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Raising a bilingual child | ||
Tags: Children | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4313 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes  Studies: German | Message 33 of 37 24 March 2015 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | ||
Perhaps. I know a lot of people who raise children bilingually,and the kids invariably learnt the local language natively, and the home language to the point of understanding, but not fluency. My wife, for instance, can understand Platt Deutsch, which her parents spoke at home, but can't speak it very well. You need a lot of input to reach native level, and as I said I believe it's ultimately my daughters decision whether she wants to achieve this or not. I will certainly be speaking English to her, reading (and later buying) books for her etc, but it's certainly believable to me that she might just get to some intermediate level and stop there. Edited by patrickwilken on 24 March 2015 at 4:57pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3316 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian | Message 34 of 37 24 March 2015 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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My parents spoke Serbian to me until I was school age, I knew some English but was basically monolingual.
When I started going to school I had issues keeping up and my teacher suggest my parents speak a bit more English at home. Eventually I would only speak English to them and stopped responding to Serbian so they spoke more English. As a result I have forgotten almost entirely the language and hence relearning it now. My parents would speak to each other and their friend in Serbian still, but I nevertheless lost my ability to understand and speak it - so I think it's definitely more than just absorbing it by osmosis - just my 2cents. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4224 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 35 of 37 25 March 2015 at 6:08am | IP Logged | ||
You've raised another interesting topic for debate. Do you actually need to lose 1 language in order to be more fluent in another? I know 2 people who grew up in Vancouver, Canada. Whey they were younger, both were being cared for by grandparents who have very limited English. They would go to an Enlgish-speaking school like every other kid in the neighbourhood. But when they got home from school, they would be surrounded by parents and grandparents who speak mostly Cantonese. Both of them are fluent speaking Cantonese and English. However, their ability to read and write Chinese characters is practically 0 because they had no formal education in Chinese which is understandable. Their spoken Chinese fluency is practically at the native level like their English. Focusing more on 1 language that you are weak at doesn't mean you have to give up your strong language altogether. It is common for people to be learning several languages at a time. Nowadays there are all sorts of online videos with various languages. You would spend more time with 1 language until you get your level up and then split your exposure in half. At home I'd be watching the news on TV in English. In the car I'd be listening to radio programs in Chinese. Even if you decide to put 1 language aside, once in a while you can watch a TV show or movie in that language so you wouldn't lose it completely. Edited by shk00design on 25 March 2015 at 6:09am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5345 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 36 of 37 25 March 2015 at 11:59am | IP Logged | ||
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basica your 2 cents are worth a lot. Raising a bilingual child is not about them
absorbing by osmosis - input is a thing distinct from osmosis - as it requires the child to actively participate, even if they don't answer back at first in the secondary language. In my personal experience and from observation from other parents who are raising their child bilingually, the process by which you lost Serbian is exactly what happens in many bilingual families. The parents begin with good intentions, but, as Germans would say they are 'nicht consequent' and slip into speaking the dominant language with the child because it is easier, causes less shouting, is considered socially acceptable etc. Bringing up a bilingual child is a relentless task - if one slips too much, one loses. It means never condescending to the child's desire for you to speak to them in their dominant language, making sure the child watches/listens to TV or audio books in the secondary language as much as the dominant language, ignoring incorrect truisms from teachers that it somehow slows the child down linguistically, and all the other pressures to conform to the dominant language. As shk00design says, it also means that reading, writing and grammar books have to be used at a later stage - where I live all the French and Chinese children seem to go to Saturday school from the age of 4 onward, although the Germans seem to think that once a month is good enough (and then they just watch old Pippi Langstrumpf videos :-/) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cod2 Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4334 days ago 48 posts - 69 votes | Message 37 of 37 29 March 2015 at 12:06pm | IP Logged | ||
I forgot to mention one extremely important point. When you start teaching a small child another language at home, you have to make the lessons as fun as possible. Otherwise it's simply not going to work. You are limited only by your imagination. I drew lots of cartoons to teach my daughter the Bengali alphabet. Then when teaching sentence construction, we let her form sentences with various rude words and names of bodily functions (equivalents of poo, wee-wee, snot and so on). We had an absolute blast. Edited by cod2 on 29 March 2015 at 12:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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