Raising children trilingual in Germany [Archive] - The Well-Trained Mind Forums (aka Hive Mind)

Yenisei

03-18-2011, 05:59 AM

All,

I'm a new forum member and I have an 18 month old daughter with another child on the way. I'm also a stay-at-home dad and although kids learn English starting in 3rd grade here (ít's a requirement), I frankly don't trust non-native speakers who usually haven't lived in an English-speaking country to teach my kids English to the standard I want them to learn it. Therefore, I want to do this on my own, and the challenging part obviously will be to get them to read and write as fluently as they will speak English. I am a native English speaker and speak only English with my daughter. My wife is German and speaks German to her, plus she spends several hours a day in a German-language nursery. She also has Arabic lessons with a Moroccan linguist for 6 hours a week, and I plan to supplement that with having another native Arabic speaker babysit her. My daughter understands all three languages (to the extent someone her age can), but speaks in German, even to me (again to the extent she is audible).

As for my daughter's contact with English, so far it's only been through me. I read to her at least 30 minutes a day, and often as much as an hour, particularly phonics-friendly books such as those authored by Dr. Seuss. She loves books and I don't expect to have any trouble encouraging her to read in English. What I am unsure of at this moment is how to teach her to read using phonics- how do I go about it? Any advice would be greatly appreciated- although I am a part-time translator, I am really more of a quant type and am certainly no linguist.

WendyK

03-18-2011, 07:14 AM

I recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Parents-Guide-Teaching-Reading/dp/0972860312/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300446453&sr=8-1

Or this program:

http://www.hookedonphonics.com/Learn-to-Read-Kindergarten-2nd-grade

I have used Hooked on Phonics with both of my kids. It really takes the guesswork out of where to start. You just open it up and use it. The first book I listed is a step by step phonics based reading instruction book, but it doesn't come with any readers. Being that you are in Germany I don't know how much access you have to phonics readers so you might like the second program.

And I just want to comment on your kids learning English from non-native speakers. My husband is from Germany and learned English in school. He now lives here in the US and has done work as a technical writer in English and has translated a book from German to English. He moved here when he was 25 and did not study English at the University (so that isn't where he got his abilities from). His English is better than many Americans I know! So I wouldn't worry too much. ;) It definitely helps to be involved with helping your children though.

Yenisei

03-18-2011, 07:50 AM

Thanks, Wendy. Your husband no doubt benefited greatly from his time in the US, and people his age had English in school from age 10 on, so usually for 10 years, although he sounds rather exceptional with regards to his English skills.

Ester Maria

03-18-2011, 08:04 AM

Welcome to the boards.
I frankly don't trust non-native speakers who usually haven't lived in an English-speaking country to teach my kids English to the standard I want them to learn it.
I hear you, I really do. What we like to call "a tourist knowledge" of the language is one thing, while the actual proficiency and literacy is a completely different boat.

That being said, I do have to voice some defense of many European schools which in my opinion and experience often do manage to, at least, present a sort of bridge between the two, rather than stay on the former, tourist level; but I completely understand the desire to have your children know English like native English speakers, which they will be, and to have a literacy level corresponding to that, rather than like Germans who were good at English at school.

Literacy is your main issue, trust me on that one.
I doubt our daughters would have "forgotten" Italian during the ten years we spent in the US had we just regularly continued to speak Italian at home and sent them in Italy for vacations, but I also doubt they would have been fully literate all that time without a consistent effort on our part to have them receive an Italian education, as opposed to just a home heritage language, "spiced" with a local dialect anyway.

