Hi Joha,

That is so true what you said about your bilingual baby daughter. My 23 months old Stella is learning the 4th language at the age of 22 months. I spoke Mandarin to her from birth and my husband speaks only English. Stella attends Spanish playgroup I am running from the age of 6 weeks and now we've got a French au pair for a few weeks. Within a couple of weeks listening to a 'new' language, she is now able to sing in French and basic daily greetings, instructions and so on.

Stella's communicating skills and the amount of words she can say and sentences she can translate between languages is amazing. She can have a conversation with a stranger (with me) anytime. Her days has just filled with activities and our Au pair has been teaching and playing with her according to the timetable that I've set up for her. She won't get board! She doesn't learn a new language from watching DVD or listening to tapes but she has a great amount of one on one sessions weekly and in group learning interactions with teacher and children her age. She learns Mandarin on Monday, and Friday morning in toddler groups and Tuesday/ Thursday French lessons, Saturday she learns Spanish.

Stella will learn a 5th language towards the middle of the year, German, after she has enough language skills in French. She will be in our bilingual Early Learning Centre 3 days a week and learning 3 different languages.

I believe if we provide our child/baby with the right learning environment, they will absolutely benefit from it and I believe dual language immersion program is a great program for me to introduce a new language to her each time she is ready to take on a new challenge.

Very happy to see and read that there are more and more parents who are focus and aware of the benefit of early language learning for their baby.

I am very happy to see that there are more babies can read and understand in more than one languages and across the area of learning. Congrats, Aangeles! You can see that your little princess has the understanding of what she sees (reading, but not able to reproduce the sound yet) and she understands how she can use her body language to express herself (pointing, touching, nodding etc). Once she is ready to talk, she would be able to read it out loud to you. Excellent job. My Spanish nanny is starting next week so hopefully my little Stella would be able to talk in Spanish soon. She is very good at using up to 8 words together in a sentence in Chinese now, with clear pronunciation. Let's all encourage each other and maximize our little ones learning potential. I am happy if she can use these three major languages in the world from now on.

This is one of the most important discoveries on babies' early language learning abilities. I've watched this video clip over the past 3 hours, I took my time to make sure that I understand it at the best of my abilities, with all the commons made available by you all above.

There are a few points I would like to make in regards to this discussion, some of them can be find form the film itself:

1. According to what this new research discovers, the sooner we create a second/foreign language interactive /socially engaging learning environment for babies/infants, the better it is to their later language development. This includes the faster and more complex first language acquisition at the later stage (24 months, this film refers to in their research).

2. From the recent new neuroscience (MEG) available, phonetic learning is a "Pathway" to language implications for reading and disabilities. the sooner we can identify that a child has the language learning disability, the sooner we can help to address the problem.

3. Babies learning depends a lot on the social interaction, therefore, a foreign language DVD or audio doesn't really help an infant younger than 12 months old. This doesn't mean that a 30 months old's toddler would have no benefit of watching a foreign language DVD whatsoever. This is because the way a 30 months old's learning is different to that of a 6 or 7.5 months old's infant. Again, the social interaction plays a vital tool to their early learning as well.

There is no argument about it. I have seen a few hundred Melbourne families in the past 3 years that tried to learn a second language (when both parents only have one, English), and, with a great % of them gave up in less than 6 months and a further few % of them gave up in less than 12 months. This is largely because parents couldn't see pass the point that babies and young toddlers learn more than what they can reproduce and lots of the 'hear says' of: 'bilingual babies are often slow talkers' or 'bilingual babies are more easily to develop language problems because they get confused by two or maybe three languages that's surrounding them', which is not what this video has shown us.

4. Bilingual babies love socializing with peers and love to be in a group of adults and babies company. They are learning from such a purposely organized social interaction gathering. My 19 months old, for example, is putting 6 Chinese words together, (she surprises us everyday, when I just made a statement of she was using 4 or 5 words two weeks ago, she has out grown my expectation, again) and she is making sentences since long before she was 16 months old. This is largely because she is in my Mandarin bilingual Toddler learning playgroups 4 times a week (I am running 21 bilingual learning playgroups weekly, offering 3 languages). When she was barely 11 months old, one day, in the class, she repeated out loud of what the teacher said, the whole group of mothers of 14 to 20 months old toddlers cheers, no one expects her to do so (she was the youngest one in the group, I moved her from baby class to toddler's before 11 months because she won't sit still for flash cards anymore, like most of the other babies would). Because of this surprise she made and got recognized, from that day onwards, she loves to make and repeats sounds/words after everyone. Her counting skills in both Chinese and  English follows a 'Yea' after '10'. I call her little parrot. She also recognizes Spanish flash cards and sounds, I never count how many Spanish words she learns during the weekly session, but she repeats after you as clear as she can be. English is the domain language at home because my husband speaks English ONLY until recently. He is now learning Mandarin with our third baby and he picks it up a lot more than in the past 9 years of our marriage all together.

