It's been proven that children who read achieve. They boast higher test scores and recognize letters and numbers more often than their peers who read less often. But getting children to crack open a book sometimes can be the tricky part for parents and teachers.

Nine years ago, the National Education Association launched the "Read Across America" program to encourage, excite and energize children to do just that.

Originally created as a one-day event to celebrate the joy of reading on March 2, the birthday of Dr. Seuss, NEA's Read Across America has grown into a nationwide initiative that promotes reading every day with more than 45 million participating annually.

"As teachers and parents, we know that kids who read - and are read to - do better in school and in life," said NEA President Reg Weaver.

NEA, the nation's largest professional employee organization, representing 2.7 million teachers and education support professionals, offers the following tips for parents on how they can promote reading year-round:

* Provide encouragement. Parents play a crucial role in their children's education. Children who report that their parents encourage them to read are more likely to read a higher volume of books than those who say that their parents leave it up to them.

* Have books available to your children. Access to books is fundamental to reading success. Increasing access to print material is the most successful way to improve the reading achievement of low-income children.

* Make it fun. Children who read frequently are better readers and better students. Studies and research show that students who read for fun have better reading scores.

"NEA's Read Across America provides a unique opportunity to encourage parent and child interaction to foster literacy on a large scale," Weaver said. "We remind parents, teachers, children and the community that reading is indeed fun because you're never too old, too wacky, too wild to pick up a book and read with a child."

Below is an article from the New York Times about bilingualism and the affect on cognitive capabilities as we age, and how being bilingual actually acts to sharpen your mind!  It's a great article in the form of an interview with Dr. Ellen Bialystok.

The Bilingual Advantage

Q. How did you begin studying bilingualism?

A. You know, I didn’t start trying to find out whether bilingualism was bad or good. I did my doctorate in psychology: on how children acquire language. When I finished graduate school, in 1976, there was a job shortage in Canada for Ph.D.’s. The only position I found was with a research project studying second language acquisition in school children. It wasn’t my area. But it was close enough.

As a psychologist, I brought neuroscience questions to the study, like “How does the acquisition of a second language change thought?” It was these types of questions that naturally led to the bilingualism research. The way research works is, it takes you down a road. You then follow that road.

Q. So what exactly did you find on this unexpected road?

A. As we did our research, you could see there was a big difference in the way monolingual and bilingual children processed language. We found that if you gave 5- and 6-year-olds language problems to solve, monolingual and bilingual children knew, pretty much, the same amount of language.

But on one question, there was a difference. We asked all the children if a certain illogical sentence was grammatically correct: “Apples grow on noses.” The monolingual children couldn’t answer. They’d say, “That’s silly” and they’d stall. But the bilingual children would say, in their own words, “It’s silly, but it’s grammatically correct.” The bilinguals, we found, manifested a cognitive system with the ability to attend to important information and ignore the less important.

Q. How does this work — do you understand it?

A. Yes. There’s a system in your brain, the executive control system. It’s a general manager. Its job is to keep you focused on what is relevant, while ignoring distractions. It’s what makes it possible for you to hold two different things in your mind at one time and switch between them.

If you have two languages and you use them regularly, the way the brain’s networks work is that every time you speak, both languages pop up and the executive control system has to sort through everything and attend to what’s relevant in the moment. Therefore the bilinguals use that system more, and it’s that regular use that makes that system more efficient.

Read more at the New York Times

Have you heard about the Language Bear's Christmas giveaway? Sign up for the mailing list and you'll get a free PDF download of the Language Bear's very first publication! PDF versions of the book are now available in Spanish and Italian!

Not only that, but one lucky winner will receive a free hard-copy of Bosley Sees the World, the 20-page full-color dual language book in Spanish. This is the story of a small bear who is excited to see and experience everything around him.

This story encourages children to take on new challenges and helps to build confidence when experiencing new things. The Adventures of Bosley Bear will be a series of dual language books, each of them will be written in English as well as Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and so on. Certain corresponding words are highlighted in both languages to help give a better understanding. And there's a list of vocabulary words in the back to help you and your child learn.

Designed to Teach

The Language Bear’s dual-language books are self-directed learning tools and are specifically designed to help young children better understand foreign words and phrases. The non-invasive teaching methods used in this book allow children to learn at their own pace and enjoy the learning process. These methods include:

• Repeat words
• Simple phrases
• Opposites
• Highlighted vocab words
• Contextual learning
• Corresponding imagery

And reading with your child is a great way to learn new words yourself!

