So, the end of day 2, and I have just finished my homework. Yes, after almost eight hours of lectures today, we still had homework for tomorrow! I think I am going to rename this the “Bilingualism Boot Camp”…

Thoughts from today:

1. Issues in Bilingualism: There used to be some thinking that bilingual children sometimes start speaking later than monolingual children (I’ve said it myself!). This is now no longer considered to be true. Bilingual children may initially have smaller vocabularies in each of the their languages, but overall they develop at the same rate as monolingual children.

2. Bilingual Education in Wales: First thought, what a success story. From one Welsh-language school in 1939, to over 400 primary school in 2011. That is a fantastic increase in the support for the Welsh language. Second thought – what a shame that still only 20% of the Welsh are speakers of the Welsh language. Why would you live in Wales and not want your children to learn this beautiful language?

3. Dynamic Bilingual Education: My thought today is that if the education authorities in NY knew what was happening on Rap Mondays… it looks daring, it looks controversial, but what an amazing teaching approach for a challenged population (teenagers immigrants in NY).

4. Code-switching: Well, really my thought for the day is that code-switching is not going to be my focus in the future… it’s interesting, but so detailed!

And now I’m off to rest my brain for another big day tomorrow.