Becoming bilingual is like that too. It’s not about a teacher leading you, or you following. It’s about communication and friendship, connecting with people and, with practice, speaking their language in every sense of the word. How would you feel if someone told you that you will never become bilingual? Check out the article below for more insight into becoming bilingual and watch the video for some French walking! (This week: verb MARCHER – to walk) |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGjI3F-myDg
Become bilingual or fluent?
I’m going to open a can of worms today, because it’s a subject that is quite ‘hot’ in this group and I’d like to voice it before other misconceptions take over like the wild fire.
Can anyone ever become truly bilingual – unless they have two mother tongues?
There is a certain understanding about bilingualism and fluency that some people get it wrong.
I heard people saying that one can be fluent when they can use with a certain ease a second language, but can become bilingual only when they master that 2nd language close to their mother tongue.
Another trend is to consider that fluency is the highest level of command of a second language. Many consider that fluency can never be acquired, as no second language can be handled with quite such an ease as the mother tongue.
I do agree with the fact that the mother tongue is hard to equal, because it resides in the right hemisphere of the brain, while an acquired language resides in the left brain. But that is only until the acquired language is used enough to migrate in the right brain, so to speak.
This is the very reason I use what works and I don’t use what doesn’t work for each of my students. The consequence is that you start to like doing what you are doing in French, and attaching positive emotions to the process of learning, makes the migration of the language in the right brain seamless. It connects the “knowing” of French (left brain) with the emotion of your stories and experiences (right brain). It becomes about what you do in French, not the French language itself.
Here is some food for thought:
1. How do we categorize those people who, by not speaking their mother tongue, sometimes have huge trouble using it at all, and they translate from the language they use most in their mother tongue? I know a lot of people in danger of losing their mother tongue, people who moved to another country as adults.
2. Where do we place those people who speak a second language really decently, even a third or a fourth? If both bilingualism and fluency refer to an acquired language that is used at the level of our mother tongue, then where are we, the vast majority of language learners, who are not (yet) there?
Would it be possible that all of us, “little people” who use very well a second or third language are bilingual (multilingual) and “fluency” should be what we should call the most advanced level of command?
Now it is your turn!
Tell us in the comments below, do you consider yourself bilingual, fluent, both or none?
Make sure you watch the Learn Parisian French – Will you ever become Bilingual? on Youtube! While you’re there, and if you like it, please click the ‘Like’ button!
Don’t ever give up on your dream to become bilingual – the world needs your enthusiasm when you go to Paris and fully enjoy it!
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p.s.
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