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Raising Kids with many languages | ||
Tags: Children | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6086 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 17 of 61 26 September 2009 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would think that making sure they're prepared for the language spoken in school should be top priority in the early years. Parents who are tempted to exclude the school language in favor of (mutliple) second languages need to consider if the child is prepared for school or not. I'm not quite sure how that works since I'm not in that situation.
My husband and I (both American, non-military) live in Germany. We don't have to try very hard^^ all we do is speak English now. (Earlier we devided it up.) My kids can speak both Eng-German but are just now learning to write and read German correctly. I stopped giving them English words to read when I saw how hard they were working with the German phonetic system. I didn't want to confuse them. I felt it important to have them learn to read/write German first. My oldest (3rd grade) can read first grade level English voluntarily and without effort. (I have an English phonetics system that I ordered.) She has trouble sometimes (that ol' "Silent e") but with a single correction her improvement every time she reads is remarkable. She's learning to read Eng. faster than it took me. Her German vocabulary is stronger since that's the main language that she reads in. Her English vocabulary will remain a deficit until she starts to read faster/ more. I'm really hoping to get her to read Charlotte's Web by the summer. What's wonderful about teaching them language early on is that they're automatically wired for speech. Once they learn two languages, the third one takes almost no effort (I hope^^) Edited by Sunja on 26 September 2009 at 3:54pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5910 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 18 of 61 26 September 2009 at 4:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Any thoughts on how to get a child to go from understanding their second native language only passively to actually speaking it at home? My 10-year-old cousin is Russian and her mum speaks Russian to her pretty consistently and she understands it well, but is reluctant to speak, probably because she's more comfortable speaking Norwegian, which is obviously what she uses at school and with her friends and the rest of the family. (My uncle also knows Russian and sometimes speaks it with his wife, but I think they mostly speak Norwegian to each other.) It seems like the habits have already been established, I'm not 100% sure what they are, but anyway, the girl doesn't speak Russian much. I asked her about it once and she didn't really give any reason, so it's not that she's against speaking it, she just... doesn't. Any insights I can pass on, ideas about what they can do to encourage her to use the language actively? I'm sure someday she'll be happy she did - or regret that she didn't...
Liz 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Leopejo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6110 days ago 675 posts - 724 votes Speaks: Italian*, Finnish*, English Studies: French, Russian | Message 19 of 61 26 September 2009 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
My personal experience is that the language of friends (and kindergarten, and later school...) is the one you learn best - 100 % native - even if at home another language is used. Besides, as long as you don't live segregated at home without friends, you will have no problems at all in school, on the contrary. Edited by Leopejo on 26 September 2009 at 4:02pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6086 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 20 of 61 26 September 2009 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Sorry, I edited that little paragraph I wrote about my Russian friends. I didn't want to cast a shadow on the thread by bringing up the fact that their daughter chooses not to speak Russian. Now that you bring it up, though, they explain to me that it has to do with a stigma. They gave me some personal anecdotes which I won't go into here. Russian literature is not lost on her. She can read at least.
Speaking is the hardest. When I lived in America my Japanese coworker said that her son could understand Japanese but was reluctant to speak it. Kids have different reasons, not the least of which is wanting to fit in. EDIT: this is in response to Lizzern's post. Edited by Sunja on 26 September 2009 at 4:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6086 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 21 of 61 26 September 2009 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
right. it all sounds so easy, but it's all intertwined with experience! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| anytram Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie France Joined 5670 days ago 85 posts - 89 votes Speaks: German*, Polish*, French, English Studies: Japanese | Message 22 of 61 26 September 2009 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Not reacting as long as they don't speak the language they should be might work, as long as the child is old enough to understand an explanation first. My brother also has trouble at times keeping up Polish, but my mother just asks him to talk in Polish and repeat his question, explanation or story.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 23 of 61 26 September 2009 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Talking of preparing for school, my mum hated the sort of "reading books" they use in schools and instead wanted us to read "proper" books that had been written to be read, not simply to teach. She was a teacher herself and read up on raising children when she first got married, and the advice that she had received was to read bedtime stories to us (before we could read for ourselves) the same types of books that we would read when we started learning. (Things like The Hobbit; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardobe; Swallows and Amazons -- a chapter a night.)
Her reasons for doing this are still accepted as true by academics today: 1) Kids learn to read by comparing the text on the page to what they already know about the language. (In fact, they normally correct their own errors, even where there is a word that looks like it should be pronounced differently -- the classic example is "break" in English -- kids read it out as "breek", then realise from the context that it must be the word that they know.) 2) Written language is different from spoken language, and fiction has its own pecularities (no-one talks like this "I'm sorry," he said, trembling, "I didn't know@). 1 + 2 = 3 3) Reading fiction familiarises the child with how the language of fiction works. This makes it easier for a child to read proper books and work out the language as he goes. (And saves the poor kid from "John has a ball. It is a nice ball. It is green and red. John likes his ball." The kid then actually has a chance of learning to like reading.) This goes for any language. As for whether kids should learn to read and write in more than one language at once, all the advice I've read is that so-called "initial literacy" should ideally be carried out in the child's native or strongest language, and writing in any other languages should wait until he's fairly confident in the first -- I believe standard practice in bilingual schools is to introduce literacy in the second language in the third year of primary. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Katie Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6719 days ago 495 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian Studies: French, German | Message 24 of 61 26 September 2009 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Lizzern, it's interesting that you raise this question. Perhaps if I share the experience of some acquaitances, it could help your cousin & her family.
Another Hungarian family I know (living in an English speaking country) has a daughter who is now around 13. When she was around 10 years old, all of a sudden she just refused to speak any Hungarian at all (I witnessed this also!). Her parents would speak to her in Hungarian and she would either continue to answer them in English, or just ignore them completely until they spoke to her in English. She 'grew out of it' after a year or so - but I get the feeling it took quite a bit of effort. They took her to Hungary for a holiday (I believe 2-3 months) and actually enrolled her in some kind of school. So she made new Hungarian friends and was in a situation where use of the language was forced. I believe it 'grounded' her a little - I think she realised that it wasn't such a big deal and that she wasn't the only one in the world who spoke Hungarian! They also continue to make a very strong effort to be involved with other Hungarians and the events that are set up for Hungarians around our city. An advantage that your cousin seems to have over this particular little girl, is that she can read & I'm assuming write aswell? This little girl can only read very poorly & cannot write at all (I can actually read & write better than her). I once asked my close friends (who know the family well) why she doesn't read or write. They said that initially the family read to her in both languages, but when the girl started school, she had some problems with reading & writing. (I cannot be certain as I didn't ask too much more, but from what I can gather the problems were not caused by the parents using the two languages - I believe she actually has dislexia or something of the kind) Anyway, they wanted to give the girl the best chance possible in school, so they discontinued reading & writing in Hungarian to a certain degree - I think they still read a little, but didn't ever try to teach her to write. The whole point of my story is that perhaps if your cousin's parents really make an effort to involve your cousin in events (even holidays) in Russian and help her find friends who speak only Russian, that she will see the language in a new light. If it is not common around her, she probably feels like this little girl did - like she's the only one in the world who speaks it and that it doesn't have any use for her except speaking to Mum & Dad who can already speak her native language anyway, so what's the point?? She's old enough to open new doors and experiences to. Maybe she could even do something like a summer school, or a distance education class in something she's interested in. Travelling would probably be the best way though, I would think! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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