Raising up a multilingual child - Bella and Yulia Devyatkina

hello everyone [Applause] hey guys shouts hello in any language you know can't hear you okay that's much better now let me introduce myself my name is Bella I'm six years old I can speak eight languages I'm really fond of learning idioms so today I will teach you some of the idiom in eight languages are you ready guys so let's get started English lights on but no one's home this is you can say this about someone who is a bit strange look at this girl she has green hair and I him in her mouth she looks like lights all but no one's how she looks weird Russian wanna go up but honey pretty clear pretty nice Epis notches Stowe Jana this Dutch daughter epitome of a rabid fan the English equivalents is don't count your chickens before they're hatched [Music] Spanish aunt Ella Mona Silvester Dussehra Mona cicada as no Kelly this non inventors apparent are lucky no eres Alvin al siempre se Roscoe mismo language equivalent is you can put lipstick on a pig it is still a pig look at this in the Spanish engine we're talking about a monkey and then my English idiom we are talking about a big [Music] French Bacchus Illinois Mozilla if you can say like okay soul of Egyptian polar vortex Rose Donnelly it was probably double the English equivalents is no pains no gains look at this coconut coconut it is so yummy but to open it you need to be strong it's how you say moto de la stessa Barca quest of all didn't get to Pia be honest esto problema Oh see what Jana beefy Chile the English equivalent is we are all in the same boat look at the stormy weather look at these clouds may be able to flip over and these and Vees have the same problem [Applause] [Music] German rifle even Madonna clapper slobbin dibadeaux to East monolithic man sweat Incan but I knocked soon the English equivalent is to kill two birds with one stone the German idiom is about a full two flies and the English idiom is about two birds plundering wattle Austria dalla other issue she wrote routine toll alone and yo poot when she she the English equivalent is one is never too old to learn look at this old look at this old lady she is learning how to use a computer [Music] Arabic also dick Wachtel dick has a method ara p-well has a Yanni incontrollable siddiqa cochlea here lambda through Keaney Phyllis she'll say yes a machete Rosen Marat the English equivalents is a friend in need is a friend indeed look at this dog and look at this lamp the little dog is feeding the lamb the dog is a man's best friend [Applause] [Music] thank you for your attention I hope you remember all the idioms and to finish my performance I will guess what say my favorites are in Arabic desert lkb LA - javi rapido cool a yeoman by the tank appear to be the pool a young man but thank you beer three police about hello me and slick O'Hare palpably want a sleek O'Hare Mart and ugly [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello everyone today my presentation is going to be about bringing up a multilingual child and I'm going to talk about the experience we had with Bella so with Bella we started from the very first day of her life I was lucky to get to know about the possibilities of early language learning before my own child was born as a student at the University I met my French teacher who was dedicated to the early language learning one day she let me watch a video of her seven year old child who could speak both French and Russian really fluently he was broke he was brought up in a Russian family with no French native speakers in it but still he could speak both languages fluently I was very impressed with this she told me about the methods she used with her son basically she just talked to him in both Russian and English in everyday life and she started from the very first days of his life when I got to know about this I said to myself when I have a child I will do the same thing to her so infancy is the most natural time to learn languages and second thing is that babies can learn just like adults or even better the only thing that makes a baby different from an adult is that he or she doesn't have a life experience it means when you teach babies you just have to adjust the program of learning to their abilities and I mean you have to facilitate the program of learning but you should be ready that the results of this won't be instant when babies learn their home language there is always a silent period and the same thing happens with all the other languages when they are little when they are younger than one year old they just don't have any physical abilities to let you know that they are understand the Lord so during this time you will have to you will have to talk to them in a radio mode it's when you talk to your child like a radio without waiting any response but there are lots of advantages advantages of beginning early the first thing is that young children are self-motivated to pick up language without conscious learning unlike school children and adults who themselves probably learned English academically at a later age through a grammar based textbooks children also have the ability to imitate pronunciation and you have to keep in mind that the earlier you expose a child to a foreign language the better his or her pronunciation will be another thing is that young children work out the grammar rules for themselves and young children learn through play like activities which creates a really positive attitude towards language learning and the most important thing for me is that multilingual has a very post positive effect on the child's overall brain development with Bella we began with only two languages I just wanted her to be fluent in both Russian and English and I didn't think at about eight languages at that time I had read a lot about