5. From an individual's academic point of view to the benefit of a society, Early learning plays an important role. If we would like to see the preparation gap disappears maybe we have to make sure that the early learning stars really early.

Finally, I am very happy to say that all the way along, I've been doing the hard work of helping and promoting the early bilingual language learning, now, watching this DVD clip, has made me more strong at what I am doing and hope all of you out there who are not sure what to do or still not able to make up your mind of 'which' language to give it to your child other than English would stop wondering and gather all the act together, giving your child the best gift you can possible give it to him/her, starting an early language learning soon.

Remember, up until the age of 7 still is a good start, although the sooner the better. Babies are the citizens of the world (the beginning of Prof. Patricia Kuhl's speech)

Regards to all and any discussions.

Marisha

You are welcome, KL. Hope that helps.

Hi hypatia,

I had a look at the link you posted below and found that everyone should be able to understand what's going on in the short clip. There is the English translation below everything they said in Chinese. The content should not be a problem as you could understand it easily by reading the English translation.

Hope this helps.

Hi everyone,

Babies do learn to speak/understand/communicate in different languages if he/she does have the multi language environment provided to him/her. It is not necessarily to say that multilingual babies speak slower than monolingual babies. I have 3 children, they were all early talkers by nature and they are all capable of communicate in 3 languages although English is the domain for the two older ones and the 18 months old is talking like a 2 and half years old, by nature, again, plus the multi language environment I purposely provided to her.

In my early childhood language teaching years, I saw many early talkers that can communicate in two or more languages some starting before 12 months old, I also saw a few bilingual children that can't say a few words or starting to talk after 30 months old. I would really like to let everyone know that it is totally depending on individual child, not because the baby is bilingual/multilingual or not. There were a hand full of children, however, I had to insist the parents to take them to the specialist because they have language delay problems and some of them are actually autistic but parents refuse to acknowledge it. They all referred to me by friends or maternal nurses but language teacher can't fix the speech problem for the child, Dr.s and speech pathologists can. We can teach your child to learn the language but not treat him/her.

If you think that your child is a late speaker but you are happy with all other areas of his/her development then, you would have no worries. If not, speak to your GP and investigate as early as possible. Autistic children or children with server language delay recover quick when the problem is dealt with earlier, trust me.

The point I want to make it here is: bilingual or multilingual won't make a child talk earlier or later, it is got nothing to do with that although lots of people would suggest that it can affect a child's ability to speak early or not.

There is a link with my website that you may want to check it out. Dr. Susane is specializing at helping bilingual children who has language development problems. She would be in a much better position to give advises.

http://www.kimmba.com.au/Links.html

Excellent, now there are three of you. Which suburb are you all from? If you can find a location that everyone is happy to travel and find a NH or community centre, church hall/room and so on. See how much do they charge for the rent. If it is an agreeable price, then the location is done. Next, find a group of mums and a good preschool qualified Chinese teacher. I am sure there must be lots of them in Sydney.

A big day ahead of me tomorrow so I will talk soon. Need to catch up some sleep.

By the way, I forgot to put the link of our You Tube short videos. You may be interested at how we run our bilingual playgroup for toddlers.

http://www.youtube.com/user/kimmbabilingual

Cheers,
Marisha

You are welcome. Hope you will find some language and community based playgroups in Sydney, otherwise, start one yourself, especially you have all the knowledge and skills of teaching French. If you need more games and activities for toddlers, I can help you with that.

I pay my teachers very well, that's why I have the lowest teacher turning rate. Teachers stay with me since 2007. I believe you have to pay them well so they will do a good job with your children (I have more than 150 children coming weekly and 7 teachers working part with me). Unfortunately, not everyone do the same.

