The Future is Bilingual Heather

Today's interview is with Christina, Heather's friend and colleague at Freestyle Languages. Christina's life has brought her into contact with many languages and she has embraced each opportunity to broaden her horizons and learn more. She tells us about how she learned Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, French and Moroccan Darija, and not only that but how she maintains them. Our discussion covers many topics including traveling and living abroad, learning a language for a relationship, and teaching all different levels and ages of students. Christina offers many great tips on how to learn languages, what to focus on, how to maintain them, where to find great free resources, and more.
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Resources mentioned:
Hebrew Time Podcast
Piece of Hebrew YouTube Channel
Piece of French YouTube Channel
Easy Languages YouTube Channel

Suzy is an Armenian-American EFL (English as a foreign language) instructor, multilingual poet and mom raising two young multilingual children. She grew up bilingually and much of her poetry focuses on the immigrant experience, especially for children of immigrants like herself. She shares with us her journey learning her various languages, how she met her French husband, and how they are raising their two children to be trilingual in Armenian, French and English. Suzy and Heather, who both teach English to foreigners in the U.S., agree that their experiences living abroad in France help them better relate to their students and to their struggles learning English while living and working in the U.S. They also discuss how important it is to learn about the culture as well as the language and grammar if we want to become proficient speakers. Suzy grew up in L.A. which has many dual-language programs and she is happy her son will be attending one and gaining exposure to a fourth language through school.



To follow Suzy and her work:

Instagram

Linktree



Other resources mentioned during the episode:

Poetry Unbound

Armenian YouTube Channel

Armenian workbooks

French YouTube Channel

Today's episode is a deep dive into the complex linguistic reality in India with Dr. Devina Krishna, assistant professor of linguistics at Patna Women's College in India. Not only is she an expert in the field but she is also raising her son to be multilingual. We get into the languages they speak and what communication looks like (spoiler: there is some code switching happening!). India has 22 official languages and we discuss mutual intelligibility between them and the logistics of recognizing regional languages. Devina brings up the important topics of language endangerment and linguistic preservation, and we also get into translanguaging and how it can be used in the classroom.

Devina share so much knowledge and real-life wisdom with us regarding the highs and lows of bilingual parenting and being multilingual. The fact that her son is a budding polyglot making the effort to learn more languages on his own at the young age of 12 speaks volumes to how much languages and cultural understanding are valued in her home and community.
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To find out more about Devina:
- Follow her on Instagram @devinakaul (https://www.instagram.com/devinakaul/)
- Follow her research on ResearchGate (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Devina_Krishna) and Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=UGDP0YMAAAAJ&hl=en)

So many truth bombs and inspiring tales in this interview episode with Anita, the founder of Bhasha Kids (⁠@BhashaKids⁠)! Anita is a Malayalam-American mom whose company helps kids (and adults!) connect with South Asian Languages and Cultures.
Anita and Heather talk all about raising multilingual kids and the best ways to support them in their language learning journey, like why it's worth getting a tutor and/or resources. They also get into linguistic topics such as phonological awareness and the different proficiency levels (e.g. the European framework A1-C2). Another major theme in their talk is identity and being a heritage speaker.
Anita offers tons of resources, some of which are free!, on Instagram and her ⁠Linktree page⁠.
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If you enjoy this podcast, please do one (or more!) of the following:
- follow it wherever you listen
- follow me on Instagram @thefutureisbilingual
- share it with a friend and on your social media
- take a minute to rate it
- leave a rating and review here
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Today's interview is with Tanner, a college student majoring in music business and minoring in Japanese. We talk a lot about Japan and Japanese culture, but first we discuss the other languages she has studied and what got her interested in Japanese. We touch on how her classes are taught using a flipped classroom model, which Heather also uses when teaching with Freestyle Languages. Tanner shares her experiences, tips and interests related to learning Japanese but also dabbling in Mandarin Chinese and Korean while Heather shares some travel stories of when she visited Japan with the high school she taught for.

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If you enjoy this podcast, please do one (or more!) of the following:

- follow it wherever you listen

- follow me on Instagram ⁠@thefutureisbilingual⁠

- share it with a friend and on your social media

- take a minute to rate it

- leave a rating and review ⁠here⁠

- buy me a coffee ⁠here⁠

Today's interview is with Maria Twena, a second-generation Latina, a bilingual children’s book author, and the creator of "MariVi: The Master Navigator". Maria tells us about what it was like growing up and straddling not only two languages but also two cultures and two opposing worldviews, one collectivist and one individualist. She only realized as an adult how challenging her experiences had been and that many bicultural children share these same experiences. She created her book series "MariVi" because she didn't see herself depicted in the general media nor in the Spanish-language media. She strongly felt the need to start a conversation about the experiences bicultural children have and her books and animated TV show do just that. She's embarking on no small feat. She plans to create a massive resource of 18 books spanning 6 years of schooling (from 1st to 6th grade, 3 books per school year) showing all the different aspects of growing up biculturally and bilingually.

Her first two books are out and available on Amazon: ⁠School Crossing (Book 1)⁠ & ⁠Weekend Ways⁠, and the 1st season of MariVi the animated TV series is available exclusively on the new free streaming platform Nuestra.TV.

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Other resources mentioned:

- Study about marketing to Hispanics: https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2007/10/17/hispanic-search-marketing-u-s-focus-global-perspective/





If you enjoy this podcast, please do one (or more!) of the following:

- follow it

- follow me on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/thefutureisbilingual/)

- share it with a friend and on your social media

- take a minute to rate it

- leave a rating and review (https://ratethispodcast.com/bilingual)

- buy me a coffee (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/futurebilingual)