"It is never too late".
I wish William could learn to speak Italian. I really hope that one day he will be able to understand his Italian roots, unlike the many Italian-Americans I meet regularly, who cannot speak Italian and who know Italy only through the cinema and the internet. As a result, I will do everything I can possibly do to help William and his friends, the members of my group, the Boston Bambino Club, to learn Italian and to learn about Italian culture.
Tufts Professor Calvin Gidney said that bilingual children, outperform the non bilingual ones in the following skills:
- Improved Working Memory
- Quicker Response Time in Solving Complex Tasks
- Enhanced Executive Functioning
- Decreased Susceptibility to Age-Associated Deterioration.
However, he stressed a few times that the children who truly become bilingual, are the ones who have had the opportunity to learn the second language
in a variety of contexts (e.g., social, schoolwork, sports, current
events). As a result, they tend to be either (1) children who went to a
school with an immersion program in the second language, or (2) those
who had the opportunity to live, for extended periods in the country of
the second language. This is not possible for many of us.
If you (or any of your friends) would like to enroll your children in an Italian immersion school (e.g http://www.lascuoladitalia.org) in the Boston/Cambridge area, please speak up and sign the petition at the link below:
Thank you for your support.
Enrica
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