Beginnings

Below are excerpts from my essay “Piggy Pedagogy: An Adventure with Puppets and Toddler Bilingualism," which will be appearing in the book Raising Children Bilingually in the United States, ed. Iulia Pittman. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2015.

Without the help of puppets, bilingualism would have been an experiment I conducted with my toddler and abandoned after a month instead of the endlessly rewarding three-year adventure it has turned into. Originally, I had decided against raising my son—Jamie—bilingually. Although I possess near-native fluency in German (hereafter L2) and have been teaching the language at the college level for 15 years, because I began learning the L2 when I was twenty-one, I felt that I lacked certain important native language and cultural instincts, especially when it came to children and the strata of language associated with childhood. My son was already two years old when, at the prompting of a former student who was raising her children bilingually, I looked into some of the recent literature on the subject, in the course of which I changed my mind.

Of course, I couldn’t simply change languages with my son, who was already fully verbal. Initially, my plan was to use a mixture of English (our L1) and German in a few specific contexts he really cared about and where I was often actively involved in the play (the main ones being his beloved stuffed animal community and Thomas the Train set), then to smoothly and gradually increase the proportion of German in my own discourse. We made what I felt to be good progress in this way for about three or four weeks. Then Jamie seemed to reach a dead end, growing tired of the repetitions and losing interest in learning new words and phrases. Basically, he got tired of German as a game, and saw no need of it as a real medium of communication with me, since he already had one. So I backed off for a few days. When I began again, Jamie declared outright he didn’t want to learn German anymore.

The solution I hit upon was to introduce a hand-puppet who was monolingual in German, thus obligating my child to learn the language in order to communicate with the puppet. It worked immediately and brilliantly. Although the idea came to me independently, it is certainly not original. Puppets have long been widely used in children’s language education at school, and I have since read a number of short descriptions of their use at home in order to reinforce bilingualism. I offer the following account of my experiences and reflections, as well as some of the main techniques, exercises, and scenarios I have found useful, in order that they may help and inspire other parents and language teachers. 

Conditions. Since teaching a second language to a child is a time-intensive and family-impacting enterprise, here is a brief sketch of the professional, material, and domestic conditions that have made it possible for me. An academic schedule, as well as the job security that comes with tenure, has allowed me the luxury of devoting, in addition to significant amounts of time during the summer and holiday breaks, generally one full day during the week of the academic year (mid August to early May) entirely to L2-intensive activities alone with my son. He is an only child, which has made sustained periods of exclusive L2 use much easier than if he had siblings. No less importantly, my wife has been able and willing to adapt to my and Jamie’s gradual shift to the L2 as our main language of communication. Although she herself speaks almost exclusively English with both of us, her German was good enough to allow her to follow all our L2 interactions from the beginning and even to participate in some of the early ones. 

Timeline. Though I have never kept detailed notes on Jamie’s progress in the L2, I have kept track of the main milestones. All in all, it took about eleven months for him to achieve English-German bilinguality. I used active puppetry constantly throughout this whole period, beginning in February 2012, when my son was two years and two months old. For the first six months, the puppet and I, as well as the puppet and Jamie, interacted exclusively in L2. With the puppet on my hand, I spoke as much L2 with Jamie as I could from the very beginning, though always supported by sufficient L1 to serve main understanding. In communicating with me in the presence of the puppet, Jamie spoke mostly L1, though he used single L2 words and phrases from the start. Gradually his L2 use with me increased, but whenever the puppet was not present, he reverted to L1. That began to change at the end of the sixth month (July 2012), when the L2 became our primary medium of communication in the presence of the puppet. (see essay)

The puppets. For the first five months, I used one hand-puppet, the model “Piggy” by the Folkmanis company. 

I chose this particular puppet because it offers excellent simultaneous control of the mouth, face, and two front feet using only one hand. The mouth and face are highly manipulable and make for a very realistic imitation of speaking and facial expressions. At the same time, it is possible to grasp, hold, and manipulate objects (with a little practice, even write and draw) while making the puppet speak. This versatility proved very important, given that I would have these puppets (first one piggy, then two) on my hands pretty much non-stop for the next eleven months during virtually every domestic interaction with my son. I have since added a number of different Folkmanis and other puppets to the mix, but so far none of them offer such easy simultaneous mouth and paw control as does the Folkmanis Piggy. Introducing the puppets. I learned that the puppets could be introduced in a way to create and constantly renew enthusiasm for the L2.... (see essay) 

First phase activities. I used the puppet primarily in three types of scenarios in the beginning 1) ritualized game-routines of narrow scope targeting the progressive inculcation of basic L2 vocabulary, grammar, and syntax; 2) puppet-mediated reading out-loud to Jamie in L1 and L2 simultaneously; and 3) watching L2 television and listening to L2 audiobooks... (see essay)

Puppets and L2 correction. Error correction is a controversial topic among L2 teachers and researchers. In my experience, L2 puppetry can be handled in such a way as to play both sides of the field, as it were... (see essay)

Second phase activities. After six full months, the L2 had become my primary language of communication with my son as long as the puppets (the second piggy, Thusnelda, had joined us by this time, followed since by numerous others) were present. With the exception of social activities involving other people, this was constant—during virtually every domestic routine, every family mealtime, every second evening of bedtime reading, every trip, every car drive, every bike ride, every neighborhood walk, etc... (see essay) 

The puppets after bilinguality. Ever since January 2013, German has been the primary language of communication between me and Jamie. He addresses me in German unless I ask him not to, whines and cries in German when with me, and mumbles German when I’m with him when he wakes up in the middle of the night... (see essay)