<div>Thanks for sharing that, Katie. I am excited about passing on this good news to our bilingual moms and dads in my district. (It's ironic how some monolinguals actually feel superior to bilinguals. Oh, if they only knew!!) </div>
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<div>Off the topic of quick attention-shifting skills, but still on the topic of bilingualism, I'd like to share the following...although I'm probably preaching to the choir here:</div>
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<div>In our libraries and communities, we should all be encouraging bilingual parents to read to and help their children begin reading in their first language <u>prior to</u> learning to read in English. When a child learns to read in his/her own language first, the vocabulary and sentence structure are already familiar and the child won't be fumbling with a strange language while trying to learn literacy decoding skills. It just makes sense. (Imagine yourself, age 4, 5, 6, tackling your first written words... in, say, German and not knowing what the words mean!) Bilingual children will transfer their decoding skills to English easily if they are literate in their first language. Sadly, many children from non-English speaking homes never become literate in their own first language. </div>
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<div>Because most of our school districts do <u>not</u> offer bilingual elementary education, it's up to libraries to help promote first language literacy as much as we can through educating the parents about the importance of this and providing materials and story-times in the language(s) most prevalent in our communities. </div>
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<div>One 5 year old boy from a Spanish-speaking family in our district entered kindergarten this last fall with almost no English skills. He was moved up to first grade after just the first few weeks of school. Why? Because his superior literacy skills! Before starting kindergarten, he was reading books like <u>Diary of a Wimpy Kid</u> in Spanish for pleasure...and after a few weeks exposure to English in kindergarten, he was reading fluently in English as well...at 2nd grade level! This boy's very devoted parents (who have regularly attended Spanish story-times with their children at our library over the years) had been reading to him and later having him read to them in Spanish throughout his infancy, toddlerhood, and preschool years.</div>
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<div>If there are non-English-speaking parents in your communities, encourage them to read to their youngsters in the language they speak at home. Their children will be ahead of the game.</div>
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<div>Thanks,</div>
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<div>Lorene Forman</div>
<div>Jefferson County Library Youth Services</div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 9:07 AM, Katie Anderson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:katie.anderson@state.or.us">katie.anderson@state.or.us</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Hello!<span> </span>I just read an excellent article on the benefits of bilingualism: "Leave Los Ninos Alone! The Mental Costs of Linguistic Assimilation" by<span> </span>Julie Sedivy in <span style="FONT-STYLE:italic">Discover </span>magazine online at: <a href="http://mblogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2012/01/19/leave-los-ninos-alone-the-mental-costs-of-linguistic-assimilation/" target="_blank">http://mblogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2012/01/19/leave-los-ninos-alone-the-mental-costs-of-linguistic-assimilation/</a> </p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Below are key points I copied and pasted from the article, all except the first one are new to me. I find the last point particularly interesting and relevant to our work. Many early childhood professionals and bilingual parents ask if one method or another is better for teaching children to be bilingual. This new study <b><i>suggests</i></b> that compartmentalizing languages, speaking one language at home and another out of the home, <b><i>may</i></b> not have the same cognitive benefits as mixing languages and flipping between them throughout the day. Note, this is only one study which means this isn’t a definitive answer to the question and this study does not address the cultural and familial benefits of learning one’s native language.</p>
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<p><span style="FONT-FAMILY:Symbol"><span>·<span style="FONT:7pt 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span>The advantages [of bilingualism] seem to hinge on the cognitive machinery of <em><span style="FONT-FAMILY:'Calibri','sans-serif'">executive control</span></em>—mental processes that allow us to switch quickly between tasks or competing information.</p>
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<p><span style="FONT-FAMILY:Symbol"><span>·<span style="FONT:7pt 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span>Bilinguals tend to outperform monolinguals whenever they have to ignore distracting information and focus on some relevant dimension… [because]… bilingual speech, whether it overtly mixes languages or not, is a highly controlled process involving rapid-fire decisions about which words to choose and which ones to suppress. <br>
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<p><span style="FONT-FAMILY:Symbol"><span>·<span style="FONT:7pt 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span>A bilingual advantage for quick attention-shifting has been found in babies as young as seven months, well before these children ever utter their first words in either language.</p>
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<p><span style="FONT-FAMILY:Symbol"><span>·<span style="FONT:7pt 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span>the drawings of bilingual kindergarten-age kids were different from their monolingual peers. …monolingual children were fairly unadventurous… bilingual children… incorporated elements from completely different objects… This kind of cross-category mixing in children’s drawings tends not to occur until kids are about eight years old, putting the bilingual kids on an accelerated timeline for this particular skill.</p>
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<p><span style="FONT-FAMILY:Symbol"><span>·<span style="FONT:7pt 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span>At the far end of the lifespan, bilingualism may help postpone the symptoms associated with Alzheimer’s disease; some bilingual Alzheimer’s populations have shown delays of four to five years in the onset of their symptoms as compared with their monolingual peers.</p>
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<p><span style="FONT-FAMILY:Symbol"><span>·<span style="FONT:7pt 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span>one recent study… compared Mandarin-English bilinguals, Spanish-English bilinguals, and monolingual English speakers living in San Diego… the Spanish-English speakers flipped between their languages on a daily basis. Mandarin-English speakers, on the other hand, kept their language use more compartmentalized. All three groups were given a test in which they had to switch between sorting visual images either by their color or by their shape. Only the Spanish-English bilinguals showed a relative advantage when confronted with a sudden category shift; the Mandarin-English speakers were no different on this score than the monolinguals.</p>
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<div align="center">Katie Anderson, Library Development Services</div>
<div align="center">* Youth Services Consultant * Oregon Center for the Book Coordinator *</div>
<div align="center">Oregon State Library, 250 Winter St. NE, Salem, OR 97301</div>
<div align="center"><a href="mailto:katie.anderson@state.or.us" target="_blank">katie.anderson@state.or.us</a>, <a href="tel:503-378-2528" target="_blank" value="+15033782528">503-378-2528</a></div>
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