This book is still undergoing publication now, but I hope you enjoy your free PDF version and the winner of the giveaway will be announced on facebook on Dec 15th!

By Kathy Steinemann

Remember the saying: 'A picture is worth a thousand words'? When learning a language, this adage is of key importance. Do you know why? Read on!

Consider the following sentence:

The battered old red truck plunged over the embankment, down the rocky cliff, and into the icy cold river.

What did you see in your mind as you read the sentence?

Did you envision letters and words, or did you form a mental picture, complete with complex images - perhaps of trees alongside the road, a shocked driver inside, huge boulders, and rushing water with whirlpools and eddies?

If English is your native language, you may have formed a vivid snapshot in your mind, supplementing it with details extracted from your imagination and based on your life experiences - a kind of mental movie. You may have felt your fingers tighten around an imaginary steering wheel or experienced an involuntary holding of your breath in anticipation of the plunge into the water.

Remember the saying: 'A picture is worth a thousand words'?

When learning a language, this adage is of key importance.

When you hear or see the foreign phrase that means 'icy cold river', see the river in your mind and feel the emotions associated with the mental image.

This reinforces a natural learning process that we employ as children. The next time you hear or see those foreign words, the emotions and senses will be stimulated again. Language learning then becomes more than words - it becomes a sensory experience. This speeds up the word recognition process considerably.

The same applies to numbers.

If you hear the foreign language equivalent of '21', then convert it to the English word 'twenty-one' in your head, and finally visualize the number '21', you retard the recognition and learning process. This becomes even more complex when dealing with languages like German, where '21' is literally translated as 'one and twenty' - opposite to the way we render the number in spoken English.

It is accepted by scientists that the right side of the brain is often associated with visual thinking in right-handed people, while the left side of the brain is more adept at linguistic (word-based) thought. It is also believed that gentle music stimulates right brain activity - something you can use to your advantage. Playing quiet classical music while reading or listening to foreign languages may accelerate the learning process.

You can purchase CDs and DVDs filled with appropriate right-brain-stimulating music (search online for 'classical music right brain CD' or 'classical music right brain DVD'). The CD and DVD packages are filled with soft, classical music - some with nature sounds in the background.

Given the fact that many foreign words and phrases have no direct English translation, visual thinking becomes even more important. Often a foreign phrase cannot be translated effectively by breaking it down into individual words.

Try thinking in pictures. It may seem a little cumbersome at first - but it will be well worth the effort.

(c) Copyright Kathy Steinemann

About the Author:

Kathy Steinemann is a busy webmaster and author who enjoys writing German-English stories in parallel translation. She works behind the scenes at several websites, including A-Language-Guide dot com. Article Source: A Language Guide - http://www.a-language-guide.com

Their development is the same as for monolingual children. Both groups of children go through the same stages of development. These stages or milestones will depend on your child's age; but remember that all children are individuals and develop at their own pace. In the early stages of language, bilingual and monolingual children develop the same, with the differences appearing at the age of three and four. Both groups have of children have six stages of language acquisition:

When your child is 0 to 3 month they will be able to respond to your voice. Loud noises will startle them. You as the parent may be able to distinguish between different cry's that your infant has depending on the situation.

At the age of 3 to 6 months noises will catch their attention and not startle them. When they reach four months babies can babble consonant and vowel sounds together. The biggest milestones happens at six months when the words "mama" and "baba" appear.

As your infant progresses to six to 12 months of age, they will begin to respond to their name. The babbling noises that they make will begin to sound like real words. Some infants at the age of twelve months begin to say their first words.

As your infant continues to develop his language 12 to 14 month is an exciting time. This is the repeating and identifying stage. They will continuously repeat sounds heard in conversations. They can also identify their body parts; when ask where they are located.

During 24 to 36 months of age they will show the most growth in vocabulary. Their speech becomes clearer and they can use descriptive words like big and little. They will begin to use words that will give you clues to their physical needs; like hungry, thirsty or sleepy.

At three to four years this is the stage where bilingual and monolingual children show a difference in development. Research indicates that children who grow up bilingual sometimes speak later than monolingual children. This is not an indication that they are having problems, learning to talk or developing their two languages. It just takes more time to learn the linguistics of two languages. On the other hand some bilingual children learn to speak before monolingual children. Sometimes as early as two. Research has also found that bilingual children learn which language to use with different people.

As you can see your bilingual child will develop along side the monolingual child. If your child speaks one language or two, the first language will help support the second language as it's being learned. Some children learn two languages at the same time. In this case it may take longer to develop their two languages.