Therefore, in addition to speaking to your children in English, you will wish to replicate an English education for them - teaching them language arts with literature, at the very least (though you may also wish to include specific cultural topics, history, geography or whatnot which is specific for you and they will not receive at school), several hours weekly, using materials aimed at native speakers rather than at foreigners, as well as have them exposed to anglophone media of all sorts. If money is not an issue, I also suggest having entire sets of textbooks in English for the subjects they will study at school and will interest them, it kills two birds with one stone: exposes them to greater varieties of language, but also broadens their particular interests.
What I am unsure of at this moment is how to teach her to read using phonics- how do I go about it?
I'm not a phonics expert, but... She may not need it if she learns to read in German first, reading as a skill will transfer and learning to read first in a more phonetic language will be significantly easier. I never taught (nor was taught) English reading via phonics, and while that is the best approach overall, note that there is a significant minority of children who will not need it even if monolingual - let alone bilinguals who learned to read first in a more phonetic language.

WendyK

03-18-2011, 08:20 AM

I'm not a phonics expert, but... She may not need it if she learns to read in German first, reading as a skill will transfer and learning to read first in a more phonetic language will be significantly easier. I never taught (nor was taught) English reading via phonics, and while that is the best approach overall, note that there is a significant minority of children who will not need it even if monolingual - let alone bilinguals who learned to read first in a more phonetic language.

That makes sense to me. Our son can read in German, but was never taught to read in German. Really all he needs work with is vocabulary. He can read anything, it's just knowing what everything means that is the challenge.

Yenisei

03-18-2011, 08:24 AM

Thanks, Ester. German is more phonetic than English, but she won't learn to read in German at least until she is six. I do want to teach her US History when she's older (she's also a US citizen), and also Math, even though the instruction in that area is quite good in the local schools. Anglophone literature is another area I want to target.

There's an Arabic-English bilingual school in my hometown and I'm thinking of sending her there at some point for a year as long as no one here tries to get her to repeat the grade she spends there.

CleoQc

03-18-2011, 08:28 AM

As Ester Maria stated, phonics may not be needed. I never had English phonics as a child, and neither did any of my kids. For my son, all it took for him to read English was to listen to a Magic Tree House book while listening to the book on tape. Voilà, he was an English reader and still is. He was 7 or 8 yo at the time. Sounds like magic? Not really. Reading skills transfer from one language to another. So start with the easier language - English is not easy. Italian and Spanish are. French is somewhere in between. I don't know about German. I'm also unsure at how well reading skills transfer between Arabic and European languages, since the alphabet is drasticaly different.

My local school system has a lot of French immersion schools for English kids. They study all day in French, from grade 1 to grade 3. They learn to read and write in French, before they learn to handle English. Grade 3 and 4 anre transitional years, depending on the school. All kids end up with the same proficiency in their native tongue as in their second language.

As for language arts, I would not duplicate the work in both languages. Literature, yes, but the bits of grammar, no. My kids rebelled in learning *again* about commas, and periods, and exclamation marks, or subjects and verbs. Lower grade language arts are the same from one language to another. And once a child has the concept of what's a negative sentence, it takes minutes to explain how it works in the other language. My son is now grade 8, and I'm thinking of finally having him to an English grammar class next year. Choose to do grammar in the language where it's trickier (as opposed to reading in the easier language) You will cover more grammar concepts that way.

While my kids have not received formal grammar education, they have read and read and read again, in both languages (French and English for us, Spanish is a recent addition) Reading really is the key to more advanced bilingualism. My kids do school subjects in both languages, so they learn technical terms in both languages. History, science, math, we take whatever resource we can find, regardless of language. We also do Sonlight, which gives us a lot of novels to read each year. And we try to get as much immersion as we can. Our household is entirely French, but I happen to live in a part of town that's mostly English, we have easy access to both languages. Spanish and Mandarin are a challenge for us.

Yenisei

03-18-2011, 08:31 AM

I'm an English-Spanish bilingual, but we decided that I would speak English to the kids since my wife doesn't speak Spanish.

