Category Archives: bilingualism

Language Rich Europe in the Netherlands – Multilingualism in Business and Education

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lre- pin wheel logo300x267As part of the Language Rich Europe project, we are holding workshops across Europe to discuss the findings and plan the next steps. In this blog post, Lorcan Murray, an intern at British Council Netherlands, writes about the workshop held in Utrecht in November.

Much ado about Language

On an unseasonably warm and sunny day, Projects Team Netherlands made its way to the heart of the country, to the lovely city of Utrecht (which meant Lorcán, the intern, had a much shorter commute, so he was happier than usual!). Our purpose was to host a Language Rich Europe workshop with our partners Levende Talen and Mercator, at the wonderful location of Silverijn, on multilingualism in business and education.

We arrived nice and early to deal with last minute preparations (“put the banner over there. No, over there. Hmm, a bit more the left.”) and panics (“What do you mean, you don’t know where the name badges are?!”), and welcomed our seventy invitees to arrive in dibs and drabs. Some arrived too early; some arrived unfashionably late, but eventually we were all gathered for the introduction from Toon van der Ven, the Chairman of Levende Talen and moderator of the afternoon, which kicked-off the programme.

Mr van der Ven was followed by a panel consisting of Ms Sena Dora International Account Manager at ABN AMRO (about being multilingual at a bank), Ms Debbie Ceiler, director of secondary school Bernardinus College (about her school offering a wide language programme), Dr. Michel Wauthion, Education attaché at the French Embassy in The Hague (about the situation on foreign languages offered in secondary education in France) and Professor Guus Extra (about LRE results for Netherlands and other European countries). Each panel member ended the discussion with a thought provoking point of view. Unfortunately, Your Humble Author was unable to witness this panel discussion, as, well; someone had to welcome the late-comers!

Fortunately, Your Humble Author was able to take part in one of the four group workshops, with each group containing a panel member, and so off we all split to our designated rooms. (Your Humble Author was in Group 4. Group 4 was the best group.) In these groups we discussed the point of view put forward by our respective panel member. In the case of Your Humble Author, it was foreign languages offered in France and the interesting idea of entrelinguisme – where you learn several similar languages at the same time, in this case French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Italian – was debated.

After all too short a time, the lively and interesting discussion was drawn to a close and we all reconvened to relay our findings and recommendations to the other groups. The findings of group 4? That there needs to be a more national consistency in language teaching, rather than have every school have a different language policy. Since you cannot speak every language, the need to be selective in which languages we teach is paramount. How do we choose? Unfortunately, that question proved too big for the timeframe!

The programme came to a close with a nice lecture from Jacomine Nortier from Universiteit Utrecht about the advantages and prejudice of multilingualism, including a delightful video example of code switching: a child switching between English, French, and Filipino in the same sentence!

And so the day came to end with a borreltje in the gezellig basement of Silverijn, and an excellent chance to network. Proost!

Regional and Minority Languages: An inevitable decline?

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Martin Dowle, Director British Council Ukraine, presented the language situation in Wales at last week’s Language Rich Europe launch in Kyiv. In this blog post, he summarises the approaches Wales is taking in order to promote Welsh and prevent its decline.

Is it inevitable that minority languages will always suffer decline? The case of Welsh shows this does not need to be the case. Since its low point in 1991, when just 18% of the Welsh population spoke Welsh, it has started to make a modest recovery. Today, 37% of 3 to 14 year-olds are able to speak Welsh, compared to just 15% in 1971, fuelling recovery from the cradle upwards.

Today, there are an estimated 611,000 Welsh speakers in Wales. Of these, 315,000 are native speakers, and the rest have competency, as a second language, to a greater or lesser degree.

Official figures suggest Wales loses between 1,200 and 2,200 native speakers every year. The number of communities – mostly rural — where 70% or more are native speakers continues to decline. But more people now speak (and are learning) Welsh as a second language in cities such as Cardiff than ever before.

In part this reflects a change in attitude to Welsh amongst non-Welsh speakers. Recent polling suggested 80% of Welsh people saw the language as something to be proud of. This is a far cry from the hostility that greeted the decision by the government in the early 1980s to set up a fourth TV channel solely in Welsh. Attitudes have changed, and this matters.

In 2000, the teaching of Welsh became compulsory in all schools up to the age of 16. The number of Welsh-medium schools is growing, as are measures to build the capacity of teachers to teach through the medium of Welsh.

But the Welsh government’s policy argues the school setting is not enough. Policy seems to me to focus on two areas.

