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Friday, June 03, 2011

Eskius mi?

human brain is very unique. even us, the one who use it everyday seems not to know much about it.

raising children somehow give you the opportunity to see lots of things a brain can do,
some even can do magic!
as the child grows up, we'l see how they use their brain (knowing and unknowingly) to be better and to survive.
at first we can see how they coordinate their body to do many things - to move the hand, pick up  things, to raise, to crawl, to move around, or even when to stop
emotionally the children will learn and re learn how to manipulate their emotion to get what they want - they wail, they smile , cuckoo - as an act of communication
later they'l find that its easier to communicate thru language. of course they'l quickly pickup any language the parents use. and as the saying goes 'children's brain is like the sponge, the absorb watever come to them. quickly', exposing children to many language will not do any harm. in fact it'l speed up the learning and help boost the brain. when we learn new language, did u ever notice that our brain somehow will 'grow' the language inside our head. i often found myself uttering new words that i never use/ or hardly known before. i think its strange. and i do think the same happen to children. as they grow they'l pick up and develop new words to improve their language skills.
however, caution is still needed when coaching a child in language. i think, whatever we do, we need to know how the child is adapting, how weel his/her capability. or in short, how smart are they. most kids are smart, nonetheless, but i've seen some kids experience a confusing moment when they have ho switch from one language to another. as i told you before, aisyah went to Malay-medium pre-school but with little exposure to English, save for using English during Math. because the curriculum said so. so went the ministry decide to switch back to Malay, the school follow. during report card day, i was waiting for my turn when i overheard the principal was telling a mother that her daughter is having difficulty to learn numbers in Malay, since she's so used to numbers in English. she just cant catch up.
im sure all  mother, including myself, will always teach our kids to learn in English. with the assumption that 'ala bahasa melayu tu kan bahasa dia, esok2 dia pandai sendiri.' so we'' stressed on using English whenever it permits.
maybe. as long as we never forget to make sure they learned it. if you'r living in Malaysia i think there'l not be much problem.
but i stil found myself having difficulty explaining to my kids why there's two name for everything. u know i had this habit of repeating the name of things in English after telling my kids in Malay. or vice versa. at times, we'l argue with each other when they insist on only in Malay or English. whichever they like.
maybe my method is not good enough.
i aso had a story of how a boy insists on the 'rice' instead of 'nasi' kat kedai mamak. habis nenek dia kena marah sebab he want to eat 'rice' but grandma had ordered 'nasi' hehe. jenuh!
ok, whatever it is, i think you know your child best. so explore.
i dont have time to touch on the method '1 parent 1 language' yet. maybe later. i'l need to consult the expert though.

wahhh entry yang sungguh akademik di hari  jumaat ini ya. ini tandanya mood untuk buat report sudah kembali.

2 comments:

mama_QnR said...

salam che ta

we are here and of course the main language is English
and Q is definitely speaking more english as she meets/mingle/learn in that language
most of her friends are english and she only learns BM at home

watched Dora and they introduced spanish by saying "in english we say xx, in spanish we say yy"
so now that is what we do
both of us Mama and Papa will teach just like Dora did
she understands BM but because she only hears them from us it would not be sufficient for her to speak eloquently like the current english
however, we will continue teaching her the BM words

hopefully bila balik she would not be too shocked

Anonymous said...

Cd, we know our kids are smart, aren't they? Hehe
I believe qis n rayyan wil do fine.they have great mother afterall!
Yup I have to agree tv does help, partly it does give me ideas how to teach mine