Ester Maria

03-18-2011, 09:18 AM

I'm also unsure at how well reading skills transfer between Arabic and European languages, since the alphabet is drasticaly different.
Reading as a skill transfers, though, as you rightly point, to a lesser extent due to the nature of the script (Semitic roots are based on specific consonant roots and thus the writing system reflects it, by largely "kicking out" vowels and using the addional vowel signs only as training wheels at young school age, but not past that) - the concept of separate sounds, letters which represent them, etc. True, children do have to learn another alphabet for the second language then, but it's significantly easier - the difficulty is only slightly bigger than learning to read in another language which adopts the Roman script, but pronounces certain letters or groups of letters differently.

The only case in which none of the skill transfers are languages which are not based on sound and letter correspondence, but on "ideas", in lack of better expression, where a symbol is tied to a concept or a derivation of a concept rather than sound (pictogram writing systems, etc.). But in all other cases, even in cases of consonant writing systems, the skill does transfer at least partially.
Literature, yes, but the bits of grammar, no. My kids rebelled in learning *again* about commas, and periods, and exclamation marks, or subjects and verbs. Lower grade language arts are the same from one language to another.True, kids often get bored to death that way. I thought of language arts in a broader sense, though, including things such as vocabulary, dictation, general oral and written expression, in addition to only literature-specific things.

In the upper school, though, I do believe in learning the grammar of the "other" language formally too, for the sake of a more nuanced understanding of it, as there are always some subtleties of use - but the basics you mention can as well be acquired only through one system. (I even have friends who made their kids formally go through much of the French grammar - in spite of children being bilingual in French and Italian which are, well, about 90% the same thing when it comes to grammar. It's for the sake of those 10% which make a difference between an Italian speaker good at French and a true French speaker that they made them do it. ;))

regentrude

03-18-2011, 10:45 AM

Our situation as a little similar; we are Germans living in the United states and are raising our children bilingually.
I found it easy to deal with the reading by simply waiting till my DD had learned to read in English and then teaching her to read in German as soon as she had understood the concept of letters making sounds which blend into words. So, I'd just wait till she starts school and learns to read, and then learning to read English will be almost effortless.

As for your concerns about non-native speakers: accent free pronounciation is something that only native speakers can teach, and the use of idioms and very particular phrases with high cultural connotation as well. The instruction in spelling, grammar and semantics, however, can often be accomplished very well by a trained language teacher who is not a native speaker. I acquired my knowledge of English in German schools (more precisely, in East German schools during communism when none of my teachers even had the opportunity to ever visit a country where English is spoken.). I readily admit that my pronounciation was not perfect - but we had very good writing instruction which continues to serve me well in my professional and private life. So, I would not automatically discount the quality of foreign language instruction in German schools. In my experience, it is far superior to the foreign language instruction in US schools, the teachers are much more competent in their respective languages.

Karin

03-18-2011, 11:45 AM

All,

As for my daughter's contact with English, so far it's only been through me. I read to her at least 30 minutes a day, and often as much as an hour, particularly phonics-friendly books such as those authored by Dr. Seuss. She loves books and I don't expect to have any trouble encouraging her to read in English. What I am unsure of at this moment is how to teach her to read using phonics- how do I go about it? Any advice would be greatly appreciated- although I am a part-time translator, I am really more of a quant type and am certainly no linguist.

My cousins are bilingual (well, one is now trilingual, but she did her third language by immersion and study in Iceland for 3 years after she got her MA). They spoke English at home, and learned French in a totally francophone school (they were considered French Canadian by the gov't due to their dad so they could do that in Vancouver), 3 of them from K-12. They were taught to read in French only, but by about gr 3 they were able to read English on their own. They did study English in high school as a subject. My aunt and uncle were told not to worry about the reading.

The eldest of these cousins really didn't like French during Kindergarten, although she picked it up easily, but her eyes lit up when they went to Montreal the following summer, and she said to her dad, "Daddy, they're speaking French!" If there is some way you can visit an English speaking country and/or have anglophone relatives come to visit, that could help, although it doesn't always work; you may eventually need to insist on certain things being all English, such as a meal or certain times, because I've met enough people who can understand a second language without being able to speak it, but I think 18 months is probably too young to insist on that :).

