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Sharon Unsworth

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Kletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]The last Kletsheads [Season 3, Episode 8]In this final – and therefore extra-long – episode, three parents who have previously been guests on the podcast talk about how their family’s bilingual journey has progressed since then. I look back over the past four years, reflect on the future and, to conclude, we hear a poem written about and dedicated to bilingual children, and inspired by the podcast. Our first guest is Liz. I first spoke to her in the first season of Kletsheads (in episode 4, about language mixing). Liz is originally from Limburg in the Netherlands but has lived in Canada for 10 years. Together with h...2023-11-151h 14Kletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Bilingualism and dyslexia [Season 3, Episode 7] Transcript Learning to read does not come easily to all children. Some children experience serious problems with reading and spelling. They have difficulty recognising and learning letters, they mix up sounds or letters, or read very slowly. With proper help, this often passes, but in some children these issues remain. Persistent problems with reading and spelling are sometimes due to dyslexia. What exactly is dyslexia? If a bilingual child has dyslexia, will they succeed in learning to read in both languages? Does dyslexia work the same in all languages, e.g. also in languages with different scripts? What can...2023-10-1758 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]The benefits of heritage language education (complementary schools) [Season 3, Episode 6] Transcript Many bilingual children around the world attend heritage language education. Sometimes called complementary or supplementary schools, heritage language programs or mother tongue education, these schools offer children and young people a safe space where they can develop and maintain their HL and cultural identity. Classes take place at the weekend or after children are done for the day with their mainstream schooling, and in many cases include not only language but also a cultural and sometimes a religious component.   In this episode we hear more about the research on heritage language education. Do certain types of c...2023-09-151h 01Kletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Bilingualism and autism [Season 3, Episode 5] Transcript According to WHO, 1 in 100 children have autism. Whilst exact numbers can vary depending on who’s reporting them, where in the world you live, and how autism is defined, this developmental disability is certainly not uncommon. In fact, in many places, the number of people living with autism is increasing. Autism is a spectrum which means that it’s different for everybody. It affects how people relate to others, how they make sense of the world around them, and how they communicate. And it’s likely these problems with communication that raise questions about bilingualism in autistic children. Should...2023-08-151h 01Kletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Books about bilingual parenting [Season 3, Episode 4] Transcript In this episode we review two books about bilingual parenting: Bilingual success stories around the world by Adam Beck and Bilingual families. A practical language planning guide by Eowyn Crisfield. We get the parental perspective from Maria Papantoniou, a Greek-speaking mother raising her child bilingually in the UK together with her Greek-speaking husband, and Sam Timmermans, a Dutch-speaking father who until recently lived in the UK with his wife and two children. Language scientist Ludovica Serratrice joins me to evaluate the books from a research perspective. Ludovica is Professor of Bi-Multilingualism at the University...2023-07-151h 03Kletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Bilingualism and aging: Can you lose a language?[Season 3, Episode 3] Transcript If we are lucky, we will all grow old. And if we are even luckier, we will stay healthy for as long as possible. But even if we stay healthy, it is inevitable that we slow down — both physically and mentally. We often don’t function as well as we used to, we become forgetful, and we may also develop problems like dementia. Research shows that being bilingual might help when it comes to slowing down these kinds of problems. Why is this the case ? And does this apply to all bilinguals? Researcher Merel Keijzer explains how being bili...2023-06-1557 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Multiple languages, multiple identities? Bilingualism and identity [Season 3, Episode 2] Transcript Identity. It’s a word you often hear when talking about children growing up in a bilingual family, but what does identity really mean? To what extent can you have multiple identities, belonging to different cultures or ethnic backgrounds? What are the consequences for children if they identify more in one way than the other? What role do parents, friends, school and wider society have in play? In this episode, we’re answering these questions with Virginia Lam, researcher at Univeristy of Roehampton in London, herself a bilingual speaker of English and Mandarin and mother of two bilingual chil...2023-05-1553 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Why are some bilingual children more bilingual than others? [Season 3, Episode 1] Transcript Why do some bilingual children end up becoming more bilingual than others? That’s the question we’re answering in this episode of Kletsheads, the first in our third season of the English-language ediition. Most children become more proficient in one of their languages compared with the other(s). This is often the language spoken at school or the wider community. Some children actively use both languages, but many do not. And