Edward de Bono explained the difference between intelligence and thinking skill as being like the horsepower of a car and the skill of the driver, if both didn't count for something, there would be no famous racing car drivers - or races!
Yesterday's post showed what early Esperanto can offer your students in terms of an engine upgrade, today is all about transferrable skills.
Experts in Languages Education have long been aware of something called the propaedeutic effect - the fact that bilingual people master a new language quicker than monolingual people do.
A good summary of many of the studies reaching this conclusion can be found here.
A more charismatic testimony to the same effect is offered by Benny the Irish Polyglot here.
Why would you care about transferable skills?
1. Why not? If you are doing Esperanto anyway in order to equip your students with increased concentration capacity before they are too old to gain maximum benefit, transferable skills are icing on the cake.
2. You can't possibly know which languages are going to matter to which children in the course of their lives, so equipping them with linguistic flexibility is the best service you can provide.
3. Transferable skills provide protection against the continuity problems endemic in the present school system, due to inadequate supply of LOTE specialists and limited demand for LOTE in the post-compulsory phase. In the present system, few children achieve significant mastery of another language because the target language changes with teacher availability. Even the few children lucky enough to experience transition to a secondary LOTE program matching their relatively successful primary target language, experience a frustrating hiatus while incoming students without that experience are inducted into the language. Better to master one multicultural language in primary school and start fresh and confident in a new one in secondary.
So what skills are transferrable, exactly? Are they anything to do with De Bono's conception of  "Thinking Skills".
Stay tuned for tomorrow's blog :-)

“New research into the neurobiology of bilingualism has found that being fluent in two languages, particularly from early childhood, not only enhances a person’s ability to concentrate, but might also protect against the onset of dementia and other age-related cognitive decline.
Scientists have discovered that bilingual adults have denser gray matter (brain tissue packed with information-processing nerve cells and fibers), especially in the brain’s left hemisphere, where most language and communication skills are controlled. The effect is strongest in people who learned a second language before the age of five and in those who are most proficient at their second language. This finding suggests that being bilingual from an early age significantly alters the brain’s structure.” (Society for Neuroscience, 2008)
That's a long quote but it does say quite compactly what other sources confirm - that  learning another language, early and well, improves brain structure and function permanently, in a way that learning other things may not. Surely enhancing the ability to concentrate is something which will have benefits in every area of learning. Rather than being a distraction from "Key Competencies", "Basics" or "Core Subjects", early bilingualism can be seen as "sharpening the axe" before spending the day chopping down a really big tree!

Of course, it doesn't help to be vague about the practicalites of providing early bilingualism.
This chart shows what can be achieved in the first 100 hours of  education, using different target languages.*
As you can see, the benefits of bilingualism - improved concentration and resistance to dementia in later life - are fully realized by schools offering 100 hours of Esperanto, but not by the other choices.
After the first hundred hours, the choice is wide open again - more so than it was, but that's tomorrow's post!

*The figures are derived from a number of sources including Alex McAndrew, former director of Sydney University's language learning unit, and the US department of defense. They are for motivated adults, and children take a little longer (wonder why? ask me in the comments below!)

Esperanto is a language, but not a language cobbled together by a bunch of cavemen and their numerous and disparate descendants, like most.

Esperanto was diligently designed by a multilingual professional with a clear purpose in mind: To distill a language which would retain all communicative functions found in other languages, with a minimum of idiosyncratic complications.

Why? Because a lot of what makes us human is that we can communicate with each other, and so inability to communicate with most humans is an obstacle to full recognition of their their humanity.

Obviously it isn’t the only obstacle but it is a significant one, and soluble.So Zamenhof dedicated his life to solving it successfully.

The language has been learned and used by millions of people for over a century, and has adapted as well as English to the advent of the computer age, so it would be fair to say that it has passed the test of time.

Today, we have even more reason to appreciate that high quality human life on this planet in the next few generations is going to require global citizenship.

Natives clearing forest in Brazil matter to us, multinational corporations doing similar things worldwide matter to us too, to all of us.

Most people in the World do not speak English, and will not speak English in their lifetimes. They do not have the time, or the money, or the access to teachers to make it happen.

So, we can leave them out... or meet them halfway. How would you like to be treated if the shoe were on the other foot?

Just as a handshake involves both parties stepping forward and extending a hand, so learning Esperanto takes both parties (adults) about 10 hours of instruction and 100-200 hours of practice.

Esperanto, as a “linguistic handshake”, is more affordable to both parties than the 600-2200 hours that natural languages require to reach the same fluency.

Besides being a beautiful example of decent behaviour, win-win “green hat” thinking and all sorts of other wholesome attitudes and values that you would want your students to absorb, Esperanto offers them a wide variety of immediate and lasting advantages. But that's tomorrow's post :-)

EsperantoAustralia is a yahoo group with 100 or so members, used to talk in (or about) anything to do with Esperanto.
Alan Mendelawitz has been keeping us supplied with nearly daily doses of Esperanto humour, with translations, for maybe 5 years now. His jokes help beginners build fluency and keep the rest of us in touch. Sometimes they are more hilarious than other times, but that just makes you appreciate the good ones more :-) Thanks, Alan!
If you'd like to join the group (and are not a grumpy troll), send a message to [email protected] and say hi!, (or saluton!)

Enjoy a whole bunch of free reads!
Bretaro has Esperanto translations of Grimm brothers fairy tales and grown-up stuff like "Murder on the Orient Express", all nicely presented and downloadable for nothing.
Judging by the empty headings, there are plans to expand, to carry films and soundfiles but... well- enjoy the print for now :-)

Clicking here will take you to a really boring portal to a collection of not-so-boring cartoon in Esperanto, by a number of different artists.
Enjoy!

This free online magazine is written in good Esperanto but with a slightly restricted vocabulary, to help beginners gain fluency and confidence.
Find it here:
http://facila.org/
and subscribe if you like.

On the side of this page, below the archives and categories, there is an orange button that says "RSS Feed". If you click it then you will receive new blog entries direct to your mailbox.
(You can unsubscribe if you change your mind.)

Here's a lovely song, performed in Esperanto by French schoolchildren.
The words are:
HIMNO DE LA TERO

Ama  glor’ pac’ kaj ĝoj
En niaj anim’ kaj kor’
La birdoj de l'feliĉ
Alportos la esper’
De mond’ pli bona
Sur la Ter’

Pluvo de steloj en la ĉiel’
Eterna rigardo
La kant’ de l'harmoni’
Rideto al la viv’
La man’ de l'infan’
Pura kaj senkulpa
Verec’
Unuec’
Liberec’


...De la reĝlando de lum’
 Rebril de l'Univers’
La kolombo de la pac’
Ekflugos al la ĉiel’
Kie am’ estas leĝ’
'stas por morgaŭ
La branĉet’
d'olivuj’
Liberec’

Paradizo sur la ter’
La glor’ por l'Univers’
Ammesaĝo por niaj infan’

Esperemo

This is a very cool video- very cleverly made by one actress playing 2 or 3 parts- teaching Esperanto verbs. It is not quite as clear as it could be, either the sound or visuals but that's ok- watch it a few times to get all it is saying :-)
Click here to see it.