Bill English man I was really impatient to start so on the second day of Bella's life I started speaking English to her we started with short sessions about 15 minutes long and I gradually made our English sessions longer and when Bella was about 1 months old I started alternating languages every other day when she was about 10 months old it was obvious she could understand both Russian and English at the same level she would react to all the simple requests like clap your hands wave your hand put your hands up and since I could speak a little bit of French I decided it would be a good idea to add French to ballast program and it was an instant success when Bella heard me speaking French for the very first time she got really excited and and interested and the next time when I started speaking French to her she got really happy she started jumping in her little bed and squealing with joy I felt that she loved the sounds of the new language and she also loved the fact that it was something new it was so impressive that I decided to start working on my French to be able to talk to Bella it was rather tough for me because I'm not very good at French but I was really eager to open this window of opportunity for her these are some of the tips that I followed with Bella while learning her while teaching all the languages to her the first thing that is really important is no mixing up the languages I always made sure that the languages were not mixed I even didn't let the other members of the family speak Russian while we were speaking English with Bella these days we can switch from English into Russian we can have a shirt dialogue in Russian and get back to English again but when she was young I didn't let myself do that another thing that is also important if you want all the languages to be at the same level is what you have to do is to keep all the languages and balance to do that I made Bella goes through the same everyday situations in all the languages I tried to speak to her in three languages and all-day everyday routine situations like waking up taking a bath feeding her going for a walk playing with her toys and later on when she started talking she was about two years old she started talking and all the three languages and she was able to express yourself in all those everyday situations in three languages and now the thing that is really important is to be a good language grown model for your child I always try to speak clearly to Bella with good use of grammar for example in French when I wasn't sure that my grandma was right whether the sentence was correct I prefer to say nothing the child needs a Gruden a good range of vocabulary too so I tried not to repeat the same words all the time but use a variety of words like synonym synonyms and antonyms the next thing I'm going to talk about is early reading because there is a there is a really strong connection between reading and speaking there is a I mean there is a close link between learning to talk and learning to read when a toddler can read he is able to see and hear the words at the same time instead of only hearing them that means that the child uses two senses of perception to understand new information they are sight and hearing it makes the perception much more effective so if a child can read at an early age it's much easier to expose him or her to a new language through reading what I noticed with Bella it's much easier for her to memorize a new word if she has a chance to see its written form another thing that's that is also important is the ability to learn independently if a little child can read he can learn a lot of new words himself and not only from books because there is lots of text information around as written on tags posts posters traffic signs and so on so very often Bella learns new things because of your ability to read so with Bella we used dolmens method of early reading Glenda Minh is an American scientist in the field of child brain development he came up with an idea that the most natural time to learn reading skills just like language skills is during infancy he suggested that children should be taught reading using whole words method when you teach your child using dolmens method he usually goes through four steps the first step is recognizing words and flashcards we started as I have already told we started using dolmens method with Bella when she was five months old and I did it in both Russian and English I just had to show her special large-sized flashcards with words in them two or three times a day by the age of ten months Bella had mastered about fifty awards in both languages she couldn't talk at that age but she could point your finger at things when we refer to them for example bam Bella was shown the word hand written in Russian or English she would touch her little hand if she was shown the word head she would touch her head the second step is learning to read short phrases when a child can recognize many individual words it's time to combine words into short phrases I made special dolmen style books with two and three word phrases which represented a combination of words Bella Worth was familiar with after that when a baby is able to recognize enough words for Bauer about 300 words were enough for some children sometimes it's 1000 words it depends but eventually they will figure out which letter makes which sound and this is when the baby starts reading new words even if he has never seen them before at the age of two Bella was able to read books with new words she had never seen before and moreover she could do it in three languages Russian English and French the first step is reading independently from day to day a child's reading skills get better and better gradually they start reading longer words and longer sentences and the speed of