In this new blog series, Meet the Little Sponges® Team, we aim to learn more about the people behind the Little Sponges® interactive dual-language program. From translators and writers to the CEO and curriculum developers, Little Sponges® has a diverse team of passionate individuals who aim to create the best bilingual program for young children.
In this blog post, we shed a spotlight on Camille Meritan, a translator for the Little Sponges® bilingual program.
What languages do you speak?
French & English
What was your path to becoming bilingual?
I started learning English in middle school and during the last year of my bachelor’s degree in France, I was given the opportunity to study abroad for one year in the United States. I never left and never stopped my language education. I am now a PhD candidate and teaching assistant in French and Second Language Acquisition Teacher Education (SLATE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
What doors has bilingualism opened for you?
It actually gave me a career. After I started teaching French to pay for my master’s degree in sociology in Kansas, I decided to become a French teacher for students in the USA.
What makes you excited about working on Little Sponges® program?
I think Little Sponges® is brilliant. The videos, songs, and characters are extremely catchy and welcoming. They are so well done and they put a lot of thought into making each and every single video, game, and assignment.
The fact that the videos, whether it be the songs or images, catch the eye of the children is a very important factor. The characters are really fun and it all is constructed very well to keep children’s attention. Little Sponges® is able to add fun to learning with the additional factor of both languages being incorporated into each video. And that is amazing. Children can implicitly learn this way, and the younger children learn a new language, the better they will be at speaking it.
As a teacher myself, I can say that this program are really great. If only I taught young children. Unfortunately, my college students might be a little too old for these videos!