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Sabine Reljic
  Reply with quote  #1 

Thank you, thank you, thank you. When I found your website, my first reaction was “How could I have possibly been surfing the Net about bilingualism and not find this sooner? This is awesome!”

My children have been brought up in a trilingual environment since birth. I had made my mind on this WAY before I had children. I have been an ESL student (I am French living in the States for the past 12 years), an ESL teacher and the principle administrator of a ESL private school. So when I met my husband and we decided to start a family, it was a no brainer. (He is also a first generation immigrant from Yougoslavia). I am now pursuing a doctoral degree in Educational Technology with a research interest in language acquisition (Computer-assisted language learning, teacher training, curriculum development, etc) and so, I finally have the excuse to spend my time researching multilingualism more throuroughly and write about it to spread the word. In fact, I have a short conceptual piece called “Theory of Fun: Nature and Nurture of the Bilingual Brain” and a communit-of-practice teacher tip called “Developing Instructional Analogy for adult ESl learners: Steps, Theories, Applications,” that are currently under publishing consideration. If I had found your website before I submitted them, I would have used quite a few resources from it!

 

In fact, I have just forward your link to all my fellow doctoral colleagues some of whom are teachers who deal a lot with english learners (California is dealing with over 240 languages without counting the dialects!) in mainstream curriculum.

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Sabine

 
Maria Reljic
  Reply with quote  #2 

Hey Sabine!

 

I was finally able to locate you on the web

I went to your other website, but there was no contact page! So I couldn’t e-mail you. Therefore I thought, I’d do it this way

 

Please do mail me back!

It’s [email protected]

Love Maria

 
sabine
  Reply with quote  #3 

Well, Christina, it appears that your association has powers beyond its intended purpose! This is fantastic. Maria and I have been trying to re-connect since we met in Croatia last summer. She’s back in London, I’m back in the States. We’ve had fantastic discussions, a lot of them about multilingualism (she’s fluent in Serbian, English and Dutch) and of course, talked a lot about my children’s multilingual education (French, Serbian, English) and how important it is that we keep it up.

 

On another note, for adults or young adults interested in learning Spanish, a new software came out that is very forward thinking and very effective: 3D Language Spain at http://www.3dlanguage.net/cms/,

 

Sabine

 
Dragan Obrenovic
  Reply with quote  #4 
Hi Sabine
I really just stumbled upon this site, when looking for a bit of third party experiences in multilinguality. I am a Serb from Croatia, living in the UK, with Estonian wife. We are expecting our first child in the end of September. We have already decided to speak in our languages to the baby, but ofcourse there are some concerns. Your husband can probably tell you how important is to us that our children speak serbian, as well as other languages. I am really thinking that if we keep talking to the child in our respective languages, it will learn both without problems, and english will come in just as easy (as my wife and me speak english between us). Few of my serbian friends, here in the UK, had similar situation (wives are polish) and they started to speak both languages to the kid. When they noticed that kid is taking its time to start speaking, they reverted to english, which I think is wrong.
I am so glad that I read your story. I would like to ask you if you know of any other web sites,or books, where I could read more on the subject.
All the best to you and your family.
svako dobro
Dragan Obrenovic

 
george best
  Reply with quote  #5 
In my opinion keep speaking to the kinds in the languages that are not commonly used in the countries where you reside. The native language of the country of residence will come along with the other even if when the kids start school and they have difficulties with the language spoken in school.
  
From George Best
 
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