View Content #7346
| Contentid | 7346 |
|---|---|
| Content Type | 1 |
| Title | Article: Parents’ Early Childhood Efforts May Not Lead to Multilingualism |
| Body | From http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/business/yourmoney/02money.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 If It’s Tuesday, It Must Be Spanish By HILLARY CHURA February 2, 2008 CONVENTIONAL wisdom says it is never too early for children to learn a foreign language. But conventional wisdom predates the days of paying someone to teach your child another tongue. “The marketplace has parents totally bamboozled,” said Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, co-author of “Einstein Never Used Flashcards: How Our Children Really Learn — and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less” (Rodale Books, 2003) and “How Babies Talk: The Magic and Mystery of Language in the First Three Years of Life” (Dutton, 1999). “Being immersed in the language and living within it are what lead to language learning, not 20 minutes of exposure to a limited set of vocabulary and sentence structures or attendance at a weekly one-hour Spanish class.” An increasing number of American parents fluent in a foreign language, as well as their English-only counterparts, want their children to be bilingual if not multilingual. While no one knows how much is spent in total on games, books, DVDs, online tools and foreign-language baby sitters, the amount can easily reach thousands of dollars a year per toddler. That counts tutors who charge $70 an hour, classes for $50 a week, foreign au pairs who can cost $16,000 a year and annual tuition at private immersion schools that charge $20,000 for nine months of study. Read the entire article at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/business/yourmoney/02money.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 . |
| Source | New York Times |
| Inputdate | 2008-02-10 03:22:31 |
| Lastmodifieddate | 2008-02-10 03:22:31 |
| Expdate | Not set |
| Publishdate | 2008-02-11 00:00:00 |
| Displaydate | Not set |
| Active | 1 |
| Emailed | 1 |
| Isarchived | 1 |
