Professor Michael Clyne: Foreword to "Talking to the Whole Wide World"
Australia can be described as a multilingual society with a monolingual mindset. While many Australians speak a language other than English, the rest of the population, including most of our decision makers, remain rather oblivious of the need for other languages. One of the things that many young Australians miss out on is the opportunity to develop linguaphilia, a love of and fascination for languages. Instead what often develops is a linguaphobia.
Recently, the need for all Australian children to learn a second language has been argued strongly on the basis of instrumental, mainly economic arguments. While economic, political and social motivations for multilingualism are powerful, the most important are cognitive. There is now much evidence that children growing up bilingually tend to develop a more advanced understanding of how language works and of the difference between form and content. They tend to problem-solve in a more divergent way. There is also considerable evidence that any second language enables the child to overcome the hurdle of monolingualism and serve as an apprenticeship for further language acquisition. The monolingual mindset leads many to believe that learning a second language is too hard and needs to be watered down through plenty of drawing and cooking, that grammar should not be taught explicitly because it interferes with both fun and real communication, and that more than a limited amount of time devoted to a second language will lead to a fall in literacy standards in English..
These beliefs are challenged by the English results of children in most bilingual programs. as the ability to notice and compare features of a language - structure of words and sentences, the combinability of sounds, practice in skimming, scanning and reading for context - is actually a strong contribution to the development of literacy across languages. While some language programs leave the explicit linguistic understanding to the child to work out for themselves, Penny Vos’s Talking to the Whole Wide World provides the teacher with materials to immerse the children not only with the second language, in this case Esperanto, but with hundreds of ways of drawing their attention to language.
The children are trained to:
Infer meaning and structural patterns from context and from other clues
Notice patterns and boldly experiment with them
Understand grammar as a system, the software of the language as it were
Make comparisons with other languages.
General information on grammatical patterns is provided strategically and in good humour, as are examples and exercises. Because of the inflectional productivity of Esperanto, children soon understand how quickly they can "increase their word power’. Beautifully illustrated with amusing drawings, the resource book is full of games, novel songs, and verses. While unashamedly part of a strategy to advance the cause of Esperanto as our second/ apprenticeship language, many of the techniques employed in the materials are superb primary school ideas which could be used for the teaching of other LOTEs (and would provide teachers of other languages with an introduction to Esperanto! )
The overwhelming impression of the materials is that languages and even grammar are great fun, and the teacher presenting Esperanto will be both inspired and greatly helped to get that message across. The book is full of useful information. Prior to the language materials, it commences with the author’s perspectives on teaching LOTE and Esperanto as a LOTE and there is a ‘language research project’, a quiz on language/s. It ends with information on resources, including dictionaries, penfriends, posters and websites. I wish the book much success.
Michael Clyne
Emeritus Professor in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
Monash University
Melbourne
and
Hon Professorial Fellow
School of Languages and Linguistics
University of Melbourne
Recently, the need for all Australian children to learn a second language has been argued strongly on the basis of instrumental, mainly economic arguments. While economic, political and social motivations for multilingualism are powerful, the most important are cognitive. There is now much evidence that children growing up bilingually tend to develop a more advanced understanding of how language works and of the difference between form and content. They tend to problem-solve in a more divergent way. There is also considerable evidence that any second language enables the child to overcome the hurdle of monolingualism and serve as an apprenticeship for further language acquisition. The monolingual mindset leads many to believe that learning a second language is too hard and needs to be watered down through plenty of drawing and cooking, that grammar should not be taught explicitly because it interferes with both fun and real communication, and that more than a limited amount of time devoted to a second language will lead to a fall in literacy standards in English..
These beliefs are challenged by the English results of children in most bilingual programs. as the ability to notice and compare features of a language - structure of words and sentences, the combinability of sounds, practice in skimming, scanning and reading for context - is actually a strong contribution to the development of literacy across languages. While some language programs leave the explicit linguistic understanding to the child to work out for themselves, Penny Vos’s Talking to the Whole Wide World provides the teacher with materials to immerse the children not only with the second language, in this case Esperanto, but with hundreds of ways of drawing their attention to language.
The children are trained to:
Infer meaning and structural patterns from context and from other clues
Notice patterns and boldly experiment with them
Understand grammar as a system, the software of the language as it were
Make comparisons with other languages.
General information on grammatical patterns is provided strategically and in good humour, as are examples and exercises. Because of the inflectional productivity of Esperanto, children soon understand how quickly they can "increase their word power’. Beautifully illustrated with amusing drawings, the resource book is full of games, novel songs, and verses. While unashamedly part of a strategy to advance the cause of Esperanto as our second/ apprenticeship language, many of the techniques employed in the materials are superb primary school ideas which could be used for the teaching of other LOTEs (and would provide teachers of other languages with an introduction to Esperanto! )
The overwhelming impression of the materials is that languages and even grammar are great fun, and the teacher presenting Esperanto will be both inspired and greatly helped to get that message across. The book is full of useful information. Prior to the language materials, it commences with the author’s perspectives on teaching LOTE and Esperanto as a LOTE and there is a ‘language research project’, a quiz on language/s. It ends with information on resources, including dictionaries, penfriends, posters and websites. I wish the book much success.
Michael Clyne
Emeritus Professor in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
Monash University
Melbourne
and
Hon Professorial Fellow
School of Languages and Linguistics
University of Melbourne
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