in much the same way as we see for learning to walk, or the age at which you lose your first tooth, we also see...2023-04-1556 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Coming soon: Season 3Kletsheads is back! Season 3 is on its way. We’ll have a new episode for you on the 15th of every month from now through November, eight episodes in total. In this short trailer, I’ll tell you more about what we’re going to be talking about. This season of Kletsheads was made possible thanks to funding from HaBilNet. The Harmonious Bilingualism Network HaBilNet aims to support and stimulate scientific research into harmonious bilingualism and to make sure the results of that research reach the general public. If you want to know more about this organisation, check ou...2023-04-0105 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]The best of ‘Kletshead of the week’What do bilingual children think about being bilingual? Children – from 8 to 38 years old – talk about the fun and not so fun sides of being bilingual, their favourite words, the language they use with their pets, and what language they will speak when they become parents themselves. In the first two seasons of Kletsheads, I talked to children about what it is like to grow up with two or more languages, our Kletshead of the Week. In this special episode, I bring you the best of, a compilation of my favourite bits from ‘Kletshead of the Week’. Want t...2023-03-1530 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Bilingual families in lockdown and Mother Tongues [Season 2, Episode 10]Transcript It's over two years since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out and families across the globe were forced  into lockdown, with schools and childcare centres closed and many parents having to juggle working from home with caring for younger children and homeschooling older ones. Whilst this was a shared experience across many communities in many (if not most) countries around the world, individual families found themselves in many different circumstances, some more bearable than others.  In the second season of Kletsheads, we spoke about the impact of the pandemic of multilingual families in a special episode dedicated to the topic in ear...2022-06-2434 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]How the bilingual mind handles words from two languages [Season 2, Episode 9]Transcript Bilingual children sometimes say things that their monolingual peers would never say. This is the same for adults, too. They don't always know certain words in each of their two (or more) languages. And in the many cases when bilingual children do know the word in question, they can't always think of it straightaway. Again, this also holds for adults. I speak from experience as someone who sometimes has to use google translate from Dutch to English to remember what a word is in my native language. As a parent, teacher or speech language therapist, you may wonder whether...2022-06-1041 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Language mixing and bilingual secrets [Season 2, Episode 8]Transcript Most bilingual children mix their two languages. Perhaps not all the time and not in all contexts, but as many parents will know, bilingual children regularly start a sentence in one language and finish it in another, or they insert a word from one language whilst speaking the other. Such behaviour is perfectly normal. You might say it's part and parcel of being bilingual. Yet why children mix and why some do it more than others remains poorly understood. Given that language mixing is often one of the biggest concerns raised by parents raising their children bilingually, it's surprising...2022-05-2727 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Bilingualism and academic achievement [Season 2, Episode 7]Transcript Every three years, teenagers around the world are tested on their abilities in maths, science and reading, as part of PISA, the Programme for International Student Assessment. Basically, it's a way of comparing how well countries are doing when it comes to educating their children.  Because of Covid-19, the latest PISA data we have are from 2018 and what these data show is that in many countries, there are huge differences between children in how well they score, differences that are related to, for example, their parents' level of education (often referred to as socio-economic status), where their parents come fr...2022-05-1337 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Multimedia resources for multilingual families [Season 2, Episode 6]Transcript When you're raising a bilingual child and you're the the only source of one of your child's two or more languages, it can be a good idea to try and find other people or places for your child to hear and use that language. One way you can do this is to use multimedia resources such as tv and films, apps, audiobooks and music. In Hot off the Press (starts at 01:12), we talk about a recent piece of research from Singapore that investigates whether using multimedia resources really does support bilingual children's language development. This is the study in...2022-04-2931 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Learning to read in two languages [Season 2, Episode 5]Transcript Learning to read is an important step in your child's development. When children start to learn to read depends on the country they live in. In some parts of the world, like the UK, children are taught to read pretty much as soon as they enter school, whereas in other countries, like here in NL, children spend a year or two first learning to recognise letters before they're actually sat down and taught how to read and write. Learning to read comes more easily to some children than others. And as a parent, it's important to help your child...2022-04-1546 