happymummy
Posts: 11
Karma: 6 Baby: 3
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« Reply #16 on: May 13, 2009, 06:00:06 PM » |
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I wouldn't worry about accent - if you live and continue to live in the US, your son and subsequent children will be surrounded by "correct" American accents - in shops, at activities and on the telly. It's pretty unlikely that they'd end up with anything but a perfect American accent.
But I might be tempted to stick to Polish only for as long as your son will put up with it. Remember a lot of education is about concepts, so once you understand something, all you have to do is learn a bit of vocab to talk about it in another language. So essentially, especially when little, I don't think it matters which language you learn about something in. I agree that as they get older, children are more likely to want to speak the language of the country they are in - but for me that makes it more important to get as much of the "foreign" language in before that time as possible. We live in the UK, and already my four-year-old tells me to "stop saying those silly French words, Mummy".
Also remember there will be "language creep" - you plan to stick to Polish except in school hours, but consider what will happen when you're talking about something you did that day - especially if your husband speaks English too. Dinner times when you're telling Daddy about what you did today might become English time too. And more.
Necessity seems to me to be the major part of learning a language. If children have a reason to learn - like next door's kids only speak English - they learn. Or all the teachers at pre-school only speak Spanish - they learn Spanish. But if you remove their reason to learn to speak Polish - ie Mummy speaks English with them at least 30-odd hours a week - you might find they don't learn Polish.
I wish you all the best with everything and I hope it works out really well for you. I have no doubt that you *could* home-school in English - there are plenty of excellent resources to support you out there (you might find your knowledge of English grammar is better than most native speaker by the way). For me, the question is more whether you *should* - at least to start with.
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