Teaching 2 Languages at a time (split from "When do I start?")

[Bystre_deti]

I searched this issue when me and my husband decided that we will not go back to USA to live (where my daughter was born) and that we will stay in Czech republic where our families and friends are. I found some information about bilingual enviroment and its advantages for babies. Unfortunately my and my husbands mother tongue is the same -Czech. I found some information about bilingual raring - http://www.bilingualbaby.eu/front-page-en/view?set_language=en - I think you can find there some answers. There are some rules - in the ideal case - one language is spoken by one parent. I tried and it worked only when my baby was in good mood. When she was not I just could not calm her using English because she did not understand. So I decided to give it up and i tried a method where you should speak different language only underr certain conditions. It could be anything you decide but you should follow through. I decided to do playtimes in English. I am wearing a funny hat and Teddy Bear when speaking English and my daughter loves it. I even attended some methodical courses to teach babies English as a foreign language. It helped a lot. My baby loves it and we spend nice quality time together, she enjoys it because I play with her and moreover she learns English. Concerning the speach delay - it is said that babies looks like they are delayed. They tend to speak later and have lesser vocabulary. But the oposite is true. They usually have vocabulary much biger because they know words in more languages. And they need to sort out the rules of different languages. In the long run the benefits are great and these babies show they are much advanced.

[heyblue41_1]

I have to agree with the poster who mentioned sign language tying it all together. You can sign and say the same word in multiple languages. As far as speech delays go, I think some kids just talk later than others. My ped kept telling us my ds learning multiple languages was delaying his speech, but I kept teaching multiple languages anyway. At 2 and 1/2 ds had a very small spoken vocab, but could sign a lot(another thing people told me was keeping him from speaking), and had a rather large receptive vocab. Now just 6 mos later and his expressive vocab has exploded to so many words I can’t even count them anymore. He even uses 4 syllable words regularly. I think the exposure to multiple languages is way more important than speaking early.

[chanelneow]

@lawrencelb post:5

Noha,
I agree with Maddy. Children very naturally blend words from various languages that they are exposed to. I don’t feel there is any harm (to the contrary, several benefits) to hearing more than one language presented at a time. In fact, if a child hears a novel word (from another language) embedded in a sentence containing words from a more familiar language, he or she can learn from the context of the familiar sentence to gain meaning about the novel word. For example, “le chien is barking a lot!” would allow a child who is a native speaker of English to draw from his or her knowledge base and he/she would be able to correctly infer that “le chien” is another way to label a dog. (sorry to disagree with you, KL!)

Another thought: I feel that it is very important for children in a bilingual family to hear
their parents speak in the language that is most familiar to them. Too often I work with parents who felt they had to only speak English to their children - unfortunately, their knowledge of English was fairly limited at that time. What happens in that situation is that the child is not exposed to underlying components of a language - semantics (word meanings and how words are related), syntax (information about word order), and pragmatics (how language is used to convey different intents). If the parent was speaking the native language, the child would be more able to “pick up” this information, which would then allow him or her to apply it to the second language being learned. By the way, although kiddos often initially combine both languages, eventually they are able to speak both languages separately (as you said you were hoping would happen).

Just my two cents! Thanks for reading. Good luck with everything!

Yes, I totally agreed. I am Chinese from Malaysia. I have limited knowledge in english but my hubby can speak english very well. Therefore, I will speak chinese (mandarin) to my baby and my hubby will use english to communicate with him.

[Nikita_1]

I was raised in Vanuatu, but didnt associate with native speakers actually speaking native all the time until I was 5. during that year I learned The Language, Bislama (a pidgin english). I could have gone to a French school which would have made me fluent in French that next year, but was sent to an English school. So I have to struggle with french like anyone else who studies a language a bit in school. As for Bislama, I left Vanuatu aged 10 and havent spoken it since, but many years later i was given a bible in bislama, and guess what…i can read it! (yet i was never taught to read bislama…I wasnt schooled at a bislama school). i would have difficulty writing it now, cos I havent been speaking it, and i’ve never written in it).

you know you’re fluent in a language when u think in it. I could think in 2 languages… didnt confuse me. i would have loved to have been immersed in more languages, and i’m doing that with Azaria… especially trying to help her get a familiarity with other language written symbols, like japanese, chinese, greek. Cos at my age they look impossible to learn, and I feel sorry for my kids having to study japanese at school, learning all those symbols… If only I’d exposed them to it as babies so it came naturally to them…

[Nikita_1]

we have a lot of immigrants in Australia who feel they have to speak in English with their kids. i would advise…dont let them lose the mother tongue…they’ll learn english in school and off tv (it’s the worlds most common language… unless we include chinese, but I mean spoken in most countries, not 1 country with LOTs of people!). So speak in as many other languages as you can… english will come as naturally as breathing anyway!!! (U cant avoid it!)