Written by a veteran teacher of 34 years who hopes to give parents ideas on how to read to their child and play reading games. Come join me at http://www.squidoo.com/interactive-reading-games and look for the educationfairy.

By Kathy Steinemann

In today's modern world, we are becoming more connected. Electronic gadgets and software are being developed to accommodate a growing number of people learning foreign languages. So - why would YOU want to learn a new language?

In today's modern world, we are becoming more connected. Electronic gadgets, websites, software and media are being developed to accommodate a growing number of people learning foreign languages. Why all the excitement? Why would YOU want to learn a new language?

The Employment Advantage

Many government departments and corporations give preference to bilingual or multilingual job candidates. Sometimes a second language is required.

Travel to a Foreign Country

Many North Americans expect that English will be spoken no matter where they travel in the world. Although this may be true in large cities, smaller towns and villages may have few English-speaking residents (or none at all). Enjoy the trip - learn at least a few key words and phrases.

Family and Relatives

Form closer relationships with your relatives who are not native English speakers. Imagine how proud Great Grandma will be when you talk to her in her birth language!

Genealogy Investigation

Old genealogical records are often recorded in a foreign language. If you are tracing your family tree, the job will become easier with at least some basic language training.

Understanding your Native Language

A famous German novelist, poet, playwright, and scientist - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - said: 'Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen.' Translated to English, this means: 'Those who don't know foreign languages know nothing of their own.' How true! When you embrace a foreign language, you must refamiliarize yourself with the grammar and vocabulary of your native language.

Challenge and Stimulation

If you are looking for stimulation and challenge - what better than learning a new language!

Appreciation of Opera, Literary Works, and Foreign Films

When a work is translated from a foreign language to English, it looses a lot of its flavor. Subtle sounds, meanings, and expressions do not survive the translation process. This is especially true with rhyming poetry. If rhyme is preserved in the translation, the meaning is often dramatically different from the original poet's work.

And wouldn't it be fantastic to view a foreign film without reading the subtitles?

Appreciation of Culture

Understanding a country's language leads inevitably to a much deeper appreciation of its culture and traditions. Where exactly did the term ‘blitzkrieg' come from? What about ‘faux pas' or ‘glasnost'?

Stimulate the Intellect

Studies show that seniors exhibit improved brain function over a period of time as they learn a foreign language. College students who learn a foreign language as children score better on exams and perform complex tasks better.

Learning Teaches Learning

The studying techniques and disciplines developed during a foreign language course teach us how to learn. We can employ these skills in many other areas of our lives.

Studying Abroad

You will require excellent language proficiency if you plan to attend an educational institution in another country. This an unequalled opportunity to grow, develop, and challenge your intellect.

Meet New Friends Online

With online chat, video conferencing, e-mail, and forums, it is very easy to make new friends from all over the world if you understand their language(s).

Make Points with a Date

Your bilingual or multilingual date will be impressed by any efforts you make to learn his or her language. And a date who speaks only English will be awed and wooed by hearing some intimate phrases spoken in one of the romance languages.

So why the delay? Roll those sleeves up and start learning!

(c) Copyright Kathy Steinemann

About the Author:

Kathy Steinemann is a busy webmaster and author who enjoys writing German-English stories in parallel translation. She works behind the scenes at several websites, including A-Language-Guide dot com. Article Source: A Language Guide - http://www.a-language-guide.com

By Kathy Steinemann

If you are stagnating in your foreign language education, read on! Find out how to jumpstart your intellectual juices and get back on the road. This vocabulary expansion method is so easy you will wonder why you did not think of it yourself.

If you have reached a point in your foreign language education where you feel like you are spinning your wheels, read on! Find out how to jumpstart your intellectual juices and get back on the road. It is so easy that you will wonder why you did not think of it yourself.

Where and when are you most likely to need communication skills? The answer is simple: in your daily activities. Map out yesterday in your mind. With whom did you have conversations? What were the topics you discussed? Could you have conducted those conversations in the foreign language you are attempting to learn?

Why not? The answer to this question is usually: a lack of vocabulary.

It does not matter where you are in your learning process. You can be a beginning, intermediate, or advanced student. However, if you do not have a decent pool of words to draw from, you will never be able to make yourself understood.

Forget about grammar. If you do not know the foreign language equivalent of 'telephone', you will never be able to say something like, 'Where is the nearest telephone?'

Here is how to solve your problem.

1. Make a list of ten topics that you might need to talk about during a normal day.

2. Write the topics down on individual slips of paper and put them into some kind of container.

3. Every day, draw a topic out of the container and talk for one minute. Pretend that a national news network is interviewing you. Do not permit yourself to use any 'ums', 'ers', 'ehs', or 'ahs'. Think quickly and improvise, using words that you know.

