Kletsheads [English edition]

About Kletsheads [English edition]

The podcast about bilingual children

Publisher

Sharon Unsworth

Category

education · kids & family · science

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

22 Oct 2020

Latest episode

15 Nov 2023

Latest episodes

34 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   15 Nov 2023

   The last Kletsheads [Season 3, Episode 8]

   Transcript In this final - and therefore extra-long - episode, three parents who have previously been guests on the podcast talk about how their family's bilingual journey has progressed since then. I look back over the past four years, reflect on the future and, to conclude, we hear a poem written about and dedicated to bilingual children, and inspired by the podcast. Our first guest is Liz. I first spoke to her in the first season of Kletsheads (in episode 4, about language mixing). Liz is originally from Limburg in the Netherlands but has lived in Canada for 10 years. Together with her Egyptian husband, she has a 4-year-old son, Otis. Next, we hear from Marjolein. Marjolein grew up monolingually in the Netherlands, studied English and then became an English teacher. When she became a mother in 2018, she decided to also speak English to her infant son Owen. She now has a second son, James. Marjolein was first featured in this episode 2 of the first season on how much input does a child need to hear to become bilingual. Finally, I speak to Christi. Christi was first on the podcast back in 2020 (in the same episode as Liz) as our Kletshead of the week. She spoke about her own upbringing as a trilingual child in Vienna, and about the choices she faced now that she had become her mother herself. In this episode she tells us how speaking German can sometimes be a challenge (especially when 'life' gets in the way) and how her eldest daughter has picked up Spanish from her mum. If you want to know how these three parents and their bilingual families are doing now, listen to the podcast! To conclude this episode and thus the entire podcast series, we hear a poem, Three words for squirrel. This poem was written and is performed by spoken word poet, Wieke Vink. You might recognise Wieke from the first episode of this final season, when she interviewed our Kletshead of the week. If you listen carefully to the poem, you will hear many references to conversations, topics and words that have passed by in the past four in the podcast. Three words for squirrel This poem is for the little onesWhose mother tongueIs more than one With words in different flavoursOn the tip of your tongueOr flowing out of your fingertips This is for the childrenFor whom the crossroads of thoughts in your headCould be spread outInto at least two different languages With womb-held babiesBathing in soundFollowing the rhythmic patternsThat are with them – all around EmergingOut into the worldA holder of knowledge Growing up You already knowHow to be gentle with yourself and with othersHow to wobble on the table of conventions How to take it slowWhen a word doesn’t immediately come to mind When in search for the right ‘mmm’The nuance that you might knowFrom the flow of past conversations Not yet fully interpretatedBut held onto brightlyIn the library of your mind Your shelves full of boxesWith vocab and grammarTu sais que somewhereBetween the Malayalam, French and Finnishthere will be a great find This is for youAs you’ve feltHow language is part of connectionFor all our neurodiverse minds Language as a connectorFor all things funny and wise, silly and kind Dear multilingual child You might not be able to speak it allYou might not be able to read it allYet you are able to hold it all In a map of the worldThat’s unique to youAnd the communities that you belong to Your cultures sometimes resonatingIn the tones of your skinThe rhythms of your sentencesThe sounds of your name You know, language is part of identityYet our schools may beSo monolingual or full of variety With the need for heritage language educationAnd intercultural communicationWithin and across our different nations With all these languages holding the world in their embraceAnd a dialect in every corner And when seasons seem out of orderYou are asked to braze both our physical and our cultural landscapes As three seasons of a podcast droppedFrom the northern hemisphereCoveri...

2. 

   16 Oct 2023

   Bilingualism and dyslexia [Season 3, Episode 7]

   Transcript Learning to read does not come easily to all children. Some children experience serious problems with reading and spelling. They have difficulty recognising and learning letters, they mix up sounds or letters, or read very slowly. With proper help, this often passes, but in some children these issues remain. Persistent problems with reading and spelling are sometimes due to dyslexia. What exactly is dyslexia? If a bilingual child has dyslexia, will they succeed in learning to read in both languages? Does dyslexia work the same in all languages, e.g. also in languages with different scripts? What can you do as a parent, teacher or speech language therapist to support bilingual children with dyslexia? Researcher Ioulia Kovelman explains that being dyslexic means that you have long-term problems with reading. More often than not, these become clear when - after several years of schooling - children have persistent difficulties in connecting sounds and letters or sounds and characters but even before children start to read, there may be some signs that children will develop dyslexia, for example if they struggle to recognise which words rhyme with each other. We also learned that dyslexia works similarly across languages and so if your bilingual child has dyslexia in one language, they will have it in another. The tests used to diagnose dyslexia may however differ depending on whether sounds are matched to letters, as an in alphabetic languages such as English or Arabic, or to characters as in Chinese. One thing that Ioulia made very clear is that being bilingual does not make dyslexia any worse. In Let's Klets, we spoke to Miriam de Oliveira from the International School Breda in the Netherlands. She told us about the Language Friendly School network. If you understand Dutch, you can hear me talk to the co-founder of this network, Ellen-Rose Kambel, in this episode of the (Dutch edition of the) podcast (Season 2, Episode 6). Ioulia Kovelman is Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan in the US. She a neuroscientist studying the bilingual brain and how children learn to speak and to read in more than one language. You can read more about her research at the Language & Literacy Lab here.

3. 

   15 Sept 2023

   The benefits of heritage language education (complementary schools) [Season 3, Episode 6]

   Transcript Many bilingual children around the world attend heritage language education. Sometimes called complementary or supplementary schools, heritage language programs or mother tongue education, these schools offer children and young people a safe space where they can develop and maintain their HL and cultural identity. Classes take place at the weekend or after children are done for the day with their mainstream schooling, and in many cases include not only language but also a cultural and sometimes a religious component. In this episode we hear more about the research on heritage language education. Do certain types of complementary schools work better than others? What effect does attending these schools have on children's language development and their cultural identity? What other benefits are there, and are there benefits for parents as well as children? Researcher Layal Husein tells us how complementary schools have indeed been found to support bilingual children's heritage language development, especially when it comes to literacy. They also serve as safe spaces for children to explore their cultural heritage and identity. Complementary schools can also serve as community hubs for parents, and for newcomers, help them navigate their new surroundings. In this episode we heard excerpts from two previous episodes of Kletsheads: this interview with Gisi Cannizzarro (starts at 22m17), director of the Heritage Language Education Network, and this interview with Thorwen, who attended complementary school in Dutch whilst living in Hong Kong as a child.   Another useful resource for anyone interested in this topic is the National Resource Centre for Supplementary Education in the UK. You can read more about mother tongue education being a human right here. Dr. Layal Husein is a researcher the University of East London, UK. She recently completed her PhD on the effects of complementary schools bilingual children's language and identity. You can read more about this work here (if you have access - unfortunately, like many academic articles, this paper is behind a paywall). Layal grew up bilingually, learning Arabic from her Bahraini father and English from her mother and at school. Our Kletshead of the week is the Sybil Vachaudez. She grew up in Denmark and Portugal, learning (and then forgetting) Danish alongside Portuguese, French and English. Curious about the Portuguese music you heard during our conversation? That was Portugal's 2022 entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, Saudade, Saudade by Maro. In this episode, I also share our final Quick and Easy, a concrete tip you can put into practice straightaway to make the most out of the bilingualism in your family, class or practice: create a reading problem that your child will want to solve. Listen to the podcast to find out more!

Reach and audience

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Apple Podcasts (US)

4.6 / 5

10 ratings