In your case, if you homeschool (are you a German citizen or can you homechool as an ex-pat?) I'd start by teacher her to read in English first, since she is not yet speaking it with you, but 18 months is too young, almost invariably. German is so much more phonetic than English, that the crossover will be easy. As for the Arabic, I'm not sure when that should start, but as others have said, the skills won't transfer due to the different script.

Yenisei

03-18-2011, 11:53 AM

regentrude, it's certainly true that foreign language instruction is a lot better in Germany than it is in the US; however, I've discussed the English instruction with dozens of native English-speaking parents and none has found it completely satisfactory for their kids unless the teacher had spent a significant amount of time in an English-speaking country or had an Anglophone parent. Two common problems identified were that teachers were often insecure when there is a bilingual child in their English class and that they often insist on an exam that a child use only the vocabulary that was learned in the unit, a particularly vexing problem when the child has a US parent and the teacher speaks and teaches British English. I took Spanish for one year in high school (three years of classes in one)and although the teacher was Italian and highly qualified, I didn't enjoy it at all because it was simply too basic.

EDIT: Karin- I am from the US and homeschooling is generally forbidden by law here, but a strong parental role is necessary here in a way that usually isn't required in the US. I do intend to de facto homeschool my kids in certain subjects, such as US History. I am the stay-at-home parent, which is why I thought of teaching her to read in English first, otherwise it wouldn't be until age six that she would learn to read in German. I wasn't planning on trying to teach her to read anytime soon, but am just thinking ahead (maybe at age four).

With Arabic, she is starting to learn how simple words are constructed since she already knows the alphabet. The teacher not only writes for her but also guides my daughter's own hand in writing, although most of the time is spent on reading to her and talking to her.

Ester Maria

03-18-2011, 12:36 PM

Two common problems identified were that teachers were often insecure when there is a bilingual child in their English class and that they often insist on an exam that a child use only the vocabulary that was learned in the unit, a particularly vexing problem when the child has a US parent and the teacher speaks and teaches British English.
While I do see a problem with requesting that the child use only the vocabulary learned in the unit, I finally conceded that they partially have a point. One of my daughters nearly got into trouble with one of her English examiners because her English was "too high" and they felt it was not representative of the material of the exam. Upon hearing it, of course, I raised an eyebrow, because I could not fathom the idea that she somehow had to dumb down her knowledge to fit the little box that was required of her. But then the examiner proceeded telling me, "Without a shade of doubt, her English is flawless and, I'm sure, much better than mine. But here, I don't grade her English in a broad sense - I grade whether she mastered, and to which extent, a certain prescribed content and a certain format of an exam. There's always room for a cetain amount of oscillations, but on this level of education, her expression borders ostentation and is getting so removed from what I have to grade that it makes it difficult for me to do so. I have to grade X, Y and Z, and she's giving me K, L and M - which are maybe higher level expressions and language abilities, but please, I need her to do X, Y and Z so I have a basis for the grade, so I can give her her well-deserved A and get it done with."

Then I remembered a similar situation from my own school days, one of my friends had some family ties with France and, of course, her French was brilliant - yet she never had an A in French, even though the professor agreed with her repeatedly on the fact that her French is fluent. But it wasn't her French she had to grade - rather, her knowledge of the specific school content. Just like in any other school subject, it's always the knowledge of the specific content that's being graded, rather than a general knowledge of the language.
Same thing with my daughters. Yes, the English textbook is laughably easy, the texts are stupid and dumbed down, many grammar points brought up are questionable and the standard is BE. But that's what you have to learn for the exam - you have to know those silly texts to be able to talk with the examiners about them, you have to spell out a few things the way they want it spelled and when you write a composition, you have to dumb it down the way they like to see it and put in there those grammatical features that they wish to grade - while the fact that you know English so much better than what's expected from you is your own personal thing and has nothing to do with the school.

