As I was rushing around last night to make sure I could pick my little boy up from football practice, I wasn’t paying much attention to anything around his school but was trying to focus hard on getting there on time (and losing my reputation of ‘mummy-who-cares-more-about-work-than-her-own-kids’) until his teacher, who seemed quite determined, approached me and said: ‘Can I ask you something?’… Oops, I panicked that Maxie had done something wrong.. Actually to be truthful, I worried that I, had done something wrong! Did I run in the corridor? Did I forget to say hello to the Headteacher? Did I use the wrong door? Oh dear…
Well actually, no, I hadn’t. None of that in fact. Instead, his teacher asked me if a little girl named Freya, in Maxie’s class (Reception year) came to my Academy. ‘She certainly does’, I replied. ‘She learns Spanish, she is delightful, isn’t she?’. ‘Well’, replied the teacher, ‘I was wondering because she keeps counting in Spanish in class and always tries to translate all we do’. Continue reading “DOES THIS LITTLE GIRL COME TO YOUR ACADEMY?” »

Offering your child a bilingual education is not just about giving her the chance to speak another language, open her mind to different cultures but you will in the process, undoubtedly, make her more clever! Proven fact.

I remember a study carried out in the USA a few years ago… At the time, I had no intention of becoming a teacher, nor a parent for that matter, not yet anyway, but the results caught my eye simply because, at the time, I was working very hard  to become bilingual myself.

Researchers interviewed twenty children from the same social-economic class.  The one single difference between all was that half of them were monolingual whilst half of them were bilingual.

Whilst the various tests were carried out, not much difference was noted until children were asked to solve problems. The bilingual children achieved accurate results in half the time needed by monolingual children.

Further research from around the world have shown that bilingual people tend to do better in IQ tests compare with monolingual people and I sincerely hope that this is true, having spent a vast amount of time and efforts trying to become bilingual in the last ten years!

So YES, engaging your child on the road to bilingualism will open her mind to other countries and cultures, offer her greater career opportunities later on in life and for now, show her the road to superior academic performances.

That is to be discussed, bilingualism should perhaps become compulsory!