Let's keep in touch. I am campaigning to go to all MCH centers in Melbourne and talk to new mothers about bilingual education at babyhood. Hope by doing so, more and more parents would follow the lead and make bilingual learning a new social phenomena in Melbourne. Maybe you can lobby so in Sydney. It does need lots of determination as some MCH coordinators are really rigid. I am very honored to have a group of professional mothers work with me and support what I am doing. Cheers, Marisha

LDSMum,
That's really excellent that you've having someone professional in both child care and providing the Spanish language to your son. I do the same myself. My 18 months old toddler is cared for by a Chinese nanny who accompanies her to Chinese toddler playgroups right through the week and Spanish playgroup on Saturdays. My daughter has more than 300 words in Chinese and she is able to use 4 to 5 words phases/sentences in Chinese, talking to my husband in English and learns Spanish since birth. She is able to repeat after you in these 3 languages no problem. I am working from home so I am able to be with her and knowing how her daily routine is like. I am very lucky to be able to do so.

Her groups of toddler friends are all looking forward to seeing her each week and she is able to call a few toddlers names when she sees them. She loves to play with all of them. She is a very sociable 18 months old. Before I had a nanny, I used to carry her in the hug-a-bub and teach at the same time as I run bilingual playgroups at 6 locations in the beginning of this year. To have a Chinese speaking nanny 6 days a week is really the best thing that I could provide for her (I am working 6 days a week). With the added bonus of Chinese toddler playgroups I run through out the week, I see so many Australian families are enjoying to bring their little tots out and learn to speak a second language.

Hope there would be more and more parents like us, actively teaching babies to learn a second language. That is the best thing we can do, to get them start any language early.

Hi tobias8, can you please give me the website so that I can look up for you and let you know soon?

I forgot to let parents know our You Tube short video link so you may be able to do the same and help your baby at home.

The link is: http://www.youtube.com/user/kimmbabilingual

More than welcome to leave your common and suggestions. I have more to post but don't have time at the moment. If more of you would like to view different activities of what we do, then I will get it done soon.

Cheers,
Marisha

There is a wonderful website and the product is excellent for someone wants to learn Chinese. I am using it for all my Chinese classes right through all 7 locations in Melbourne. It is http://www.betterchinese.com

This product is one of the bests and the easiest for a Non Chinese speaking parents to learn Chinese with your child. It is suitable from birth to high school. They produced both simplified and traditional Chinese characters so that parents are free to choose either one or the written forms you would like your child to learn Chinese.

What I have done in the past few years was collecting all orders from my parents and place the order together so that parents can share all the added costs of express international delivery and insurance and packaging charges and so on. So it cost parents ranging from $80 to $95 per set of 36 books and 1 cd, it depends on the exchange rate.

Tobias8, that's right, the friendliness and the acceptances to others make bilingual babies all that much more pleasurable to be with. Can you imaging if we could encourage at least 1/4 of the Australian population to be at least bilingual (multilingual is even better), the violence of the society would be reduced dramatically.

From the personnel and social point of views, bilingual is the way to go. 

We all know that language is best taught from young. The younger you start the better the outcome is.

There were a few babies that I taught last year who had absolutely no Chinese (a second language), neither the farther or the mother came from any of the Chinese backgrounds. So how could the English speaking parent teach the baby, say, Chinese? How did we do it in our playroom on the weekly bases?

Well, you can spend lots of money buying all sorts of learning materials or engaging a professional Chinese language teacher, or hiring a Chinese speaking nanny for their services. These are all high cost ways of helping your baby to be on the path of a second language learning.

The best would be for a bilingual parent to speak to your child your home language. unfortunately, this is not always possible for us all. Most of us have only got one language.

There were about 15 babies all together since my first Mandarin baby class in July, 08. These babies are ranging from 24 to 13 months old now. 99% of them talked very early, either starting with Chinese words or English. Once they are able to talk, their language ability just matured daily. They are much happier to be around new members of the community and they are much more friendly to other toddlers. They are so confident at being with other adults/mums. Few months ago, I was telling a group of 8 toddlers (a few of them from our baby class last year) a story, suddenly, I realize that most of them are sitting with someone else's mum, not their own. But they were all so involved at the story that I was giving. I wish I had a camera to capture this moment, but I soon realized that this happens all the time with this particular group of baby -> toddler learners.

