How can I teach my child to be bilingual?
I am white, my husband is Mexican. We both speak English and Spanish. I am very fluent in Spanish but my husband is more fluent because this is his native tongue. At home we only speak English. He speaks English with his family as well with the exception of his parents and grandparents. We now have a 14 month old little girl and another one on the way. I want to teach my children to be bilingual from the start, but I am having trouble on knowing how to get started. I don't want to teach only Spanish and my children will learn English when they get to school or Viceversa as they will not be able to communicate with the English speaking side of the family. Where I get confused as to what to do is like when I'm telling my baby what things are. For example if she is looking at the table I'll tell her "table". Should I also say "mesa" which is the Spanish word for table? How should I go about doing this? I let her watch some programs in Spanish and when she visits her grandparents about every two weeks she gets practice there. Any tips would be greatly helpful! Thanks so much in advance!
Is your child bilingual? How did you teach them?
I'm bilingual myself, what my parents did was: they taught me Czech (their language) and in kindergarten I knew only Czech. I couldn't speak English at all, and my teacher got worried. However, in grade 1 I started speaking English. I think the child will quickly catch on.
How would you teach a small child to be bilingual? Do you just switch languages everyday when talking to the child? Won’t that get confusing for the child?
Bilingualism is the norm in many parts of the world. I’ve even heard people claiming that monolingual children have, on average, lower IQ’s due to not being stretched enough by the complexity of learning at least two languages. Whether you believe that or not, children seem to cope without difficulty with two languages.As an English speaker living in France, I have many friends raising children with a partner who speaks a different first language. Each parent just speaks their own language to the children, and they reinforce the foreign language with holiday visits to the home country of the parent who doesn’t speak French. The children don’t seem to get confused. If my husband and I visit friends who have bilingual French and English children, their children always speak to me in English and my (French) husband in French, even if the adults (including me) are conversing in French. The children hear my accent, and speak English to me without thinking about it.The children of friends who speak Spanish and French have a harder time with me. They speak French to my husband, but usually try to speak Spanish to me at first, and only speak French when that doesn’t work.
What are the differences between ESL and bilingual teaching?
I am a teacher in Thailand, and so the difference between ESL and bilingual education is pretty clear. Bilingual education is where students take core subject classes in two different languages - here Thai and English. At the school I used to work at, they would take all of their core classes, math, science, social studies, even PE, in English. Then they would take all of these again in Thai. Plus they have their language classes, like grammar and writing, both Thai and English. This way students recieve the specialized acedemic vocabularies in each language. The expectation is that they are learning in English, but not neglecting their native language as opposed to the international schools where instruction is only in English and graduates tend to be weak in their native language (as compared to someone in a Thai or bilingual school). An ESL program is typically geared toward getting someone to be able to survive in an entirely english environment. So we had ESL at the bilingual school to help kids in their English classes and we also have ESL at the international school.
How can i make my baby bilingual?
talk to your baby in both languages, at first there will be some confusion and they will mix their languages but they will learn. When they're young and learning to speak is the best time to teach them though because their brains are like sponges! They'll remember everything!
Raising bilingual children?
My fiancé and I are discussing how we want to raise our children. We both agree that we want them to be bilingual. The problem is neither of us are bilingual. I lived in Spain and I speak/know a great deal of Spanish. But my fiancé knows next to nothing. He wants to teach out children Russian. Our close friends are Russian and we both know a little bit. So the question is can our future children be bilingual? And how to we go about teaching a second language? And how can we compromise on the specific language? Is three languages too much? Thank you in advance!
Question about raising a bilingual child?
i babysit for a family with bilingual children. they are 5 yr old twins and a 3 yr old. i have been with the family since the twins were 2. as long as i have known them the mom has spoken spanish and english with them. she knows that it is essential now to know more than one language. they are from peru but they live in america, so she feels they need to know both languages, and i agree. i would say that since the family speaks english and she speaks spanish that she should also practice both with her child, so her child can understand everyone. children that young are like sponges and observe and learn everything. she can and will learn both languages if the mom practices both with her. good luck!