It's a sort of game at the elementary and middle levels of education, tell your kids it's a learning opportunity to attempt to "lower" themselves to the level expected for exams, pretend they communicate with somebody who speaks only basic English. On a high school level, they will probably learn at least something substantial and literary, and professors might even take into account multiple norms (in my lycee, all the wanted was consistency within one norm, for example), so it will be less of a role playing game and more "real" even for the child who speaks the language natively.

regentrude

03-18-2011, 12:50 PM

regentrude, it's certainly true that foreign language instruction is a lot better in Germany than it is in the US; however, I've discussed the English instruction with dozens of native English-speaking parents and none has found it completely satisfactory for their kids unless the teacher had spent a significant amount of time in an English-speaking country or had an Anglophone parent. Two common problems identified were that teachers were often insecure when there is a bilingual child in their English class and that they often insist on an exam that a child use only the vocabulary that was learned in the unit, a particularly vexing problem when the child has a US parent and the teacher speaks and teaches British English.

Yes, I have heard that, too. (Which, btw, is not only a problem for native speakers, but also for advanced German students who have a vocabulary beyond what is taught.) Ester Maria already addressed this point about examinations.
I feel, however, that this has nothing to do with the quality of the instruction itself. Sure, it is a pain having to jump through the exam hoop (and maybe not have an A as a native speaker) - but that is a formality and not content. And, btw, if it is British English they teach, your child can easily pick up the British English that is taught from just attending class. I don't see that as a problem at all.
And you do not have to find it COMPLETELY satisfactory - because you are always able to supplement the points that school does not teach to your satisfaction. But you don't have to do ALL the teaching - you can let the school do its job and ADD, using your expertise as a native speaker, the missing bits such as rigorous literature instruction, idioms, cultural literacy.

May I ask why you find it so important that you child learn to read at age 4?
I am actually rather glad I did not teach my kids to read before school - as it was, they picked it up easily. Had they been fluent readers at the start of school, they would have been bored out of their mind.

Yenisei

03-18-2011, 01:17 PM

regentrude

03-18-2011, 01:55 PM

Excellent points in the last two posts. I do, nevertheless, feel that her time would be better spent on learning a language other than English- for those unfamilair with the German system, two foreign languages are required for anyone in a university prepatory track (Gymnasium).

You might want to try and find a school which does not teach English as the first foreign language, but French (for the second language, there are usually several choices offered in gymnasium). This may or may not be possible, depending on where you live (it is common near the French border, but not in some other parts of the country)
Alternatively, you could look into gymnasium with language focus where they start the second foreign language not in 6th but in 5th and shortly thereafter add a third language. This way, even if she has to take English, she still gets thorough instruction in two other foreign languages and it won't hurt that English is easy for her.

Yenisei

03-18-2011, 04:29 PM

Thanks for those suggestions- I'll definitely look into them. I am in Bavaria. The daughter of my daughter's Arabic teacher attends one of those language-focused Gymnasien, so that does sound like a good idea.

I just threw age four out there as a possibility for her to learn to read- I don't have any expectations and am waiting until she shows that she is ready. The Arabic teacher told me that may daughter seemed particularly interested in abstract symbols so I figured that I could teach her the Latin alphabet and the numbers, which she learned pretty quickly. She now takes note of numbers and letters she sees within words and on signs, and also the letters within Arabic words, even pointing to the letters sometimes and saying the name of the letter. She loves Arabic, no doubt at least in part because it's taught in a playful way, e.g., with singing.

Karin

03-19-2011, 04:23 PM

EDIT: Karin- I am from the US and homeschooling is generally forbidden by law here, but a strong parental role is necessary here in a way that usually isn't required in the US. I do intend to de facto homeschool my kids in certain subjects, such as US History. I am the stay-at-home parent, which is why I thought of teaching her to read in English first, otherwise it wouldn't be until age six that she would learn to read in German. I wasn't planning on trying to teach her to read anytime soon, but am just thinking ahead (maybe at age four).

.

