packing cases

Because maintaining a quality blog takes a lot of time…  And two blogs  are even more demanding.  So, we decided to move the content of this blog to our main blog : The Lingua Franca Foundation. To read all these articles, just click here.

Yesterday, I published a post about Piccolingo, an European program aimed to promote early language learning for preschool children.  Here, is an article I wrote several month ago on early language learning and its benefits.

Some myths and legends about language learning seem very difficult to eradicate…

One of the most ancient and long-lasting wrong idea about bilingualism is that children who are exposed to several languages at home face learning problems and are retarded in their acquisition of their mother tongue.

A new study of the Sissa (Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati – International High School for Advanced Studies) just demonstrates the opposite : children early exposed to bilingualism at home develop earlier and better learning capacities than monolingual kiddies…

Experiments carried on by Professor Jacques Mehler and Agnes Melinda Kovacs show that bilingual young children cope easier with some verbal stimuli based tests.

In one of these tests, children have to associate a sequence of sounds with the position of images on a screen.  For instance, when the  baby hears a sounds sequence based on a AAB pattern (like loloba), a puppet appears on the left of the screen.  When the sequence follows another pattern, ABA (like lobalo), the puppet appears on the right side of the screen.

Monolingual one year old children  can only anticipate the apparition of the puppet according to the AAB sequel while bilingual kids are able to predict the position of the puppet in both sequences.

According to the researchers, bilingual children develop an early ability to take in consideration the important things in a determined context, while their monolingual colleagues are lost in a dark forest of details…

Theses children, also develop – even before they talk ! – a capacity to observe the tiny linguistic nuances of the parents languages and can learn foreign languages easier and faster than monolingual children.

A good news for language lovers, isn’t it ?

If you want to know more about this research, you can read the press release of the Sissa or go to the Science Magazine website to read the abstract or purchase the full article.

“Every child should learn at least two languages”.  The European Council.

Logo Piccolingo

 For the European Union, “multilingualism lies at the heart of the EU.”  Therefore, the European Institutions, throughout the Lifelong Learning Program is supporting initiatives related to language learning.  For the European Commission, there are 3 strands of the multilingualism policy :

1.  Encouraging language learning and promoting linguistic diversity in society.
2. Promoting a healthy multilingual economy.
3. Promoting social integration through improved knowledge and acceptance of languages.

 As languages are one of the four key activities, the Lifelong Learning Programme offers a wide range of actions designed to support language learning, including language learning at an early age.

The European Union is launching a campaign, named Piccolingo, through the 27 Member States.  This campaign aims at parents and seeks to raise awareness about the fact that young children who start learning languages at a very early age will, as they grow older, will confidently approach foreign languages and cultures.

Through the Piccolingo campaign, many parents will realise that learning languages before starting school is beneficial because their children will:

• Find communication easier
• Learn and memorise through play – good preparation for school
• Learn to be open-minded
• Feel at home in any country
• Increase their chances of finding a job
• Find foreign cultures alluring rather than threatening
• Appreciate their own culture

Piccolingo is also a network  throughout Europe.  Every association, group or network who wants to work in the field of early age language learning can be part of the scheme.  Piccolingo supports actions such as :

• A cultural institute introducing parents and young children to language diversity during particular activities
• A child welfare association organising conferences on early language learning in a civic centre
• A local cultural association organising a multilingual storytelling event in a public library
• An immigrants’ association organising a multicultural event with immigrant families based on young children’s nursery rhymes from different countries
• A parents’ association organising a conference on early language learning at school
• A nursery school organising a multilingual event involving families

The support provided by the Piccolingo program consists essentially of sharing and mainstreaming.

Through the Piccolingo campaign, you can:

• Promote your initiatives and actions
• Present your organisation or network in a European directory
• Share and enrich your practices, resources and testimonials
• Use the Piccolingo logo for greater visibility

Find more about this program on the Piccolingo Website.

If you want to know more about the European Union Language Policy, visit this page.

The Lingua Franca Foundation was established last week and we worked hard to get our blog (almost) ready and to list all the projects we aim to do in the coming days, weeks, months, years…

And we are proud to give you the result of our brainstorming  :

Mind Mapping - Projects

Of course, this is a little bit small and crowded… so you can see it in full size at this address.

And then, you’ll have a unique view on what we want to do in the future. The future starting… now!

In the coming days, we will give you full information about our projects and the developments of the Lingua Franca Academy. Thank you for your patience.

You can also have a look on our more general projects at the Lingua Franca Foundation.