mummies who are teaching their bb foreign language,
we speak mandarin to baby and use LR (english) for english. I know Malay, Indonesian and Thai. i intend to introduce Malay, Thai, Spanish/Italian/Latin to my baby. However, i do not know spanish/italian/latin
may i know how you introduce multiple language to your kid? i read from previuos thread and found out some have suggested using one particular language for particular day in a week. I would adopt this approach.
Can anyone share how to do this? ie. showing same flash cards (pictures) but in different language? Is this effective or will it confuse my baby? Any other suggestions/experiences to share? Thank you in advance!!
For the children it’s not confusing to show them the same thing in different languages. In my opinion, the difference comes in what you want to do and what type of materials you have to teach them.
I prefer “messing things up with his brain”, I mean playing a little and help in different types of wiring so I use mainly different programs or different ways of teaching for each language.
Or, for instance: one day we go in the park and I show him a flower and name it in one language and another time I see another flower and name it in another language etc. He gets it every time, it’s not confusing even if I name it in the same time in many languages. He gets them all with ease.
Maybe other BK parents, with more experience, can share more.
dna,
My daughter has a 6 week old girl and is planning (maybe she already started) to take 2 languages monday, wed, fri and other 2 on tuesday, thursday, saturday. Maybe when they are a little older we can arrange talking through skype or any other. We are teaching mandaring without speaking, just with CD’s and Dvd’s. We are spanich speaking so we can work something out, you with mandarin and i with spanish.
I like that approach but the problem comes when you do not speak the language you are trying to teach. We are covering at first: Spanish (native language) with Chinese (most difficult) and every other day English (which we speak) and French (basic knowledge but much more materials).
we just want her to get use to the sounds so that when she gets older we can look for other methods or after some months with LR in english (curriculum) and spanish, we can use some download in Chinese or but the LR Chinese curriculum.
Native language - Romanian; I have tried to use Doman method for Romanian using cards since he was 6 months old, but paused for few months till his health was stable.
The most intensive program for other languages: since september 2009 (age 2 years and 2 months old). Till then I seldomly used Youtube clips with songs and some YBCR.
Languages that I, the mother, speak and teach our son - [i]English /i, Spanish (basic, but with accent; I’m learning along with our son and Little Pim)
Languages he learns and I don’t speak: Chinese (WinkToLearn - I’m learning along with him)
Other languages I speak and shall use when I feel it’s ok: French (good, but I use it rarely, only when needed, not yet in our kid’s curriculum; I’ve tried, but it’s not so appealling as English and Spanish and Chinese) IItalian (fluent - but I don’t use it yet in the house) German (basic for me, but I know what materials to count on)
I must say that my parents paid a teacher to teach me English since I was 6 or so. And by the time I was in the first grade I started to learn French too. Since that moment on I had a great pleasure and I learned foreign languages with ease, mainly English, French and Italian. I’ve learned Italian in few years (age 12-14) just by watching Italian TV programmes.
My idea is that even if you skip some years in the window of opportunity, the fact that the child gets the chance of being emerged for a while in that language - living in a family where someone speaks another language, or through language classes, different educational materials or just shows he likes in a foreign language etc. - is helping a lot in training the ear and the brain.