First: the home. It encourages mothers and social carers, midwives, and nursery education to help develop the adoption of Welsh as a first language. If two parents speak Welsh, it’s estimated the chances the child will too are around 80%. If only one speaks Welsh, the chances are halved.

Second: the leisure activities of adolescents. The language is at risk if young people don’t see the benefit of speaking it, or think it’s cool to switch to English. So an effective language policy needs to consider youth culture, peer-group pressure, community attitudes, the global media and social networking. Providing enough cultural and social value to tip the balance in favour of Welsh is a big ask – but it’s essential to long-term survival. So policies really do need to focus on the language of ‘interaction’.

Read more about languages in Wales on the Language Rich Europe website and in our previous blog posts:

- Language Rich Europe Launch – Wales
- Can Google Speak Welsh?
- Speaking Welsh, Living in Brussels

Are bilinguals smarter than the rest?

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Lately there has been an increasing amount of articles written on the subject of bilingualism. Some argue that people brought up bilingual are smarter than the rest of us. Others tell tales of hardship caused by loss of identity, loss of belonging, loss of friends. According to a recent article written by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee for The New York Times, there is enough evidence to show that

Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

It’s all down to interference:

- – in a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other.

This was previously considered a hindrance but in fact, it makes the mind work harder and thus strengthens its cognitive muscles. The bilingual brain actually improves the brain’s “executive function” which directs things like problem solving and planning. One of the processes this influences is remembering things.

According to the article, the main difference between bilinguals and monolinguals is that they have a “heightened ability to monitor their environment”:

Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often — you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language,” says Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain. “It requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving.

This monitoring is certainly visible in our 2-year-old daughter’s everyday life. She constantly switches between her two languages, Finnish and Dutch, while talking to people. This is an extract of a conversation which took place recently:

Me: “Sanopa papalle, että kahvi on valmista. Nyt voi tulla syömään aamupalaa.”

She: “Papa, koffie klaar! Eten.”

Also, she switches between languages even within a sentence if, for example, she happens to hear her father come in:

She: “Kohta pyörällä… buiten fietsen.”

I often wonder how much she understands of the situation she’s in, that is, that she speaks two languages whereas many other people around her don’t. It does seem that she recognises the fact and says things like “papa zegt ‘baby’, äiti sanoo ‘vauva’”. She has also learned to know which relatives and friends speak which language.

When it comes to bilinguals having a good memory, I must say that our daughter seems to have an incredibly good one. When she sees a book she hasn’t seen in months, she instantly remembers what it’s about. Or, when she sees a car that resembles her Finnish grandparents’ car she’s seen only a few times in her lifetime, she always shouts “mummi pappa auto!” Also, she seems to remember everyone’s names – even if she’s only seen them in a photo – and she can connect things like berries with her Finnish grandparents.

I could be inclined to say that our daughter is a good example in proving the claims in Bhattacharjee’s article right. On the other hand, I haven’t done many comparisons, so it might as well be that this is completely normal behaviour of a two-year-old, or that this is just how she is and has nothing to do with her being bilingual. Somehow I do think though, that this constant increased brain activity makes bilinguals more active, more alert. Whether this is always a good thing, I don’t know. Our daughter seems to have her head full of things constantly and cannot sleep easily or talks in her sleep – in multiple languages. So maybe this constant language switching and monitoring your environment has such a profound effect that it can even cause restlessness. Then again, maybe it’s just how she is. Whatever the case, I think I wouldn’t go out of my way to make my child bi- or plurilingual, but if it’s possible and comes naturally (like in the case of parents with a different mother tongue), I think it’s certainly worth it.

Meertaligheid is hot!

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In this blog post, we have a guest contribution from Drs. M. Blumenthal, senior researcher at Royal Dutch Kentalis. Kentalis is a national organization in the Netherlands providing diagnostic, care and educational services to people for whom the ability to hear or communicate is not a matter of course. Please read on (in Dutch) to find out what Drs. M. Blumenthal has to say about children and multilingualism. This article was previously (7 November 2011) published on the Kentalis website.

Op de één of andere manier lijkt het alsof er dit jaar een enorme toename is in de aandacht voor de positieve aspecten van meertaligheid voor de ontwikkeling van kinderen. Nu de wetenschap steeds dichter in het kinder- en babybrein doordringt, vindt men steeds meer dat het brein het goed doet met meerdere talen. Bialystock vond, in verschillende onderzoeken door de jaren heen, bijvoorbeeld onder meer dat meertalige kinderen beter zij in het negeren van niet-relevante informatie, dat zij beter zijn in multitasking, en dat de symptomen van Alzheimer zich bij meertaligen 5 tot 6 jaar later manifesteren dan bij ééntaligen. Het Frans of Engels dat we op school hebben geleerd beschermt ons volgens haar helaas niet tegen vroege Alzheimer….