I know it's illegal, and since your wife is German I wasn't sure if you could do it because you are American, which is why I asked. At least one person on these forums used to homeschool in China, and while it's illegal there, apparently the Chinese authorities turn a blind eye to foreigners homeschooling there, but one parent is from the UK and the other from US.

I agree that you can teach her to read when she's ready. While I did what Regentrude did re: reading for the same reason, I found that my dd was bored, anyway. It really didn't take her long to read (she already know some phonics prior to school because we started and then I stopped because dh didn't want to homeschool). In hindsight, I would have let her read when she was ready. If your dd learns to read Arabic and/or English before school, she isn't as likely to be bored learning to read German, but since each dc is different, it's difficult to know.

jld

03-20-2011, 12:38 AM

I'm an English-Spanish bilingual, but we decided that I would speak English to the kids since my wife doesn't speak Spanish.

Please speak Spanish to your daughter as well. Your wife may end up picking it up. Even if she doesn't, it will be helpful to your dd to have that exposure to another of your native languages (I'm assuming one of your parents spoke Spanish to you, or you grew up in a Spanish-speaking community).

It is really a shame not to share your native languages with a child. There are several children here in India with one parent speaking, say, Telugu, to them, and the other parent speaking another Indian language to them, maybe Kannada, for example. The parents together might speak Tamil, or whatever the local language is, and with the larger community, English or Hindi.

There is no reason not to speak native languages with kids! It doesn't have to be perfect!

Yenisei

03-20-2011, 07:35 AM

I know it's illegal, and since your wife is German I wasn't sure if you could do it because you are American, which is why I asked. At least one person on these forums used to homeschool in China, and while it's illegal there, apparently the Chinese authorities turn a blind eye to foreigners homeschooling there, but one parent is from the UK and the other from US.

I agree that you can teach her to read when she's ready. While I did what Regentrude did re: reading for the same reason, I found that my dd was bored, anyway. It really didn't take her long to read (she already know some phonics prior to school because we started and then I stopped because dh didn't want to homeschool). In hindsight, I would have let her read when she was ready. If your dd learns to read Arabic and/or English before school, she isn't as likely to be bored learning to read German, but since each dc is different, it's difficult to know.
Thanks for your thoughts. If I were here with SOFA status, e.g., military or DOD civilian, I could homeschool her, but I am here with the German equivalent of a green card. It doesn't matter that I am not German.

DD loves Arabic, and we have an excellent teacher for her so I think there's a good chance she will learn to read prior to starting school at age six. I am also arranging for her to spend time at a baybsitter's who also has small children with whom she speaks Arabic, so she'll have other kids to speak to.

DD loves books and brings them to me to read to her, so I wouldn't be surprised if she would be ready to learn to read in English before age 6. Although she speaks in German to me, if I point to something and ask her what it is, she tells me the English word. There is one English word she uses even with her mother- car. Maybe "Auto" (proniounced ow-toe in German) is too difficult phonetically at this point.

jld- my father is a native Spanish speaker but I think three languages are enough for the little one for now. Spanish is relatively easy to learn so I think she could pick it up later.

stripe

03-20-2011, 09:12 AM

I also recommend the website
http://www.multilingualliving.com/

It used to be a bimonthly magazine but is now basically a blog. In any event a useful resource to know about.

Karin

03-20-2011, 05:07 PM

Thanks for your thoughts. If I were here with SOFA status, e.g., military or DOD civilian, I could homeschool her, but I am here with the German equivalent of a green card. It doesn't matter that I am not German.
.

That makes sense, then, plus your wife is German. I used to have a green card, so have done something like you have.

I agree that three languages is enough right now, too, and I think choosing the language your wife understands is a good choice.

Steven

03-23-2011, 10:21 PM

We have raised our daughter bilingual (English/German) even though both my wife and I are native speakers of English and live in the United States. I, too, am a stay at home dad. Your project is certainly doable. We didn't even start German (beside singing some songs) until she was 18 months old, when we had her start watching the BCC language course Muzzy (in its German version).