[KL]

Agreed!

[nohayo]

I’m wondering… how far can you stretch this multiple languages issue? I mean what’s the maximum languages one can teach…are we talking 5 languages for example?

(If you’ve read Harry Potter; I feel like voldmort, asking about the horcruxes’ limit hehehe

[Nikita_1]

I read in a book, I think it was a Doman book but might have been Raising a brighter child by joan beck about a lady at the turn of the previous century who raised her baby to speak 9 languages fluently. If this woman could do that with no knowledge of what we know now and no CDs cassettes, videos dvds, then what excuse do we have? (I think she was a priviledged sort, so probably had maids to do housework, and had spare time)

[Sapna1322]

Even my son is 2 and he knows 4 language ie of them are our native language and the 4th one is English.I m not worried about the 4th one ie English.He is nywayz going to learn in school.We speak all four language with him.Sometimes i speak with GOD in English or in native language when my son is sitting besides me.So he repeat sometimes.I speak with his toys in native language or in English.
I beleive that you should speak in different languagesLike say in morning you should speak English than in afternoon someother language.I dont think so they will mix up any language.I beleive trust your child.He understands everything.And he will saggeregate everything when he will speak.So trust him.And if you have any doubt while teaching your child than he will not learn properly what you are teaching.

[Nikita_1]

I’m looking forward to teaching different languages, cos I’ll be learning them myself. It’s nice to have an excuse to learn a language!! If i just decided to learn Spanish and went off to spanish groups and classes, it would seem odd if I didnt have a purpose for it, like becoming a missionary in South America or something!

[chispa]

I love all the info. Yet, I didn’t see much about exposing children to the two languages in print. What are the thoughts on that?

[Nikita_1]

There’s plenty of books on it and info on the net. Even articles in parenting magazines, and other forums on this topic alone!

[jeannonato]

I´m have this experience. Interact with my little child only in English language while my wife speak only in portuguese. He is adquiring both language and this site is help me a lot. The flash cars from little reader, for exemple is so good. Soon I´m send you the result of this experience and my research about Second Language Acquisition for kindergarten children interact with non-native-speaker of English that I participate in my University - UEFS - Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana. I´m have some problems now, I don´t get to use the little reader because my permition expire, so I don´t get place the permition again.

Thank you

Jean

[nikzam]

Here in Malta, speaking 2 languages is pretty normal.
Coming from an English background I find it easier to talk to my daughter in English rather then in our native language Maltese. Maltese is not out of the scene though. My husband and myself use Maltese between us and amng other members of the family so the sound of it is not new to Emily. Now that she is nearly 3, she tends to pick out certain phrases or words which she repeats. Sometimes I also point out words in Maltese that might attract her attention too. Another good thing is that I know that she will be exposed to the maltese language further once she starts school.
Through research that I have been carry out it seems POSSIBLE that a child picks up more then one language when exposed to them, even if this is done simultaneously.

[umm_amani]

Hi I am new to this forum and to teaching my daughter (21 month old) to read but have found this post very insightful and useful. My husband is Arab and I am Gujerati but not fluent in Gujerati. My parents speak to my daughter in Gujerati and English, my hunsband and his family speak to her in Arabic and I speak to her English with some in basic Arabic and Gujerati now and again!

So far she seems to understand all three languages - but as she is in nursery the English is more prevalent now that she is beginning to speak…

I have just signed up to the 14 day trial and am glad to hear that I can use different languages with this…So it looks like I will be buying this.

If anyone has any other tips on teaching more than one language and what has worked for them when using little Reader or other tools it would be appreciated…

Reshmi (Umm Amani (Mother of Amani))