4. If you do not know how to form future or past tense, substitute with a phrase that means something like, 'Next Friday I go shopping,' or 'Last Friday I go shopping'. The point is to converse in an understandable manner without awkward pauses.

5. After your one-minute talk, quickly jot down all the words you could have used if you knew them, and look them up in the dictionary.

6. As soon as possible, try a similar speech, incorporating the new words. Throughout the day, attempt to recall what you learned, and replay the speech in your mind.

7. Every day pick a new random topic.

8. After you have gone through the ten topics, increase your talks to two minutes, or develop ten more topics to work with. After you reach two minutes, see if you can stretch the time to three.

Here are some questions that an interviewer might ask:

• What do you eat for breakfast? Do you cook it yourself?
• What do you do for a living? Do you find it enjoyable?
• What is your favorite hobby? How much time do you devote to it?
• Tell me about your family. Do you have a happy home life?
• Where were you born? Did you grow up there?
• Why are you attempting to learn a foreign language? Is it fun?
• Who has been your biggest inspiration in life, and why?
• Have you read any good books lately? Why - or why not?
• Where do you do most of your shopping? Why?
• What is your favorite TV series? Why?

You will be amazed at how quickly you can increase your vocabulary with this method. Additionally, you will learn to think faster and apply grammatical concepts easier with each session.

(c) Copyright Kathy Steinemann

About the Author:

Kathy Steinemann is an author and webmaster who enjoys writing German-English short stories and poetry in parallel translation. More of her foreign language articles are available at A-Language-Guide. Article Source: A Language Guide - http://www.a-language-guide.com

By Kathy Steinemann

Most subjects require a certain degree of memorization by students. However, learning by rote can be slow, inefficient, and laborious. This article demonstrates how context-based recall is superior, especially when acquiring a foreign language.

Most subjects require a certain degree of memorization by students. However, acquiring facts by rote can be s-s-s-l-l-o-o-o-o-w-w-w-w and laborious. This article illustrates how context-based recall is vastly superior, especially when acquiring a foreign language.

Are you tired of endless vocabulary lists and verb conjugation tables? Do you want to eliminate some of the drudgery - and instead dive into the fun of learning a foreign language? Grab a stopwatch or timer, and read on. Please do not peek at the rest of the article until you have your timer at hand.

Now get ready for a couple of one-minute exercises. There are two sections below, labeled 'Section 1' and 'Section 2'. Start with the first one. Set your timer and give yourself 60 seconds to memorize the definitions for the fake words.

Reset your timer and proceed to the next section. Give yourself another 60 seconds for memorization of Section 2. Because the second section illustrates context-based learning, spend most of the 60 seconds repeating the first sentence, preferably aloud, while you envision the action in your mind. When finished, proceed to Section 3.

(There is an answer section close to the end of this article.)

If necessary, before you proceed to the timed exercises, go back and reread the previous paragraphs. You must understand the instructions completely before you begin.

Are you ready? On your mark, get set - go!

Section 1 - Memorize the Definitions:

brellieran - to yell
shrallzent - happy
trummkey   - baby
zelltran   - to smile

Section 2 - Memorize the Definitions:

He prozzed, 'Narrnel Birthday!' to the soytole and it breozed.
He yelled 'Happy Birthday!' to the baby and it smiled.

Section 3:

Cover the preceding sections (no peeking) and provide the definitions in English for the following words:

brellieran ____________________
breozan    ____________________
narrnel    ____________________
prozzan    ____________________
shrallzent ____________________
soytole    ____________________
trummkey   ____________________
zelltran   ____________________

How did you do?

How many words did you remember from Section 1? How many from Section 2? If you are like most people, you probably remembered significantly more words from Section 2.

What does this tell you?

You should spend more time learning phrases or complete sentences. Your mind automatically categorizes words based on the way in which you use them. How often have you seen a word that seemed familiar, then rifled through the information in your mind until you remembered a previous sentence or phrase in which you used the word?

Context-oriented learning works. You have just seen the proof! How efficiently are YOU learning? Maybe now is the time to make a change.

Still not sure? Want to try another language vocabulary test? Go ahead. The results should be very similar to what you discovered here. If not convinced, try this language vocabulary test as well!

Note: All of the fake words in this article produced zero matches in a Google search. I apologize in advance if I somehow managed to use a word that translates to something inappropriate in a foreign language!

