By the term “multiliteracy” I mean the ability to read and understand multiple languages.
It is my goal to raise my children multilingual with 4 languages.
Spanish – Me
English – Community/ my extended family
Arabic – Dad / dads extended family
Undecided 4th languages – DVD’s/ Nanny/Immersion program in school/ friends/ etc.
Which seems more beneficial to the child for the future? The 4th language is strictly for their advantage in the global market and their enjoyment with DVD’s, books, video games, etc…
I plan to do a reading program like Doman and Little Reader, etc. I’d like to keep the balance of abilities within as many languages as possible. I’m wondering if I should use the same words in 2-3 languages and do one language a day, or do the complete program in English, then the complete program in Spanish, Arabic and 4th, one after the other. I’m interested in having my kid read in all their langauges, even if only on a basic level, and if they have a good understanding of the language orally, aurally and in their heads, I’m wondering how those of you with multiliterate little ones have done it.
And what about bits of Knowledge, I’m thinking of teaching bits in just 2 languages and then have the child talk about their bits in another language.
My aim is to have them tri-or quadrilingual by the time they are 6. I put understanding and speaking a language above reading or writing it so if I cant find a feasible way to do multiple written languages then I will not worry about it and just do the reading and bits program in 1 or 2 languages.
Depending on where you live French, German, Russian, Hindi, or Mandarin would be good choices for the fourth language. Latin is a great language to know as well. Both because of the current uses (biology uses latin for extensive swaths of nomenclature) but also for all the original texts that were written in Latin. But its use is primarily as a written language.
We do one language per day, plus sign language everyday. We have 10 languages we would like to teach Zed (11 if you count sign). We just picked the 7 we wanted most for him to develop fluently. Right now we do Spanish, English, French, German, Mandarin, Russian, and Japanese. We’re going to drop the English day (and do some activities in English each day) and replace it with Arabic or Hindi (depending on who we can locate to help). Then we will drop the French day (and do some French every day as well) and add in the other language. And last we will add in Latin everyday in little bits. Once he can speak and read each language then we will reduce the day to just an activity or class and a bit of reading to maintain fluency and increase vocabulary.
We’ve opted to do a lot of audio and/or video resources for our non-native languages. Plus classes and playgroups. There are a few read-a-long books in each language we are teaching at the library. The stories are great and sometimes I can find the same story in multiple languages. We end up reading the same book three times, in three languages.
We live just outside of a million person city, so there are a lot of different cultural groups. We haven’t had any issue finding people who want to share cultures. We have a little girl who plays with Zed on German and Mandarin days because her family speaks Mandarin. They learn German from us on Thursday and we lean Mandarin from them on Friday. For extra culture, I cook traditional German foods for them. And the little girl’s mom cooks us traditional Chinese food. Otherwise we mostly attend classes and groups designed to teach children languages their parents do not speak.