Bilingual Avenue With Marianna Du Bosq

On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, I give a mother advice on how to introduce writing for her children.  She is looking for tips to teach writing in the home language which will be different from the one her children are learning in school.  She is also looking for advice on what language to use at home and how to help her children with their homework. 

On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, I interview Amanda Shong-Blahdgett also known as Miss Panda.  She is raising her two children to be bilingual in Mandarin Chinese and English.  Miss Panda is also the creator of the Let’s Learn Mandarin Chinese with Miss Panda album geared towards young children. 

On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, I answer a question from a father who is wondering if he should be stricter with his daughter since she is refusing to engage with him in the target language.  I give him seven different strategies that he can implement at home.  I also share with him the strategy we use in my family and which one the research has shown to provide the best results for boosting vocabulary. 

On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, I interview Lindsay Dow, a private language tutor and the founder of Lindsay Does Languages.  Lindsay believes in inspiring others to teach themselves languages. Whether that be in a face-to-face lesson with her, or through one of her Skype classes, or one of her blog posts or even one of her videos, she wants you to know that it is possible for you to learn a language!  Lindsay shares 25 different tools to help you and your children learn a language!  

On this episode of the Bilingual Avenue podcast, I share strategies with a listener who is interested in teaching her child two languages, English and Russian.  I explain to her who the One Parent, One Language strategy works as well as the Language Time approach. I also walk her through a series of strategies that she can implement to promote language development for her little one from the early months all the way to the when her child starts making two word sentences.  

On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, I interview Carla Curiel the founder of Mundo Lanugo.  Lanugo is a Miami-based lifestyle and entertainment brand for preschoolers inspiring Latin at heart confidence and cultural pride.  Carla shares with us how she has instilled a love for her culture in her daughters from an early age and has tips for parents who are looking to do the same. 

On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, I provide advice to a mother who is concerned that she may have waited too long to teach her children Italian.  Her children are 6 and 11 and although they are showing interest in learning the language, she is looking for suggestions on how to pass on the language to them.  I give her some tips on how to motivate older children and find age appropriate content for them.  

On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, I interview Nicola Lathey, one of the top speech and language therapists in the United Kingdom.  She is the author of the prize‐winning and best-selling book, Small Talk.  We talk about how parents can promote language development with their children from birth to four years old.  Nicola shares excellent strategies that parents can implement right away in their daily interactions with their children. 

On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, I check in with a mother who is concerned that her son may fall behind in Kindergarten if he attends a Spanish only preschool.  I describe the different concepts that her child will likely be exposed to in preschool and assure her that many of them will be skills that he can transfer regardless of what language is being used for the instruction.  For the skills that are language specific, I give her ideas on how she can incorporate them at home.  I also share some ideas on how she can partner up with her child’s teacher to make sure she is able to help her son with the transition.  

On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, I interview Brynn Barineau.  Brynn is originally from Atlanta and has a BA and MA in International Communication from American University in Washington DC.  It was while finishing her Masters that she met her Brazilian husband.  Brynn eventually joined her then fiance in Rio de Janeiro and began teaching.  After moving to Vitoria, she taught economics and American literature at Escola Leonardo Da Vinci.  Brynn is currently working on building a career as a writer and publishing her first novel.  She blogs at BrynninBrazil.com  She has a four-year old daughter that she and her husband are raising bilingual in English and Portuguese.

On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, I give advice to a mother who is worried that changing her language strategy with her daughter will confuse her.  Currently, they are speaking English at home while her child picks up the community language, Spanish in school.  They will be moving to the United States and the target language and community language will be swapped.  She is concerned that their relationship will be impacted because her daughter feels much more comfortable conversing with family members in English.  I assure her that although it may be difficult at first, her daughter will eventually sort out the shift in language strategy. 

On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, I interview Annabelle Humanes,  a former researcher in language acquisition and language teacher in a previous decade.  She shares with you her tips for getting your hands on children's language development research and shares her personal family language journey which includes four languages!

On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, I describe the different types of language school models available to parents including two way immersion, submersion and transitional programs.  I also answer a mother’s concern of whether her child will be able to learn the community language and give her strategies to ensure that he has plenty of exposure in that language. 

This episode is sponsored by Gus on the Go, an great language app for the little ones at home! Visit www.gusonthego.com/bilingualavenue and get access to a special free printable exclusively for Bilingual Avenue listeners. On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, Alice Junglaus, a parent coach, chats with us about her cross-cultural family and how they have followed their dream of living a multilingual, pluralistic and interdependent global lifestyle.  Alice also chats with us about global parenting including what it means and how it can help you and your family! 

On this episode of the podcast, I answer a listener’s question who is concerned that although her family has moved to Taiwan her children may have limited exposure to Mandarin.  She wants to help them to learn Mandarin, however, she already has her hands full supporting her children’s learning of Spanish.  I share my advice on how she can still encourage them to learn Mandarin while maintaining a focus on Spanish. 

On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, I chat with Sonia Gil, an entrepreneur, language geek, and passionate traveler!  Sonia is on a mission to show the world how travel can enrich your life without emptying your bank account. She is the founder of the digital language learning company Fluenz and she is also the host of Sonia's Travels, a two time award-winning web original series about Sonia's unique take on the places she visits. Sonia is also the lead behind the non-profit Fluenz.org which we will discuss throughout our interview today.  

On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, I answer a listener’s question who is navigating her son’s transition to the community language.  She is concerned that he will need more exposure to English to make things easier for him when he starts school.  However, she is concerned that if she herself speaks to him in both languages, he may be confused.  I assure her that he will be able to tell difference but encourage her to consider what languages she will want to use when her son has more exposure to the community language.  

Yono Mittlefehldt was born in Israel but grew up in the United States. Yono currently lives in Germany with his wife and his 2.5 year old son who is being raised trilingual with English, German and Hebrew.  He co-created Gus on the Go with Alice Zhao, an app with 10 interactive lessons and 89 words that allow kids to explore vocabulary in a new language.  On the podcast, we talk about Yono’s journey raising a trilingual son and how he is managing to personally pass on two heritage languages at the same time. 

On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, a grandmother is worried that she will have a negative impact on her grandchildren by mixing English and Spanish.  

On this episode of Bilingual Avenue, I interview Dr. Paola Giuli Dussias, a Professor and the Head of the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at Penn State University.  Dr. Dussias describes to us how the brain is capable of managing multiple languages and dispels the misconception that adding a second or third language can complicate our language system.