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

[teresa]

Hi Buckeroo,

Thanks for your sharing and I totally agree with you! You are a real example showing us that learning multiple languages is possible. If you immerse a kid in different language environments, they will learn it so naturally.

Teresa

[leana]

Hallo everyone. That is a very interesting topic! I agree that children are linguistic geniuses. I have seen many kids who can speak 3 or four languages equally well and am trying to teach my baby 4 languages at present. I am Russian and my husband is Iranian. We speak mainly English between each other, plus we live in an Arab country, so that's four! Our daughter is only 8 months old, so that's hard to judge whether she's picking it up equally or not. But she does understand many things when we speak Russian or Farsi to her. Well, I think Little Reader can be of great help in teaching languages too and making sure that they learn same concepts in different languages. I would also love to hear about other people's experiences. Please, share!
Regards to everyone,
leana

[ed]

it is incredible how we can educate our children with different languages, at home I always use polish, my native thongue talking to Flavio (15 months), but when he choose some italian book or story to read together with him I read it in italian too. I know that I shouldn't do that, the principle is that one person one language, no? So I speak polish and my partner speaks italian with Flavio. I try to use other languages - english, which I didn't practise for a years, french and spanish with songs, films, cartoons, games. I do it every day - in the different moments of the day. I've heard that only during the first 2 years from the birth the child can absorb the sounds and worlds unlimited, after that it will be a bit harder and it happens in a different way for his brain.That's why I'd like to make Flavio hear more languages now at the time, he should remember them and learn easier any language in the future.
Anyway he's not able to repeat the words we say yet, but we hope that this will happen very soon ;-)

[Nanayaya]

I would like to know what everyone's views are on speech delay as there has been so many school of thoughts saying that if you teach a baby more than one language, it will hinder speech development. Although I do not agree with this, I would like to know what everyones else's opinions are on this.

[KL]

I'm not sure about speech delay, but this is how I look at it.

In terms of what language we use with our child, firstly, by speaking more of Language A, we will tend to speak less of Language B, or Language C.  It's a trade-off most of the time.  Secondly, I think it must be true that the more we speak a certain language, the faster our child will learn that language.

By that logic, wouldn't this mean that if you want to MAXIMIZE your child's language ability in Language A, then you would speak in Language A to your child 100% of the time??  I think maybe this is the reason that some people think there may be a speech delay problem if we introduce too many languages at the same time - ie., because of the "trade-off".

On this, I will make 2 points:

1. Whether that statement is true or not, even if we just speak in 1 language 100% of the time, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't expose our children to as many languages as possible. Eg., it is a very good thing if someone else in the family speaks a different language.  And I think it's of great benefit that we play our children foreign language CDs, etc.  For me, whenever I do allow Felicity to watch TV (which we generally try not to do, at least not for extended periods), I would switch it to a foreign language channel, cos at least that time is spent being exposed to a different language.  And if we are sending our kids to nurseries, playschools, etc, I would highly recommend choosing some with a totally different language environment.  It is in these environments that it is very clear a different language is spoken (and only that language), and it will encourage them to speak in that language because they will realize that otherwise they will not be understood. This similar to having a foreign-language-speaking grandparent around.

2. In terms of what language we speak to our children, I think it's not necessary to just focus on one language in order to maximize the child's language abilities in that language.  I think that especially if a child is progressing normally with the main language, I would recommend using some time (maybe even a lot of time) to speak to the child in one or more different languages from time to time, and doing this would not significantly slow down the progress of the first language.  However, I would still recommend NOT mixing languages when you are speaking, eg., using different languages in the same sentence. The child may have a tendency to mix languages in a sentence, but that doesn't mean we should do that.

The only difficulty in speaking different languages to our child is that we tend to slack and take the easy way out and just use the mother language to communicate since it'd be easier to get our child to understand what we are trying to tell them.  To get around this, like I mentioned in an earlier post, I would first say something in Language B, then repeat in Language A (to explain what I just said), and then repeat the words in Language B again.  After a while, you can drop Language A and the child will understand what you are saying in Language B.
But then again, this needs a lot of discipline!
  

But let's say we can discipline ourselves to use Language A most of the time and Language B sometimes, what about introducing Language C (if we know so many languages)? Or even Language D?  All I can say is that for me, I feel that Language B is already not spoken enough (since I lack discipline!!), so I do not carve out time to speak in Language C, because I feel that would impact upon my child's acquisition of Language B.  Therefore I try to make up for this by exposing her to as many different languages as possible (Languages A, B, C, D etc.) through other means.

In any event, I certainly do believe that a child can pick up many many languages at the same time, and it is definitely advisable to expose children to many different languages!

My 2 cents' worth!

[pupisek]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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!

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