronounce. You will pronounce words wrong. When I was learning Spanish, I remember a friend of mine saying “Somos novios” instead of “Somos nuevos.” He had just said that we were lovers instead of saying we were new. However, the more you speak, the better you will get at speaking it. Having a good sense of humor goes a long way.

Going along with that, don’t be ashamed to ask someone to repeat something or define a word you don’t recognize. Although some people may become frustrated with you, most will appreciate the attempt you’re making to learn the language.

Make friends that speak English:

Those striving to lose weight always do better when they do it with a friend or group of friends. As mentioned before, learning a language is a social experience. If your friends speak your native language, then chances are, you’ll speak your native language with them. If your friends speak English, than you will be forced to speak English around them. Whatever experience you can have with the language will reinforce what you learn.

Fully immerse yourself:

When you watch movies, watch them in English. Change your computer’s language to English. Listen to English pop music. This isn’t to say that you should give up entirely on your native language and culture, but make a fully concerted effort to live, breath, joke, cry, and laugh in English. Your level of commitment to this process will determine your success level

Don’t settle for “What is your name?”:

Some people try to talk only about subjects they are familiar with. I knew a man who lived in the United States for almost twenty years but knew only how to talk about things related to his painting business. Don’t shy away from unfamiliar subjects. You can often talk around words that you don’t know. For example, if you’re talking about soccer and don’t know how to say the word ball, you can say something like, “that thing you kick around on the field.”

Carry a notebook to jot down words you wish to look up later. If necessary, explain that you aren’t very familiar with the vocabulary of a subject and ask them to slow down. Prepare for situations where you know you might hear words you aren’t familiar with. For example, if you are looking for an apartment, you may want to learn words and phrases related to that.

About the Author

Stephen Sharpe has worked for MyCollegesandCareers.com for more than 8 months. My Colleges and Careers is an online database which helps future students find online schools. Through an education, you can acquire your dream job.

It’s really hard running a blog and working a full-time job as a school manager, as many bloggers know. There are weeks that I work 60-80 hours at work and put in another 25 on the blog. It’s become so overwhelming keeping up with everything. I have been so hard-headed in that I wanted to learn to do everything by myself, but I now need assistance if this blog is going to expand. The one other person who has been helping with the blog also acknowledges that we need extra help.

This year my primary New Year’s resolution is to enhance and expand the resources provided for parents and teachers who are raising or educating bilingual children. One major goal that I would like to focus on is including more effective bilingual teaching strategies as well resources for ESL-an essential component of bilingual programs in the United States.

We always have tons of ideas of how we might provide useful content to our readers, but lack the time to create it. This year I’m dedicating myself to making the time-in any way necessary. Some additional goals that I would like to have for the blog are:

1. Show our readers who I am and let them get to know me. There is one driving person that is behind this blog and I want to begin to introduce myself to readers. I want to connect with people and get to know them.

2. Hire frequent contributors. If I really am going to make the time to create the content that I envision for the blog, then I will also need to delegate to other writers. If you are interested in becoming a frequent contributor, we can only afford at this time to pay $10 a post. Email us if interested.

3.Create “how-to” and practical resources for raising and educating bilingual children-which we already do, but I want next year’s materials to be much more strategic and focused. I want to create blog posts, e books, online classes, and other resources for readers. I don’t have it all mapped out, but I will get there.

4. Get to know my readers. I want to engage more with my readers when they leave comments and cultivate conversations on Facebook posts. I want to meet people.

5. I want to have an editorial calendar where I map out content and themes that will be highlighted each month. I want to be more strategic in my planning of content so that my partner and I can better delegate tasks.

I’m excited to write these down and publish them so that we can make them a reality! What are some of your New Year’s resolutions??

-Melanie

Our fourth entry for our second annual student writing contest for Hispanic Heritage month is from Andrew Berthelson, a sixth grade student from New Mexico.

Eddy Trujillo was my great grandpa. He was a very brave man. He was born in Mexico. He fought in World War II. He was a family oriented person. He was very kind to everybody.

My grandpa is important to me because he made a lot of changes in people’s lives. He would play a lot of practical jokes on people to cheer them up, and help them forget about their worries. He made a lot of thinking puzzles that I play with right now. He has changed me and my family’s lives.

I learned how to be considerate of others. He taught me to be kind and listen to others. I use this today to make others happy. With this I can make people glad and they are kinder to others.

I hope to speak Spanish like my great grandfather. His life was spent with others I hope to do the same. My great grandfather was a great Hispanic in my eyes. I hope to do everything he did in my lifetime.

My grandpa is important to me because he made a lot of changes in people’s lives. He would play a lot of practical jokes on people to cheer them up, and help them forget about their worries. He made a lot of thinking puzzles that I play with right now. He has changed me and my family’s lives.

Stay tuned for some additional student essays! After we have uploaded all of the articles, our readers will have a chance to choose a first, second and third place winner.

Read additional student essays here.