I saw this link on twitter yesterday and firstly was blown away by what a fantastic and engaging speaker Patricia is - whilst she clearly has a passion for her specialist field, I am sure she could be very popular on speaker circuits.
However the topic was very dear to me. My linguistic skills are poor, as a child and as an adult I have tried to learn other languages - for my backpacking trip round Italy - I spoke enough to get by, but sadly it just doesn't stick, perhaps I am more of an immersion person...
For my son I would like to have him grow up speaking more than one language, or at least with a grasp of a second language. I have been 'doing' French with him daily ABC's, 123, Animals... however my mastery is poor. I'd had some ideas about a half day a week of day care in a French speaking environment and also once a week in a Mandarin. We live in Canada, so French is a given, Mandarin will be a prominent language by the time he is a school leaver...
Do watch this ten minute enthralling clip and then come back.
http://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies.html
Patricia Kuhl - Great speaker, great subject!
As the site says 'Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another -- by listening to the humans around them and "taking statistics" on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world.'
The prospects as Patricia put it of increasing our own ability as adults to learn, based on this research is wonderful and exciting.
Whilst I am saddened that my French efforts which are computer based with me singing and talking along are probably having zero impact at least on his ability to learn it as a language - that is because I have no accent, so no statistics for him to lay the blue print of learning the language. Hmmmm have to re-think my strategy as we are coming up to 9months, it's perfect timing to review it all, maybe those daycare options, or find a foreign speaking friend might be an option. I will let you know how we progress.
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