/Japanese Children's Society, October 18, 2012

バイリンガル教育講演会 開催20121018

/Japanese Children's Society, October 18, 2012

/Japanese Children's Society, October 18, 2012

/Japanese Children's Society, October 18, 2012

Japanese Children’s Society Inc.

NY IKUEI LECTURE

Raising

BilingualChildrenThursday
October 18th
9:15-10:15 am@ Gym

Celia Genishi, Ph. D.
Columbia University
Professor of Education

Japanese Children’s Society Inc.
8 West Bayview Avenue
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 07632
Phone: (201)947-4832 Fax: (201)944-3680
E-mail: info.nyikuei@gmail.com

/Japanese Children's Society, October 18, 2012

NY IKUEI LECTURE : Raising Bilingual Children

Bilingual

Please join us on Thursday, October 18,
2012 at 9:15 AM in the Japanese Children’sSociety’s Gym for the guest speakerpresentation "Raising Bilingual Children :Promise and Challenge " by Professor Celia
GenishiofColumbia
University.
Professor Genishi will speak about thediversity of children’s literacy andlanguage acquisition background andmerits of being bilingual, how to acquire or
retain bilingualism or other languages.
Professor Genishi will also speak about
challenges for children coming from nonEnglish speaking homes or JapaneseAmerican children who are learning
Japanese as a heritage language and trying
to maintain the identity as Japanese andgive some suggestions to their parents.

)

Celia Genishi is professor of education andprogram coordinator of the Early Childhood
Education program, the Department ofCurriculum and Teaching at Teachers College,
Columbia University. She is a former secondary
Spanish and preschool teacher and now teaches
courses related to early childhood education andqualitative research methods.




Children, Language, and Literacy:
Diverse Learners in Diverse Times
Ways of Assessing Children and Curriculum;Ways of Studying Children
The Need for Story:
Cultural Diversity in Classroom Community

Application for the Lecture
1015201-947-4832 ,E-mail info.nyikuei@gmail.com

About Dr. Genishi (Educational Background

Selected Publications()

B.A., Barnard College (Spanish Literature)
M.A.T., Harvard University (Teaching
Modern Foreign Languages)
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley(Early Childhood Education, Language andReading Development Program)

Please apply to Japanese Children’s Society
Attn. Oct. 18th Lecture on phone or E-mail byMonday, October 15th.

Japanese Children's Society, Inc.
8 West Bayview Ave., Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632
Phone:(201)947-4832 Fax:(201)944-3680
HP: http://japaneseschool.org
E-mail: info.nyikuei@gmail.com

/Japanese Children's Society, October 18, 2012

Japanese Children’s Society Inc.
NY IKUEI LECTURE

The Gift of Childhood Bilingualism:
Windows of Opportunity and Realistic Options

AGENDA 1. Introductions

 2. Windows of Opportunity

 3. Realistic Options

 4. Questions and Answers””

/Japanese Children's Society, October 18, 2012

1018

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Primary,~

Secondary/Japanese Children's Society, October 18, 2012

Debunking the Myths ofMultilingualism
Published in Inside - Volume XVI, No. 6(Newsletter of Teachers College, Columbia University)
3/29/2011
Fact or myth? Children are linguistic sponges who will pick up any language
if exposed early enough.
Myth, says Celia Genishi, Professor of Education. In reality, kids make “sociolinguistic choices”; witness her own story.
Genishi spent part of her youth in a Japanese internment camp during World War II, where her parents spoke Japanesewith their friends. As she grew older, however, Genishi felt embarrassed when she used Japanese words with her peers.
She rejected the language, even though it had surrounded her from her earliest days.
Bi- and multilingualism seem to inspire mythmaking, perhaps because they break down traditional (and, for some,reassuring) barriers between people. At the panel at which Genishi and several other TC faculty spoke in mid-February—“Bi- and Multilingualism in Young Children: Supporting Families, Cultivating Linguistic Diversity”—several other myths
were debunked.
MYTHS
One was the notion that multilingualism leads to language delays. Children learning multiple languages may, in fact,take a bit longer to start speaking, but often their grasp of linguistic principles is more sophisticated once they do begin
speaking. Meanwhile, “some children have disabilities and they are bilingual but it is not caused by the bilingualism,” said
Patricia Martinez ALVAREZ?, Visiting Assistant Professor of International and Transcultural Studies, adding that a true
disability will show up in both languages.
In fact, multilingualism is associated with certain cognitive benefits, such as better executive control, divergent thinking,and communicative sensitivity (the ability to understand the needs of the listener). Multilingual people do have more “tipof-the-tongue” moments, searching for the right word, but that’s because they have more words to process.
Another myth: the idea that “code mixing”—changing from one language to another within the same utterance orwritten text, a common practice in societies in which two or more languages are used—is a sign of linguistic
confusion. In fact, said Maria Souto-Manning, Associate Professor of Education, children use all the language at theirdisposal to make sense of the world around them. Code mixing can be very rich, linguistically, and is often quite
grammatical.
And still another myth: Even if bilingualism has benefits, it will hamper English language learning. In fact, said Maria
Torres-Guzman, Professor of Bilingual Education, there are no studies proving that knowing another language harms
English acquisition. The real problem is inconsistency; if a child’s schooling isn’t consistent, he or she will have a hardtime learning English. In addition, children who are not native speakers may have difficulty functioning when academic
English is used, because they encounter words that have not previously come up in every day use. Adults who are awareof this difference can help children acquire the vocabulary they need. And if students have a strong foundation in one
language, they will eventually be able to transfer those skills to a second language.
Tori Hunt, Instructor of Curriculum & Teaching, was the only person on the panel raised in an English-only household,and she agreed with the others that multilingualism is a gift, not a liability. “I felt like I was at somewhat of a disadvantage
because I was never given a second language,” she recalled. “So I have dragged my children every Saturday to Chineseclass.”
All of the panelists stressed the importance of giving children opportunities to use their languages while understandingthat they may not embrace a language in the way their parents want them to. Some children will refuse to speak in adifferent language with a parent they know speaks English. One solution in that situation, Torres-Guzman said, is “thegrandmother effect”: interactions with relatives who only speak the other language.
That observation brought the conversation full circle to Genishi. Children, she said, are “agents in charge of their ownlanguage stories.”

/Japanese Children's Society, October 18, 2012