Are Speech Therapist trained for Bilingual Children ?

The question has been raised by many groups around the world.

The general answer is NO. Speech therapists - even if they are bilingual themselves - do not receive any training on how to assess bilingual children. Their methods and intrumensts are usually designed for monolingual people.
A bilingual person is not an addition of two monolingualisms !!!
Unfortunately, speech therapists are not trained for the bilingual population !! And they cannot speak all the languages round the globe !!!

It is a problematic question for parents !! Espacially when they are told their children are delaying in learning the language. We should not forget that the acquisition of language for bilingual children is completely different than for monolingual children.

There is hope however :
A group of scientits in a University in the USA have found how to assess and help bilingual children speaking English and Spanish.

10 Other Ideas to help your child be fully Bilingual

I would just refer you to another site :

http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/bilingualkids5.htm 


You will find there many interesting ideas !!

Multilingual Breakfast

For those who are at home or those who can, I suggest that meet once a month for a multilingual breakfast.

Let's say that the first one will be on Friday 26 November !!
Let's say we meet at 10 am !!
Place : what about Mahon Point (downstairs near Debenhams !!)

Bring a friend if you wish !! I am sure we all know families who have two or more languages at home !!
That will be an opportunity to meet, chat, share ideas and views !!

Please, let me know, if you are coming and send me an email : cork.group@bilingualforumireland.com

TIPS FOR SUCCESSFUL LANGUAGE LEARNING

I am getting inspired here by Corey Heller who gives tips for a successful way of learning a language. She is extremely active in bilingualism and helping families to raise their children to be bilingual.
In short, she says, language learning should be

1. playful - because it has to be like a game. 
2. imperfect - making mistakes is a great way for improvement.
3. daily - you should practice it daily 
4. incentive because it must not be an obligation - we must not learn at certain precise time of the day 
5. spoken - because a language is there to be spoken as much as possible
6. inefficient - because if we are doing it at home and not at school, the idea of being marked is not there
7. emotional - because a language is living and every one would have different feeling about it

I think she has great ideas. We are trying to have our children be bilingual and use the different languages we have at home. If we want them to be able to speak them, enjoy them and then be fluent in them, we must present these languages as games, as toys. Children like to play. They are not at school and the "other" language (I mean the one which is not used at school) should not be forced on them. There are so many ways to make our children appreciate them and use them.

Europe has launched a new competition !! "Tickle your stories !!"
Make people smile and laugh with your stories
Visit the web site for more information and to register !!


http://www.tonguestories.eu/


Let's join and participate !!!