reading grows faster too at the age of two and a half Bella could read with ease and she would read books all by herself another benefit of duman's method is that once the child gets the hand of reading in one language he is able to extrapolate and applied what he has learned to other languages so the child who can read in one language can learn reading skills and other languages very quickly it took Bell about 1 months to learn reading in Spanish German and Italian and I'd like to emphasize that she learnt reading very naturally without any effort and now here is a video of Balor eating in six languages at the age of four at the Russian TV show yeah [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] this does come to charm [Music] [Music] so if you are about to teach your baby read with using dolmens method there are some useful programs that can help you because Dolan's method is really effective and very beneficial for children but it's a lot of work for a parent so there are basically four programs that you can use there are two DVD programs which are your baby can learn and twiddle wink and there are two interactive applications that you can buy through App Store their little reader and monkey jr. all of these programs use an interactive multi-sensory method of learning it means that the meaning of each word is explained with various videos and photos providing that the child not only reads but really understands the meaning of each word so teaching your baby to read using dolmens method usually involves creating a lot of self-made materials apart from making word flashcards and dolmen style books I also converted cartoons into so-called video books I used my video editing program to put some text data into the cartoon so that Bala could enjoy watching her favorite cartoons and practice practice hidden skills at the same time those video books worked really well with Bella she liked repeating sentences from the cartoons especially the ones that she could see in the written form so it was really beneficial not only for her reading skills but also for her language skills that's why I made about 100 of those video books in Russian English and French and I also shared those video materials on the internet and received lots of positive feedback from other parents who also told their children you dolmens method so when Bella was two years seven months old it was obvious that she had great interest in language learning that's why we decided to it and not to add another one to our program and I wanted someone that was totally different from the languages she had been studying before and that's why I chosen Mandarin I got Bella and native Chinese speaker to teach her Mandarin she came to our house three times a week and usually spend about two hours with her plane and interacting with her in Mandarin I thought it would be rather difficult for Bella but in fact she pick up to vocabulary really quickly and she started speaking with short sentences after a month of her classes she showed a great interest in the new language and at the same time I mean at that time she always chose to watch cartoons in Mandarin and played a lot of games in Mandarin on her iPad she would even start talking Chinese to me and she talked Chinese to herself while playing with her toys here is a video of Bella in the beginning of her Chinese classes oh yeah yeah you got that what have you said and they may change that's a that means a benign Chinese and how do you say I'm eating an apple in Chinese and how do you said this is our rabbits - does she Pooja how do you say this is a dog okay yeah yeah and how have you said this is a cat Shama Kashima ho how do you said this is a guy taking - does she - and I can you say I'm laughing in Chinese oh yeah what's y'all can you say I'm sleeping in Chinese shh shh oh oh yeah oh oh that's too difficult for me yes [Music] viva la tournelle 11 years old it was obvious that she that's why that's why I started many languages French she started saying short sentences in Spanish on the second day of her lessons with a native speaker we I want to say that we always started learning a new language with reading using dolmen method providing that she could learn spoken language and grayton language at the same time Bella was already familiar with the Latin alphabet from English and French so Sheldon needed some time to understand reading rules in Spanish and it took her about two weeks to figure out all the rules and she started reading in Spanish with ease when she was 3 years 2 months we added German to introduce Bella to German language I let her watch special videos which I considered to be fantastic vocabulary builders they are little PMD no Linga and professor to tour after about two weeks of watching those videos her first German teacher came and she was really surprised to find out that Bella could already read in German it turned out that Bella had learned written in German by watching little ping video with German subtitles it it took Bella a little bit longer to start speaking in German because she had only one German class a week in other languages she usually had two or three classes a week but I want you to keep in mind that Bella doesn't have classes in the traditional sense all the teachers come to our house to play with Bella and to have fun with her they can play hide and seek go for a walk together sometimes even take a bath together read books play with toys and like everything and teachers never forced Bella to do anything Bella usually chooses what she wants to do today providing that she really enjoys all of her language classes when Bella was three years and four months old we added Arabic and once again before starting classes with a native Arabic teacher I let Bella watch vocabulary builders in Arabic after about a