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Teaching your children languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Nyerere Triglot Newbie United States Joined 7185 days ago 24 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English*, German, Swahili Studies: French | Message 1 of 19 12 April 2005 at 8:31pm | IP Logged |
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I have a 2.5 year old son who used to understand German and Kiswahili pretty well. I've gotten lazy lately with him and am kicking myself for it. My wife and I (she and I speak German and Kiswahili in addition to our native English) started out alternating days with him--one day Kiswahili, one day German, one day English, but it made us crazy. We then switched from week to week and it kept us a little more sane. We spent a summer in Tanzania and the little guy's Kiswahili took off. Unfortunately, since we've been back in the US we've been lazy and have only been using English.
Now that I think about it, it's more than laziness. He is really communicating now and it's hard to use a language with him where I can't say everything I want to. I really want to be able to communicate with my son and I don't want our relationship to suffer because I was using him for language practice or trying to get him to be a polyglot. Do any of you have children that you are teaching languages to (besides your native language)? How are you doing it? Is it working? Are you at all conflicted about it? How do you deal with not being able to express yourself fully? Do you know any language enthusiasts who have taught their children non-native languages successfully? Edited by Nyerere on 12 April 2005 at 8:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes  | Message 2 of 19 13 April 2005 at 9:43am | IP Logged |
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A lady named Tracey Tokuhama published a book about raising multilingual children just a few years ago. She's American, not Japanese as her name might suggest, but is married to an Eucadoran diplomat, by whom she had three children, whom they were raising in Geneva, so all of them spoke English, Spanish, French, and I think one of them also German. I looked up the book on Amazon.com a while back and it had a lot of reviews, most postitive, but some quite critical, as it seems she makes a lot of emphatic but controversial assertions.
I know that lots of people worry about doing something wrong in raising their children multilingually and so inadvertently hurting their linguistic abilities, and this is indeed always a possibility. However, I think that this is such a basic area of human development that it generally takes care of itself and that "experts" don't really know much about it and so meddle and perhaps harm more than they really help. My first son is also now almost two and a half and he is already trilingual in Korean, English, and French. He is quite articulate in all of them and can express himself in relatively complete sentences of seven or eight words in all three of them. His mother speaks and reads to him about 66% of the time in Korean. I read Korean books to him if he asks, but I rarely speak it to him. He overhears us speaking it, though, and we frequently have Korean guests. He also overhears us speaking in English, his mother speaks and reads it to him about 33% of the time, and I speak it to him fairly exclusively when we are in the home or outside as a family. He has been going to a French-speaking nursery school for six or seven hours a day for the past few months, and so most of the songs he knows are now in French. I read it to him as well, and speak it to him when he and I are alone outside the house, e.g., going on walks or in the park. As I said, he is articulate in all of them, but I think he is strongest in English and then in Korean, while French is a somewhat later addition, though it is really closing in fast these days. He speaks to me about 75% of the time in English, 25% in French, but I suspect it will soon be 66/33 or maybe even 50/50. He hardly ever says anything to his mother in anything but Korean. He has never shown any difficulty whatsoever in keeping the three systems separate by mixing them up or confusing them in any way. We have lots of multilingual picture dictinaries, and he can say the same thing in all three when prompted. I plan on sending him to a German school when he turns 4, where he will add both German and formal Arabic. He has already shown an interest in the latter when we look at picture books, and I really wish I were more advanced myself by now so that I could read it aloud better to him. He has a small but growing coloquial Arabic vocabularly that he picks up from the environment. As for German, for some reason the other day he kept repeating "gute Nacht," while a few days before it was "feliz navidad"--mysteries of being a polyglot's son. Well, he should be thorougly anchored in five languages (Korean, English, French, German, and Arabic) by the time he is five. After that, I plan on teaching him a language a year as long as he will accept them, while his mother will teach him classical Chinese caligraphy. Our second son can't say anything in any language yet, but then again, he is only one month old. I won't force them to learn languages if they don't want to, but if they show inclination and talent, I will gladly shelve my own aspirations to play Leopold to my Wolfgangs or James Stuart to my John Stuarts. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7319 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes 6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 19 13 April 2005 at 8:29pm | IP Logged |
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I have also seen many sites on the Internet which discusses bilingualism with children. It seems that all of them agree that it is quite safe and beneficial to raise a child in more than one language.
I believe it is true too - children can learn languages effortlessly if the language is introduced and spoken to them early enough. I think keeping the language fluent is more of a problem. I have heard too many stories where the child could speak a language very young, then forgetting most of it as they grow up. I just have to say how lucky your children are to be exposed to all these languages as this young stage. It will benefit them greatly and they are open to so many more cultures. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| yoyo Newbie United States Joined 7159 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes | Message 4 of 19 20 April 2005 at 3:18pm | IP Logged |
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Only speaking one language natively myself, I am wondering if anyone knows if children will easily pick up a more authentic accent than the one i will be using to teach them additional languages. Perhaps from television.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bradley Groupie United States Joined 7224 days ago 55 posts - 56 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 19 23 April 2005 at 12:28pm | IP Logged |
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I have a younger sister who just turned six years old, and I would love for her to be fluent in at least Spanish, French, and hopefully Russian and Mandarin. How difficult would this be now that she is already six and has had no experience in a foreign language? I know the Mandarin and Russian may be a tougher one, but Spanish and French is the two my mom wants her to learn, so she will probably be focusing on these. Just some advice on some programs I could buy for my mother to use with her, so that she can begin to form lingual skill while she is still young.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 19 23 April 2005 at 8:36pm | IP Logged |
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I've never seen it, but I think that the BBC's Muzzy Spanish course is supposed to be the Spanish course for children. And there are always used copied for sale on ebay.
There's also Muzzy French, Italian and German. Oh yeah, and English Edited by heartburn on 23 April 2005 at 9:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| guillaume Pentaglot Groupie France Joined 7182 days ago 59 posts - 57 votes Speaks: French*, English, German, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 19 23 April 2005 at 9:11pm | IP Logged |
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I used the BBC's Muzzy English course when I was a kid, from what I remember I really enjoyed it. I don't know if it teaches a lot but I know that it is entertaining for kids... And that's necessary for courses targeted toward kids.
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| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 19 23 April 2005 at 9:32pm | IP Logged |
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You might want to check out Power-Glide also. I don't really know anything about it except that they have programs for children.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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