I am not completely sold on the one-parent-one-language method. In part, because this would have been impossible for us. Neither my wife or I spoke German completely fluently, and so always speaking German to our daughter would have hindered our relationship with her. So we just decided to speak German to her when we could express ourselves in that language and to use English when we couldn't. We never mixed in a sentence, but we did switch back and forth within a conversation. We also did a lot of repeating in English what we had just said in German.

In observing other families, I think there is something to be said for both parents trying to speak all the languages to the child that you are teaching the child (even if each parent principally speaks one particular language to the child). If the mother only speaks German and the father only English, the child may feel put upon because he has to speak English and German!

I would also recommend latching on to other families that are teaching their children English. I started a playgroup on the theory that speaking German needed to be fun, and bought special toys for use at the playgroup.

Because we spend a lot of time driving, we listened to lot of CDs, both songs and stories. I think you will find this critical (along with reading books to her) for building her vocabulary. Ordinary conversation just does not use enough words. Movies and DVDs suffer from the same limited vocabulary as regular conversation.

We taught our daughter to read English first, using Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading. We started around the time she turned four. When she as almost 6, we began German reading , which went very quickly. One of the main reasons for starting reading in English at age 4 was so that she could read in German early on and so build vocabulary. Currently she is almost 7, and is reading easy chapter books in German. We did English reading first because it is less phonetic and didn't want her to become frustrated by English phonics in comparison to the very highly phonetical German.

Just one other comment: Dr. Seuss is not really very phonetical. The innovation of his books was that he used only words from the so-called Dolch list, the list of sight words taught in whole language, look-see methods. In that sense, Dr. Seuss is the antithesis of phonics. If you use a phonics-based reading method (which most people on these forums would recommend), your child will not be able to read Dr. Seuss until quite late in game. He uses a lot of words that are only decodable with late-stage phonics instruction. As read-alouds, however, the rhymes are certainly fun for most kids and probably encourage language development. I just wouldn't give them to a child as early reading material.

Yenisei

03-24-2011, 05:51 AM

Thanks for your thoughts. Our daughter already seems to be code switching, and I do intend to teach her to read using phonics. Reading Dr. Seuss books to her was primarily with the intent to drum up interest in reading, which has worked like a charm.

I haven't found any English speaking kids in our part of town yet and she really doesn't like being on public transport for 45 minutes to get to the parts of town more heavily populated by native English speaking expats. Part of the problem is the dominance of German- to give one example, one of the kids in my daughter's nursery group has a father from Anglophone Africa. However, after speaking to the boy I realized that he doesn't speak English, and apparently only speaks German even though is mother is from Hungary. German is the parents' common language and they solely speak it at home.

Speaking of learning phonics, TWTM recommends The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, so I will check out the reviews on it.

skueppers

03-24-2011, 08:34 PM

Just to offer you some encouragement: my daughter spoke only English to me, even though I never spoke a word of it to her until she was four. She was exposed to German songs, books, and television. She went to a German preschool from the time she turned three. She didn't start speaking German regularly until she was almost five. It's been about the same with my son.

She learned to read English first, and has been working through a German first grade program this year as well as attending a Saturday school program. She reads English better than German at this point, but I think that's mainly because she's had more practice in English. She certainly reads German at an adequate level compared with German children her age.

As others have mentioned, reading skills do transfer. I've had her working through a formal German program mainly so she will get a strong foundation in writing. I remember that when I was in mid-late elementary school, I could read in German better than one of my slightly older German cousins, although I'd never received a moment's reading instruction in German.

ElizabethB

03-25-2011, 01:33 AM

I would teach German first, reading is easier to learn if taught with a more phonetic language first.