Maar er is meer.

Recent bleek in een onderzoek door onderzoekers van de Universiteit van Washington, dat ééntalige kinderen met 6 maanden onderscheid konden maken tussen de verschillende klanken in de eigen taal, maar ook in de klanken in andere talen. Tussen de 10 en 12 maanden zijn zij die vaardigheid echter al weer kwijt voor andere talen dan de ene die er in hun omgeving is. Hun brein heeft zich dus al vroeg gespecialiseerd.

Meertalige kinderen daarentegen, kunnen in de periode tussen 6 en 9 maanden nog geen onderscheid maken tussen klanken, in welke taal dan ook, maar als ze 10 tot 12 maanden zijn, kunnen ze in dit, in de beide talen die ze leren, wél. Ervaring vormt dus het babybrein, waarbij het tweetalige babybrein er weliswaar wat langer over doet, maar uiteindelijk meer heeft gewonnen: discriminatie van klanken in twee talen in plaats van één.

De hoofdonderzoeker Patricia Kuhl licht dit onderzoek toe in een verbijsterend filmpje (ondertiteld in 40 talen, waaronder Nederlands! Hoezo meertalig?) .Er is een mens nodig dat tegen de baby praat, zo blijkt, om baby’s de statistiek te laten uitvoeren die nodig is om uit te vinden welke klanken relevant zijn, en welke niet. Van alleen video of audio leren ze dat niet. Hoe zou dat zijn bij oudere kinderen? Zelf verbeeld ik me dat ik wel degelijk Engels leer door veel naar Engalstalige TV-programma’s te kijken…Maar met statistiek hou ik me dan waarschijnlijk niet bezig…

Meer informatie op de website van Kentalis.

Learning Languages through Sport

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Football, some believe, has become a ‘global language’. In a BBC blog post from 2009, Tim Vickery writes

I have often put forward the view that part of the explanation for the extraordinary global success of football is that the gameis a universal language which we speak with different accents.

Other sports popular in the UK do not always have the global reach of football. Snooker, rugby and cricket can all struggle to gain audiences in many countries. Could one reason for this be that these sports have not turned into ‘global languages’ but have remained predominately English-speaking? If this is the case, could language education potentially open doors to audiences in countries where these sports are less popular and in turn make pupils more enthusiastic language learners?

In the Netherlands, the European Platform internationalizing English has decided to develop a cricket project which will incorporate cricket into the sports programme of up to 120 bilingual schools across the country. This initiative has been described in an article by Rod Lyall on Cricket Europe Netherlands as possibly

the most important initiative in the Dutch game since the ICC introduced its High Performance Program, and may in the end prove to be even more significant for the sport’s long-term future.

The opportunity to use a language programme to reach over 25,000 pupils is clearly appealing to a sport keen to raise its profile; but the programme can be beneficial to pupils too. Senior projects officer at the European Platform, Onno van Wilgenburg, explains:

Cricket is anideal sport for our purposes […] because it can be enjoyable both for pupils who are naturally athletic and those who are a bit less talented.

Because it is played across the English-speaking world it adds a truly international dimension to our programme, and it can feed into almost every area of the curriculum.

The essence of CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) is that language learning should not be confined to the language classroom but that other subjects should be taught ‘through the medium of a language other than that normally used.’  Programmes such as this can provide a good opportunity for learners to improve their sporting and linguistic skills simultaneously. It is not only cricket that could reach a new audience through programmes such as this one, but languages too.

For more information on the cricket project, you may be interested in the following articles:

Bilingual schools projectis Dutch cricket’s big opportunity

34 schools sign up for Dutch bilingual schools scheme

Thank you to our Portuguese partner, Lachlan Mackenzie, ILTEC, for bringing this project to our attention.

