Francophonie

The New York Times had an interesting story yesterday on the benefits of bilingualism. We’d heard that children who grow up in bilingual households tend to hit language milestones a bit more slowly than their monolingual peers, but eventually catch up. Once caught up, there are some obvious advantages to being bilingual, not only for traveling, ordering in restaurants and working, but also for interacting in a meaningful way with people outside your daily strata.

The Times article, The Benefits of Bilingualism, goes one step further, showing that the skills that children pick up by being bilingual can be applied more broadly to all sorts of cognitive tasks. For example, while monolingual and bilingual children were equally adept at sorting colored shapes into groups by color, bilingual children were better than their monolingual peers when they had to ignore color and sort by shape, presumably because they’ve had to exercise the ability to focus on certain patterns while intentionally blocking out others. We’re not sure if the level of bilingual education offered by the John Stanford School is sufficient to earn these gains, but it’s still good news for all you JSIS parents.

For anyone else who wants a touch of the bilingual, the Alliance Française de Seattle is holding a Francophonie (French-speaking) event this Thursday at the Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center from 7 – 9 pm. There will be a performance by the Alliance Française choir followed by finger foods*!

Families are welcome. Free for AF members / $5 for non-members. Please RSVP to [email protected] or 206.632.5433 by March 19th.

 

* We couldn’t find a good French translation for “finger foods”. The closest we found was repas sur le pouce, or “eating on the hoof”. This seems to have both the connotation of a quick snack, but also of eating without sitting down.