Macaroni Kid interviews Sharon Huang about her thoughts on early childhood immersion, career changes, and the day-to-day magic that happens at Bilingual Buds.
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Sharon Huang the owner and founder of Bilingual Buds (http://www.bilingualbuds.com) a Mandarin and Spanish immersion school for young children located in Summit, NJ, and more recently, Manhattan. Bilingual Buds started 6 years ago with the vision of enabling children ages 1-10 years of age to become global citizens who are intellectually curious, culturally aware and linguistically capable.
Sometimes an idea appears and you just have to act on it. Sharon explains, "I remember sitting on the subway as an expectant mother, reading all this research about early language acquisition. I started thinking, that parents should realize and see how important this is.” Because she couldn’t find what she wanted, she created a program for her twins. According to Sharon, "Age 3 1/2 or 4 is the time when spoken language progress is most significant. The brain is wiring itself and is naturally able to learn languages. It is physiologically primed for language. Learning a second language also makes it easier to learn multiple languages. Becoming bilingual also offers cognitive benefits such as the ability to think abstractly and more creatively. . The brain is wired differently." The critical language-learning window tends to close around age 13.
She explains, "…I really wanted my children to be bilingual and I did not feel that doing a language class once a week or on weekends was enough. It is best to start it when you are very young. If you really want them to have a second language then they have to be immersed." Sharon had first-hand experience with being exposed to different languages and cultures, because as a child she lived in Japan for a few months and became fluent in Japanese. Bilingual Buds strives to create an environment where children can hear, write and learn the language to develop the foundation for becoming bilingual. Another motivating factor stemmed from Sharon’s work experience: With fifteen years of work experience in consumer marketing, which took Sharon around the world with Nabisco International, she quickly realized the importance of languages. She goes on to explain; "I feel that English, Chinese and Spanish are critically important long term for our kids."Read More
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