Kaksikielisyys on iso ilo

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Tyttäremme sai syntyessään suuren lahjan: kaksikielisyyden. Koska hänen äitinsä on suomenkielinen ja isänsä hollanninkielinen, hän sai lahjaksi suomen ja hollannin. Meille oli jo alusta asti selvää, että minä puhun hänelle suomea, mieheni hollantia. Olenkin ollut yllättynyt siitä, kuinka moni tuntuu kysyvän tästä ja jopa ihmettelevän asiaa, etenkin täällä Belgiassa: “Siis puhutko sinä hänelle suomea, vaikka asut Belgiassa? Oho.” Suoraan sanottuna minulle ei tulisi mieleenikään puhua lapselleni esimerkiksi englantia tai hollantia. Miksi tekisin niin? Mielestäni kaikkien lasten olisi hyvä puhua molempien vanhempiensa äidinkieltä ja toisekseen, mielestäni vanhempien on parasta puhua lapselleen omaa äidinkieltään, jotta nämä oppivat kieltä mahdollisimman virheettömästi ja oikein. Olen ymmärtänyt, että sillä ei ole niinkään suurta merkitystä, mitä kieltä vanhemmat puhuvat keskenään. Me olemme kuitenkin lapsemme syntymän jälkeen yrittäneet minimoida englannin ja italian ja keskittyä hollantiin ja suomeen myös keskinäisessä kanssakäymisessämme. Uskon, että tämä tekee hyvää sekä tyttäremme että meidän kielitaidollemme. Toki se voi tehdä hallaa italian ja englannin kielen taidoillemme, mutta koska meistä kumpikaan ei puhu näitä äidinkielenään, on tärkeämpi, että lapsemme ainakin alussa keskittyy kahteen kieleen ja oppii ne hyvin. Mehän voimme opiskella muita kieliä myöhemmin tai siinä sivussa; kuten kaikki tietävät, pienten lasten vanhemmilla on rutosti vapaa-aikaa.

Lapsemme puhuu tällä hetkellä molempia kieliä vähän sekaisin, mutta mielenkiintoista on, että vaikka asumme Belgiassa, hän puhuu ja ymmärtää suomea huomattavasti paremmin kuin hollantia/flaamia. Tarkemmin ajatellen tähän on kuitenkin aika monta järkisyytä. Ensinnäkin minä olen ollut tyttäremme ensisijainen hoitaja siinä mielessä, että hoidin häntä kotona, kunnes palasin töihin osa-aikaisesti ja hän aloitti päiväkodin. Kotona puhun hänelle aina suomea, luen suomenkielisiä kirjoja, kuuntelemme etupäässä suomenkielistä (lasten-)musiikkia, soitan pianoa ja laulan pääasiassa suomenkielisiä lauluja ja ylipäänsäkin vietän hänen kanssaan paljon aikaa.

Myös sosiaaliset suhteet vaikuttavat tunnetusti kielten oppimiseen. Asuinmaa tai kontaktien määrä ei kuitenkaan automaattisesti määrää vahvempaa kieltä. Tyttäremme käy osa-aikaisesti hollanninkielisessä päiväkodissa, missä hän oppii hollantia. Hänen isänsä lisäksi hän tapaa täällä muita sukulaisia ja ystäviä, jotka puhuvat hollantia. Minä tapaan myös säännöllisesti suomenkielisiä ystäviäni sekä Belgiassa että Suomessa. Useimmilla heistä on myös lapsia, joten lapsemme pääsevät leikkimään yhdessä. Lasten ollessa pienempiä järjestimme toisinaan myös jonkinasteisia musiikkileikkikouluja, joissa soitimme tai ainakin lauloimme yhdessä – suomeksi. Lisäksi Skypen kautta voimme olla yhteydessä suomalaisiin sukulaisiin ja ystäviin. Epäilen, että viimeistään koulun alkaessa kielten paikat vaihtuvat ja hollannista tulee tyttäremme vahvempi kieli, mutta sitä suuremmalla syyllä hänen onkin hyvä oppia mahdollisimman paljon suomea nyt. Hän ei myöskään tällä hetkellä vielä seuraa mediaa, ja uskon, että vanhempana silläkin on varmasti vaikutuksensa. Toki lehtiä, tv:tä ja radiotakin voi seurata usealla kielellä.

Minä odotan mielenkiinnolla, koska tyttäremme suomen kielen taito yltää hänen isänsä suomen kielen taidon tasolle. Lapsemme varmasti innostaa meitäkin opettelemaan toinen toisemme äidinkieltä paremmin. Olen kuullut, että kriisejäkin saattaa olla luvassa: lapsi saattaa esimerkiksi kieltäytyä puhumasta toista kieltä, vaikka osaisikin sitä. Tätä on kuitenkin turha miettiä nyt, kun voimme vielä toistaiseksi nauttia lapsemme uusista ja hauskoista oivalluksista molemmilla kielillä.

To be continued…