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Trilingual with Xitsonga and Hot off the Press [Season 2, Episode 4]Transcript In Hot off the Press (starts at 01:12), I tell you about a recently published study from Canada. This research deals with two important factors in bilingual language development, namely how early you start (age) and how much contact you have with a language (amount of language input). It's often thought that age is more important than language input, but this research shows that this is not the case. The study focused on the language development of bilingual children in Montreal who were growing up with French and English and/or another language. The children were 6 and 8 years old and h...2022-04-0127 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Well-being in bilingual families [Season 2, Episode 3]Transcript Children who grow up hearing two or more languages do not always end up actively using all their languages as they get older. In such cases, it's typically the heritage or minority language which suffers at the expense of the school language. As we heard in the last episode of Kletsheads when I spoke to my neighbour Kate, children may be perfectly capable of speaking the heritage language but prefer to use the language or languages spoken at school. in some cases, however, they might not be able to speak the heritage language well enough in order to express th...2022-03-1837 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Heritage language refusal & Hot off the press [Season 2, Episode 2]Transcript In this episode of Kletsheads we talk about one of the greatest frustrations faced by parents raising their children bilingually: you speak consistently to them in the heritage or home language and they consistently respond in the school language. Of course this only happens when you're proficient in that language, too, and for many parents this is indeed the case. In Let's Klets (starts at 15:35), we speak to Kate, English-speaking mum to two daughters, aged 5 and 8. Until recently, they both almost always spoke to her in their other language, Dutch, the language of the community they grow up in...2022-03-0428 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Bilingual babies [Season 2, Episode 1]Transcript Children start talking when they are around one year old. However, we know from research that they are already working on language before that. In this episode, we learn what exactly babies know about language. And we hear about the ingenious ways scientists have developed to figure this out. For example, they measure how fast babies suck on a fake teat, or measure the activity in their brains.  Bilingual babies by definition hear more than one language while in their cradle. How do they keep their two languages apart? How do they know which combination of sounds belong together a...2022-02-1838 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Coming soon: Season 2The second season of Kletsheads is almost about to start! The first episode will drop on Feb 18th. You can expect the same mix of science, experiences, and practical tips, but not quite the same as the last season. The episodes will be a bit shorter (between 30 and 45 minutes, instead of an hour) and they'll be released every two weeks (instead of once a month). And we have two new features for you: Hot off the Press and Kletsheads Quick and Easy. Listen to this teaser episode to find out more!2022-02-0103 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads on Much Language Such TalkTranscript In this special bonus episode of Kletsheads we have a podcast crossover. We are delighted to share an episode of the Much Language Such Talk podcast, an English language podcast that answers questions about language, learning, and culture. The podcast was created by three researchers at the University of Edinburgh, Brittany Blankship, Eva-Maria Schnelten and Carine Abraham, who are also volunteers at Bilingualism Matters, a research and information centre on multilingualism at the University of Edinburgh. There are episodes on a variety of topics related to multilingualism, from language, race and ethnicity, to language and cognition, and specific languages such as ...2021-11-191h 04Much Language Such TalkMuch Language Such TalkS2 E4: Child Bilingualism - Dr. Sharon UnsworthFor this episode, we invited Dr. Sharon Unsworth, who is a lecturer and researcher on second language acquisition at Radboud University in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on how to best raise children bilingually and which factors play a role in this process and best predict success. She is involved in various projects on early foreign language acquisition and bilingual primary education. More specifically, on the role of age and environmental factors such as the quality of the input, and she is currently leading a project on how the two languages of bilingual children influence each other. While Sharon...2021-11-111h 00Kletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]How bilingual children’s languages influence each other [Season 1, Episode 10]Transcript "You're wobbling the whole time the table! This is what my bilingual son said to his sister when they were playing a board game sat together at a small table and big sister was apparently also playing with the table leg. His message was clear. Big sister stopped and the game continued. What struck me most about this conversation was the way in which my son had chosen to phrase his message: his sentence was perfectly ok English, and his sister clearly understoond him, but I am certain that his English-speaking cousins in England would have said it differently...2021-07-1650 minWoordwaardeWoordwaarde#22 Meertalig opvoeden doe je zó (2) Strategieën voor ouders Hoe zorg ik dat mijn kinderen mijn taal blijven spreken? Deze vraag wordt het vaakst gesteld