When you teach English, there are some good free online resources you can either print out or write out on a whiteboard or chalkboard. I am currently using Webster's Speller with my son, it is free, here is a thread showing what we do each day from the white board:

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=208407

Also, here is a book for you, it uses a special phonetic print called Leigh Print (http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/leighprint.html) that has the same markings showing the similar sounds in English and German, with basic phrases in both languages:

http://books.google.com/books?id=qFwBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR20&lpg=PR20&dq=edwin+leigh+pronouncing+orthography&source=bl&ots=nPqkX18L2I&sig=EamrNdiU6ghDuHKotuT2O2kTjnI&hl=en&ei=t9v9SYjcF4jCtwfk_aWjDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10#v=onepage&q=edwin%20leigh%20pronouncing%20orthography&f=false

The best free online book for explaining how to teach phonics is "Pollard's Manual: Synthetic Method of Reading and Spelling." Blend Phonics has a good quick summary, but does not teach all the phonics you need to learn everything, you would need to continue with another more complete book. It does have excellent instructions and is a good start, though. Both are linked from my phonics and spelling book page and are free online:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/phonicsandspelli.html

Yenisei

03-25-2011, 10:51 AM

Elizabet and skeuppers, thanks for the advice. I am going to teach her to read in English because I am her only contact with English.

desertmum

03-25-2011, 11:03 AM

I'm an English-Spanish bilingual, but we decided that I would speak English to the kids since my wife doesn't speak Spanish.

Pretty much the same boat with one caveat. Husband doesn't speak Spanish and we live in the Gulf. I spoke to DS in Spanish exclusively for the first 3 years of his life. Not only I could not get him to speak Spanish but he spoke very little English. Speech therapist said ds needed more English input (husband works very long hours so he only spent a few hours a week with DS). My mum said, "don't worry ds will pick English in school". Problem: DS is being HS so I have become pretty much his only source of English. I am talking to DS in English about 60% of the time. Of course his English has improved lots but the Spanish has gone down the drain. My mother won't talk to me now and I am worried DS will pick my accent (I'm originally from South America). I sooo feel your pain... :grouphug:

Yenisei

06-11-2011, 08:06 AM

I thought I would update everyone on my daughter's progress. She is now 20 months old and is talking quite a bit more, but apparently almost entirely in German, even with me, when she says something voluntarily. However, she clearly understands me and the Arabic speakers she has contact with 5x a week.

When she sees Arabic words in a text, she decodes the letters and her Arabic teacher has begun to teach her simple written words such as Baba (papa) and Kursi (chair) using vocalization. One thing I found particularly interesting is that when I point to pictures in her Arabic alphabet and vocabulary books and ask her what it is I am pointing at, she will say the word in Arabic. When we do the same exercise with parts of the body, she will answer in English, although she clearly knows some of the body parts in Arabic as well because I have seen her babysitter testing her on them.

EDIT: I forgot to mentíon that we play a lot of Arabic music for her, especially songs for children. My Arabic has improved quite a bit so I am certain hers has benefited greatly from that as well. I think we'll get Arabic language satellite TV when she is at an appropriate age to watch cartoons.

We have a second child on the way and I'd like him to learn Chinese, but my wife prefers that he learn Arabic or Japanese.

hmlentz

06-11-2011, 04:03 PM

I would use a regular phonics based program like Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons for reading instruction.

Make sure that you continue to speak in English and your wife in German. My first language was German (we moved there when I was 1) and my mother is German. I use to be totally bilingual, but then we moved to America and I refused to speak English. My mother stopped speakig in German to me to try to get me to speak English. I now struggle with German. I am no longer fluent. My godmother has grandchildren who can switch languages in mid-sentence depending on who they are talking to. They are not at all confused and know both languages equally well. It's wonderful.

Good luck!

Yenisei

06-11-2011, 05:56 PM

Thanks for the advice. I think she may actually end up eventually learning to read in Arabic first, and I'd guess in German before English at any rate since my wife will be home with her and No. 2 and since German is anyhow more phonetic than English (so is Arabic, BTW). That's a ways off, though.

I only speak in English to her and will continue to do that. When she was born it felt a bit strange at first to speak English with her because I was accustomed to speaking in German with small children such as our nephews.

Karin

06-12-2011, 02:27 PM