Compare this group of toddlers to the other groups of toddlers that I have, which none of them were with us from babyhood, you can see the difference and teachers actually feel that it is harder to teach these groups to the one baby -> toddler group and I often have to help the other groups of new toddlers.

This actually shows us that the new research finds Bilingual babies developing the ability of acceptance to others (people, language, cultural, foods,) more easily than Monolingual babies.

For this reason alone, we need to find ways to help our little babies and toddlers to learn a second language as soon as we can.

Low costs ways of helping your baby/toddler/preschooler to learn a second language are:

1. Organize visits and home plays with friends or community members that speaking the particular language that you would like your child to learn.
2. Join local/starting your own bilingual learning playgroup that is community minded and focus on children's language learning and aiming at providing the best outcome for families.
3. Using free on-line learning materials, and learn it with your child.
4. Install the cable TV system that provides 24/7 language access of programs that you can choose particular time frame to watch the TV show with your child. I don't suggest that you use TV as baby sitter while you get other house chores done. As some of the contents of the show may be ok to the culture background but not acceptable to you.
5. Songs is the best way of helping your child to learn a new language. Song CDs in the car, at home, in the playroom.
6. Printable flashcards, place them all over your house. Visual stimulation is so important to those little brain's development. Fill your house up with them your child will soon learn making connections with what he sees and what it means.
7. Make a space available to encourage your toddler to draw and express himself on the wall, whiteboard, if possible. Don't forget that gross motor skill development is another vital important part of language learning.
8. Most importantly, don't forget to bring fun into the learning. Children won't want to learn or participate if there is no fun. So make it fun for them to do any activities that's the aid to their learning.


Got to catch up some sleep before 8am as I have 6 classes tomorrow and will only finish at 5pm every Saturday, school terms.

Hope all above is helping and encouraging enough to get you start at helping your child to learn a second language.

Visit my website for more information regarding our classes for babies, toddlers, kinder and early primary children:
http://www.kimmba.com.au

I forgot to mention that there are lots of Chinese newspapers and Chinese weekly or Chinese magazines and so on that would have lots of Chinese TV installers' details. Friday afternoon is the best time to go and pick up a copy from your local Chinese store and you will be able to find someone that you are happy with.

The other sure way of helping your child to learn Chinese is having a Chinese nanny and organize a regular play with Chinese families that speak Chinese at home, If attending Chinese playgroups weekly is not an option for you.

I don't know much about the sign language myself but I absolutely agree with you Nikita, about using the 'sign' language to help children to learn a second language, this is the similar approach we have in our classroom. We don't really have a sign language section but we use a lot of body language to help our children to understand what we are saying before we explain it to them in English, mind you, babies won't care what language you explain to them. They just understand you anyway, how wonderful.

I am searching for more self learning Mandarin materials for you all, will take me a few days before I would have enough information so please be patient. Once I've got enough information, I will put it up in the forum. We can either order it individually or order it as a group and maybe getting some group discount.

Cheers,
Marisha

Hi diva7, hypatia has asked me the same question. Please read my reply if there are enough parents in Sydney, I will certainly go up and help you all to set it up so more and more children can benefit the early language learning without paying a costly amount of money.

Hi Nikita, yes Bilingual Learning centre project is going but I don't know how long will it take. If you know of any drafting individual or company, any town planner and builder/ building company, etc. please refer me as this is the first time I am building in this country so I need as much help as possible.

Meantime, let's keep helping the little ones and get them going with the language learning.

The one sure excellent way is to install a Chinese TV system so you will have Chinese tv the whole day. Of course you will have to select the program that you are showing your children but you can learn it yourself, too. It costs between $499 to $2000, it depends on which system you are getting. Mind you, not the more you pay the better it is. You may need to speak to as many Chinese TV installers as possible to decide at the end.

Kimmba also has a DVD that you can buy with songs and children's dancing, it's about 1 hours' children stage performance. I made that DVD in 2007, our first end of year concert. It was so popular with all our families. My two girls has watched it over and over again, they sing and dance with the DVD. My older children only watch Chinese Dora, Chinese story DVD, and Spanish Dora. The language DVDs I have are not the teaching ones, it's just the carton stories and karaoke Chinese children' songs. So it is much more interactive and engaging.

If you would like more details, please email me. We are changing our internet provder, after 5 and half years with them. It will take about 5 to 20 days (hope not that long) to switch over so we are on the dial up at the moment.......

Cheers,

Marisha