aan Unsworth. Soms lukt het niet om een tweede of derde taal levend te houden in een gezin. Ook hebben ouders wel eens te maken met weerstand. Als gouden tip noemt Unsworth noodzaak. Zoek situaties waarin kinderen niet anders kunnen dan jouw taal spreken. En wanhoop niet als kinderen toch liever die andere taal spreken. Zolang ze jouw taal horen en begrijpen, zijn ze toch meertalig! Luister via deze link ook het eerste d...2021-06-1922 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]How to make use of bilingual children’s home languages in the classroom: Translanguaging [Season 1, Episode 9]Transcript One language at school and another language at home. This is the reality for most bilingual children here in the Netherlands and in many countries around the world. Bilingual children often use the school language when they're at home, sometimes because this is the language spoken to them by one of their parents, but speaking the other language at school? That rarely happens. Sometimes it's not even allowed. According to many researchers -- and more and more teachers -- this is a missed opportunity. Because using the home languages of bilingual children at school can have all kinds of...2021-06-1855 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Can a child learn three languages at once? [Season 1, Episode 8]Transcript Many children in the world grow up with three languages. For example, because their parents both speak a different language and they learn a third language at school. Or because they speak one language at home and go to a bilingual school where they learn two new languages. There are also many countries in the world where almost everyone is trilingual. Think, for instance, of countries in Central and West Africa, countries like India, Luxembourg and Switzerland. There are actually far more trilingual children than you might first think, also in countries like the Netherlands.  In this episode, we f...2021-05-2852 minWoordwaardeWoordwaarde#21 Meertalig opvoeden doe je zó (1) Nooit te laat Meertaligheid bij kinderen kan alleen slagen als je vroeg begint. Dat is ook een veelgehoorde stelling rond meertalig opvoeden. Je maakt zeker een vliegende start door vroeg met je baby te praten. Babys wennen namelijk aan de klank van verschillende talen. Maar als kinderen al wat ouder zijn kan je nog steeds een tweede taal introduceren, legt Unsworth uit. Ze benadrukt dat het goed is om vóór de geboorte na te denken over een family language plan. Je bouwt namelijk een taalrelatie met je kind op, er slijten gewoontes in...2021-05-1424 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Does it matter if a bilingual child only actively uses one language? [Season 1, Episode 7]Transcript "Help! My child doesn't speak my language back to me!" This is one of the most frequently heard concerns from parents raising their children bilingually. You really try your best, consistently speaking your language to your child, and yet she or he mostly speaks to you in the majority language, usually the language spoken at school (so Dutch here in the Netherlands, English in Ireland, German in Germany, and so on). Some parents don't really mind when their children do this, but for others it can be a source of great frustration. In this episode of Kletsheads we ask...2021-04-1848 minThe Whole Home Show with Tony JoeThe Whole Home Show with Tony JoeEpisode 197 Downsizing and the WellesleyPreparing to move and the Wellesley ResidencesHear about getting your home ready for sale and having a seamless moving and set-up process with Jaclynn Soet www.thehappynest.ca 778 676 4663Plus Retirement Concepts The Wellesley of Victoria with Sharon Unsworth http://www.retirementconcepts.com/category/the-wellesley/ 778-990-13612021-04-1300 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Bilingual siblings [Season 1, Episode 6]Transcript Children growing up in the same bilingual family can differ in how well they speak their two (or more) languages. Sometimes siblings in bilingual families differ in how much they use their two (or more) languages. Parents often remark that their eldest child is more bilingual than their youngest. Or that their youngest develops more quickly in the school language and often ends up preferring this language over the heritage language (or languages). A crucial moment in a bilngual family's life is when the eldest child goes to school. Then, suddenly, the school language starts being used (more) at...2021-03-1946 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Bilingual families in lockdown [Season 1, Episode 5]Transcript Many bilingual families across the world find themselves in lockdown. And as a result, schools are closed and children are having to be taught online and/or by their parents. What would have been unheard of a year ago has now - unfortunately - become normal. But normal, of course, does not mean easy. Many families are struggling with homeschooling, from practical issues like whether there is enough space and equipment available to issues relating to actual content of the lessons.  Bilingual families may also face additional challenges. If you don't speak the school language at home, how do yo...2021-02-1637 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Should you worry about language mixing? [Season 1, Episode 4]Transcript For many bilingual families, mixing languages is quite normal. Children may start a sentence in one language and end it with the other. They sometimes throw in words from the other language in what is otherwise a monolingual conversation.  