Multilingual Education

[supakoal]

Hi, all =)
I'm so glad to find this site. I teach English and Korean to preschoolers and am now researching child bilingual + multilingual education. I want to study more on that aspect so that I could contribute to develop kid's language skills in early stage. I'm working on producing animation for kids as well.

I wish to hear your opinion about the program "Dora the Explorer" and "Go Diego Go" which are spoken both in English and Spanish. Do you think they are really good ways of teaching bilingual education? Have your kids watched them? Did they like them? Were they helpful to learn either English or Spanish? Do you believe kids can grasp more than two languages at the same time?

I'd really appreciate your opinion about anything related to Child's lingusitic development. Have a wonderful day!

[tcollura]

I think that these shows are great ways to introduce children to speaking two languages. I don't think that children will gain much besides knowing some words, but the value goes way beyond that. My fiance's nieces watch these shows and one day on a long drive I decided to teach them some Spanish words because I speak English and Spanish. I taught them basic words as we passed things. Later in the day when they were talking about the drive Ana the younger girl said, " Aunt Stephanie we saw agua and botas." Besides being the cutest thing in the world it was so amazing how she remembered the words. I don't think she would have remembered the words as well if she had not watched Dora and heard agua before. By children watching these shows it introduces to them the idea of knowing two languages and they may even remember a few common words which are used repeatedly. I don't know if there is research but it would be interesting to see a study on how children watching these shows compare learning languages later in life than those who do not.

[staciholland]

I have two sons ages four and seven and they both watch Dora the Explorer and Diego. I find that, as we all know, children learn through play and imitation and by providing a child with a fun and educational format to do both is highly benefical. On the other hand, I find that the older the child becomes the less likely they are to maintain their interest in a "kiddie" show, so the real issue is to find a way to have Dora and Diego grow as the child grows to continue their interest in acquiring a second language.