John Curran
Northern News Services
Published Monday, January 21, 2008

TUKTOYAKTUK - Preschoolers Paige Cockney-Steen, Brianna Gruben and Jasmine Gruben have a good chance of growing up bilingual thanks in part to the efforts of Molly Nogasak.

The Inuvialuktun instructor at Tuktoyaktuk's Child Development Centre, Nogasak ensures the children regularly hear and learn to speak their own language.

She's been doing the job for five years now and said it is something she loves.

"My favourite part is that I'm passing on our culture," she said. "We're losing our language, but we can get it back."

On any given day there are normally 15 kids at the centre and she talks to each and every one of them.

"I try to focus on just a few words at a time - that's how we learn," she said. "My parents taught me that way."

She said there is no set time when everyone speaks Inuvialuktun in class and instead opts to pepper her English conversations with individual terms and phrases.

"They learn best if you can do it throughout the day," she said.

The words she chooses aren't picked haphazardly, mind you. She starts with things the youngsters are already familiar with and very used to saying in English.

"I do mostly their names and the names of their family members in the beginning," she said. "I really enjoy working with the kids."

She doesn't just equip her pupils with names, however; she also arms their Inuvialuktun vocabularies with words they'll be able to use down the road.

"We cover a lot of things like 'pencil' and 'paper,'" she said. "They are things they'll use when they move on to kindergarten at the big school."

She also teaches them the Inuvialuktun words for various items of clothing and things they're likely to see around Tuktoyaktuk.

She even worked with them to paint a mural of the land, sea and sky around her community to help their young minds better understand the words she teaches them.

Experts agree that learning any language is easiest when you're exposed to it while you're young and that's something Nogasak understands well.

"This year there are a lot of newcomers to the centre which is good," she said. "I find the babies pick it up very quickly."