month we found a teacher favela but we were not very lucky with her the personality of a teacher is what really matters because learning languages is all about communication so it's really important that a child should feel really comfortable with the teacher in Bella's understanding her teachers come to her as her friends and if it is really like that the classes will be a success for me a perfect class is when I hear a Bella love from her room if I hear her laughter it means it's a good language class we live in Moscow it's a big city with lots of teachers available but not all of them are experienced in working with little children and it usually takes some time to find the right person but luckily after two months we found another Arabic teacher and she was just perfect and with her Bella started speaking Arabic after about two months now I would like to talk about how we create language learn learning environment for Bella the first thing which is really important is building a home library in each of the languages books are the main source of new vocabulary for Bella so it's really important to have suitable books at hand that's why everywhere we go we usually come back with a suitcase full of books we have already visited some books in Austria to buy some german books for Bella and I also ask my friends to bring us books whenever they travel abroad it's also important to watch cartoons in all the languages and I usually tends to authentic video materials meaning that cartoons are not dubbed into foreign language and we also try to make our home language rich well it has lots of electronic toys and devices that speak different languages I mean talking pans and games and iPad educational applications and so on we also regularly arrange fun trips with your teachers to create an even more positive attitude for communication in different languages for example we go to the Asian area with the Spanish teacher we go to the museum with our Chinese user or we go to the amusement park with our German teacher and we even sometimes take our teachers together when we travel to the seaside we also try to arrange language classes for a group of children who are also fluent in different languages we have some friends who also bring up their kids in a multilingual environment they often come to our house to have classes together with Bella so she has regular classes with children who can speak other languages and the last thing is that we try to link language learning to some interesting activities Bella does lots of interesting activities in different languages she has cooking classes in French and Arabic she learns to roller-skate with the tutor of Spanish she visits classes in the English drama school she has art classes in German and English so these are normal activities for a six years old child but in a combination with learning languages here I have a video of Bella cooking in French with your French teacher Bella is really fond of cooking Wow this is nothing to eat [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he's don't eat you know [Music] okay the last parts of the video was invalid doing some sports with her Spanish teacher the last thing I want to talk about is our plans for the future as a parent I understand that it's impossible to learn all the school subjects in all these eight languages so we have already decided which languages we are going to focus on and we have chosen Russian English French and Mandarin we want Bala to be native like fluent in these languages so we might choose to study math in English geography in French history in Chinese and so on it depends on what teacher I can find right now because it's not easy to find teachers and regarding all the other languages we want her to be conversationally fluent and we are prioritizing Bella's language learning around communication we'd like to give her the ability to speak with lots of different people all over the world this is all I wanted to say thank you very much for your attention if you have any questions please ask me [Applause] and yeah it's true [Music] she never refuses to speak in a language I mean she likes all the languages but it might happen that she doesn't like that the teacher the person you see if she doesn't like the person then she doesn't enjoy the class and then she might refuse but she she loves speaking different languages but when we at home we usually speak Russian in English and sometimes she asks me mommy let's speak English let's discuss this in English for her it's easier to discuss some topics in English some topics in Russian because it's very difficult actually we try to keep all the languages in balance but in fact it's really difficult so it's like that [Music] she she never uses different I mean words from different languages in one sentence but sometimes she forgets some of the words and then she would just ask me mommy I don't remember this word in English can you remind me I don't remember this one image but she realises that she this like she doesn't remember it and she won't use a word from other language that's why I talked about that we made sure not to mix up the languages when she was little and she's used to that she knows that it's not correct to you to mix languages because some children especially in bilingual families parents tend to mix up languages themselves and that's why children start doing that but when you like pay a lot of attention to that they follow this thank you very much for coming thank you [Music] you

Channel: LingvaFest'

Views: 2,111,401

Keywords: Bella Devyatkina, youngest polyglot, lingvafest, jazykový festival, multilingual child, bella polyglot, young polyglot, polyglot, multilingual parenting

Id: OfAMbjYnNY8

Length: 36min 48sec (2208 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 25 2019