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CAN RAISING YOUR KID TO SPEAK BOTH SPANISH *AND ENGLISH SET THEM BACK IN SCHOOL?
SOME PARENTS WORRY IT WILL.
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BUT DOCTOR DIEGO ROMAN… AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN BILINGUAL AND BICULTURAL EDUCATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON… SAYS THAT’S A COMMON MYTH.
HE SAYS BILINGUAL STUDENTS CAN SOMETIMES *APPEAR BEHIND ACADEMICALLY… BUT OFTEN IT’S THE TEST… *NOT THE CHILD.
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Duration: :47
Super: Dr. Diego Románz – Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“So sometimes when parents and teachers are worried, most of the time it’s because the testing and the assessments are mostly done in English when the child, for example, speaks Spanish at home or their mother tongue is Spanish. Now, when we have shown studies, we have seen studies that have shown that when children are tested in their maternal language, or their mother tongue, then this kind of gap in academics, or delay, is completely erased. So there is no difference in academic performance. There are even some studies that show multilinguals perform better over time when both languages are used in testing and instruction.”
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DOCTOR ROMAN SAYS SPEAKING MORE THAN ONE LANGUAGE CAN ALSO SHARPEN MULTITASKING SKILLS.
THAT’S BECAUSE BILINGUAL STUDENTS ARE OFTEN SWITCHING BETWEEN LANGUAGES DEPENDING ON WHO THEY’RE TALKING TO.
STUDIES SHOW IT CAN PROTECT BRAIN HEALTH AND DELAY DEMENTIA AS WELL.
PLUS… HE SAYS SPEAKING TWO LANGUAGES CAN HELP STUDENTS STAY CONNECTED TO THEIR HERITAGE… AND STAND OUT IN THE JOB MARKET.
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Duration: :43
“Being multilingual, it’s beautiful. If we go to Europe, there are so many languages used in very small regions. And when we talk with people, I tell them being multilingual is the common setting in our world, and monolingual is what’s unusual. It shows that we live in a huge country, in the United States, in which English is the main language used, but traveling around the world, the common, the default setting, I could say, is being multilingual. So the more languages that we can acquire, again, has these cultural, cognitive, and career benefits that I think will benefit everyone.”
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SO WHAT CAN PARENTS DO TO SUPPORT KIDS WHO ARE BILINGUAL?
DOCTOR ROMAN’S ADVICE IS SIMPLE… CONTINUE TO USE THOSE LANGUAGES AT HOME.