Answers:

brellieran: to yell - Section 1
breozan: to smile - Section 2
narrnel: happy - Section 2
prozzan: to yell - Section 2
shrallzent: happy - Section 1
soytole: baby - Section 2
trummkey: baby - Section 1
zelltran: to smile - Section 1

(c) Copyright Kathy Steinemann

About the Author:

Kathy enjoys writing foreign language articles for A Language Guide. She also writes German-English short stories and poems in parallel translation. Article Source: A Language Guide - http://www.a-language-guide.com

Our children are growing up bilingual in the French part of Canada – Québec. “That’s fine”, says everyone. “Even though they’ll probably start speaking later because they’re learning two languages at once, they’ll catch up.”

Well actually, this well-entrenched idea that bilingual children are slower to acquire language, is actually a myth!

We were surprised and delighted to learn that research is finding that bilingual children do NOT acquire language later than monolingual children. Our first child participated in a language study on babies carried out at McGill University of Montréal, Québec, Canada. There it was explained to us that research is finding that the difference in language acquisition of one child compared to another is very large. Some children speak sooner, some speak later. And the range of language acquisition of bilingual children is just as large as the range for monolingual children, statistically speaking.

Although these research results are relatively recent, I was able to find an article on the internet about it, written by Professor Fred Genesee of McGill University at http://www.earlychildhood.com/Articles/index.cfm?FuseAction=Article&A=38, confirming what we had been told verbally. In addition, instead of seeing bilingualism as the minority exception to the rule, Professor Genesee suggests that there many be as many children growing up bilingually as there are growing up monolingually.

So rest assured that the myths are wrong and the following are true:

• Bilingual children do NOT have delayed language acquisition.
• Learning more than one language at a time is NOT difficult for small children.
• Bilingual children DO master both languages just as well as one.

More and more parents are convinced of the benefits of exposing their small children to foreign languages. This has resulted in the recent explosion of videos, books, music and computer software aimed at babies and preschoolers, that expose them to another language. For example, free computer games on the http://www.kiddiesgames.com website allow babies and preschoolers from an English-speaking environment to learn and practice French and Spanish.

The most obvious benefit, and one that is confirmed by research, is that exposing infants to a foreign language can help them master that foreign language later on. In the well-documented but very accessible book on baby brain development “What’s Going On In There?”, the author Lise Eliot explains that babies are born being able to hear the sounds of every language in the world. However, this ability is subject to the “use it or lose it” phenomenon. If the baby is not exposed to foreign sounds, she will lose the ability to distinguish those sounds. For example, on page 368, she reports:

«Infants’ ability to discriminate foreign speech sounds begins to wane as early as six months of age. By this age, English-learning babies have already lost some of their ability, still present at four months, to discriminate certain German or Swedish vowels. Foreign vowels are the first sort of phoneme to go. Then, by ten or twelve months, out goes the ability to discriminate foreign consonants, like /r/’s and /l/’s for Japanese babies or Hindi consonants for English-learning infants.»

Another benefit of exposing children to another language that is starting to be recognized, is that of increasing their proficiency in their primary language. It may be that the brain exercise of sorting out multiple languages gives that brain a deeper proficiency in language and grammar overall.

So the next time your infant has the opportunity to be exposed to a foreign language in a suitably fun setting (which is how all activities should be presented to infants, isn’t it?), then jump at the chance!

Have you ever watched in amazement how easily children learn new concepts and ideas?
The reason why children are so incredibly proficient during these early years is because they utilize all of their senses, they cultivate an optimistic attitude, they make learning fun and exciting, they turn everything into pictures using colors and shapes, and they constantly form associations and connections with existing knowledge and information.
Is it really surprising that children are extremely creative and imaginative?
Don’t you think that the way children naturally learn during these early years is the way adults should continue to learn during their later years?

This is an exerpt from "Learning How Children Learn" from IQ Matrix's: A Rediculously Simple Guide For Beginners. This book outlines and demonstrates an entirely new way of learning which promotes creativity and the use of colors, images and creative wording to convey simple concepts. It is a simple method that the creators of the Language Bear have used with great success for years. The method utilizes the inate learning pathways that we are all born with and therefore resembles the way children learn. We, as adults, can learn great things by thinking back to childhood and by watching our children learn by whatever methods are best for them.

I would encourage anyone to take a look at this program for amazing benefits and improvements to your learning process and tools. One of the tools utilized by this program is the "Mind Map" which is something that has been around since the days of Leonardo DaVinci, and is being used more and more popularly in businesses and schools today.

IQ Matrix: A Rediculously Simple Guide For Beginners