For many parents, this is often cause for concern. It might be a sign that their child can't speak either language well, or that they're confused. In this episode of Kletsheads, we find out whether these concerns are justified. Children aren't the only ones mix. Parents who speak more than one language do this, too. And this is also something wh...2021-02-0536 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]How do you know if a bilingual child has a language delay? [Season 1, Episode 3]Transcript Potty-training, teething, learning to ride a bike: some children are quick to reach each of these milestones, whereas others are much slower. The differences between children can be huge, and such differences also exist when it comes language development. But how do you know when your child's progress in learning a language really is too slow? What should you do as a parent or teacher of a bilingual child, if you're worried about his or her language development in one of their two languages, or perhaps even in both? At what point is it wise to contact a professional s...2021-01-1152 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Books about bilingual children [Season 1, Special episode 1]Transcript Are you looking for a book about bilingual children to give to someone in the holidays? Or perhaps you just fancy a new book to read for yourself. Then this special episode of Kletsheads is definitely one for you! Because together with a panel of experts, we are reviewing three recently published books on raising bilingual (and trilingual) children.  These are the books: And here our the members of our (all-women!) panel: Cécile De Cat is originally from Belgium and has lived in the UK for over 20 years. She is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Leeds. In...2020-12-1444 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]How much language does a child need to hear to become bilingual? [Season 1, Episode 2]Transcript Bilingual children grow up in many different circumstances. In some families each parent speaks his or her own native language with their child.  So, for example, Mum speaks Italian and Dad English. This is what's generally known as the "one parent, one language" strategy. In other families, both parents speak the same language, for example Arabic, and the child only comes into contact with the language of the wider community at a childcare centre, in the playgroup or at school. Some children hear their two languages from native speakers, whereas others also get language input from people who are le...2020-11-1346 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]How to plan for a bilingual child? [Season 1, Episode 1]Transcript Are you or your partner pregnant, and do you speak a different language from each other? Then chances are there's not just a baby on the way, but a bilingual baby! At least that's what a lot of parents hope when they find themselves raising a child together with someone who has a different mother tongue. It’s not always clear though what exactly the best approach is in such a situation. Should you both continue to speak your own language, or are there other choices you could make that might lead to better outcomes? What do you do if...2020-11-1335 minKletsheads [English edition]Kletsheads [English edition]Introducing Kletsheads [English edition]Find out more about the new English-language edition of Kletsheads, the podcast about bilingual children for parents, teachers and speech language therapists.2020-10-2202 minDe Waanzinnige PodcastDe Waanzinnige Podcast#2.3 Mert (11) leest Sjakie en de grote glazen liftFunkakkie! Mert (11) vertelt over Sjakie en de grote glazen lift. Dit verhaal begint waar het boek Sjakie en de chocoladefabriek eindigde: in de lucht! Sjakie en zijn familie komen in Amerikaans luchtgebied, wat leidt tot grote misverstanden... Helemaal wanneer Willie Wonka een vreemd lied begint te zingen dat als volgt begint: 'Kierisoekoe maliboekoe, wijzig wijs en hijsij koekoe.' Boek: Sjakie en de grote glazen lift Schrijver: Roald Dahl Illustraties: Quentin Blake Uitgeverij: De Fontein Wil je dit boek lezen? Meer weten? www.dewaanzinnigepodcast.nl Deze podcast is een cross-over met Kletsheads, de podcast over meertalige kinderen voor ouders, leerkrachten...2020-10-1608 minKletsheads [Nederlandse editie]Kletsheads [Nederlandse editie]Over Kletsheads (Aflevering 0)Kletsheads is een podcast over meertalige kinderen voor ouders, leerkrachten en logopedisten. Wil je meer weten? Luister dan naar deze inleiding van je host, taalwetenschapper Sharon Unsworth. Vriend van de show worden2019-09-1502 minBERKSHIRE EDGE ON-AIRBERKSHIRE EDGE ON-AIRThe Berkshire Edge On-Air – Wednesday August 21, 2019The Berkshire Edge LLC is a locally owned, regional publication. Our goal is to provide – regularly and in depth – content that truly reflects the life, interests and aspirations of this unusually rich and vibrant community. Guided by respected journalistic standards, the principle of fairness, the quest for truth, a commitment to social, economic and environmental justice, and an abiding admiration for the independent spirit of the Berkshires, The Berkshire Edge offers in-depth local news reports and features, perspectives on the arts, wide-ranging commentary, and a comprehensive calendar of events – all written, illustrated, and, in some cases performed, with w...2019-08-2126 minSaturday ReviewSaturday ReviewThere Is a Light That Never Goes Out, Animals, Colson Whitehead, Olafur Eliasson, This Way UpThere Is A Light That Never Goes Out, Scenes From The Luddite Rebellion has just opened at Manchester Royal Exchange. Combining verbatim recreations and imagined encounters, it looks at Manchester and England at the beginning of industrialisation Animals is a new film based on the novel by Emma Jane Unsworth. Two friends messily drift along and apart and back together in Dublin Colson Whitehead's new novel The Nickel Boys fictionalises the true story of a reform institution in Florida where cruelty, abuse and violence were the norm Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life is at Tate Modern in London...2019-08-0347 min