lulalu Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 (edited) Bilingual gamily. The alphabets are very different and letters can make different sounds. We will be teaching English with a very phonetic approach (Spell to Write and Read) Should I teach reading in both at the same time? Or do you wait until reading in English is fluent and then begin in another language for reading? Reading in second language is a must. I don't want my son to not know how to read it. Also I am not fluent enough to really pick up any book that would help me teach it. Should I just teach it with sight words? Thanks! Edited December 9, 2017 by lolo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mathmarm Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 How old is the child? Can you get a hold of a K or 1st grade level Turkish reading primer since you are in Turkey? Can you find a Turkish reading tutor for him? Are there any Educational Childrens DVDs in Turkish that you could get a hold of? What about the library or bookstores in the area? Can you go in and speak to someone there to ask about beginning literacy? Have you hunted around the internet? Here is Turkish 101 page from Princeton University it has little readers on it that you might find useful for yourself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosie_0801 Posted August 26, 2015 Share Posted August 26, 2015 Turkish is a clearly phonetic language, no? Then there is no good reason to teach him sight words. That would be more work than learning phonics. Is there a reason you can't teach him to read in Turkish first, and let the English follow along behind? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lulalu Posted August 26, 2015 Author Share Posted August 26, 2015 (edited) All of our schooling products for other languages have been purchased in English. So that is why I was thinking teaching English first. And maybe waiting until he can fluently read English. But if that doesn't sound logical I am open for ideas and suggestions. He is starting kindergarten. So 5. I have not yet looked around at our options available. We are in the states at the moment but will be back soon. So I am trying to get our year all ready. The one issue I have is that I cannot read second language beyond the basics I need for living- groceries, paying bills, street signs etc. So I if I were to find a way to teach it I would need to find things around us or have friends teach him. Edited December 9, 2017 by lolo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest olga.tr.kz.ru Posted August 27, 2015 Share Posted August 27, 2015 We are also in Turkey, so I can share our experience. My son speaks Russian and Turkish, and I taught him reading in Russian first. Then, after mastering connections of letters into syllables, he learned reading in Turkish simply by asking what each Turkish letter sounded like. Turkish is VERY phonetic, so you don't need sight words. Very few words are written differently from the way they are pronounced, so all you need to do is to teach how to connect sounds. Many consonant letters are similar to English. In schools here children start learning to read at around six, and they start with cursive (for writing and reading). You can buy some readers for the first grade, written in cursive, in bookstores and "kırtasiye". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosie_0801 Posted August 27, 2015 Share Posted August 27, 2015 The one issue I have is that I cannot read Turkish beyond the basics I need for living- groceries, paying bills, street signs etc. So I if I were to find a way to teach it I would need to find things around us or have friends teach him. If he's only 5, you've got time to polish your skills. It'll be about two years before he's doing much more than reading street signs himself. We're learning to read Arabic. With the added anti-bonus of not knowing the language at all. :laugh: We're working on decoding because we can, and comprehension will follow along when it does! (Not that we are in any hurry like you are. We're only doing this for fun. And dd has learning difficulties with comprehension, but not decoding.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lulalu Posted August 27, 2015 Author Share Posted August 27, 2015 Thanks! Olga- you taught Russian first. How long after teaching Russian reading did you begin on reading Turkish? Rosie- thanks for the encouragement! I guess I have probably overthought too much and should look at building up my skills as he is still young. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosie_0801 Posted August 27, 2015 Share Posted August 27, 2015 Once dd began reading in English, I had her begin learning the Arabic alphabet. Which took FOREVER! Talk about taking a simple concept and making it as difficult as possible! To vowel or not to vowel? Like I can remember where the dots go when you mess up the 1. no dot then 2. dot on top rule! Three different forms of most of the letters? Not even all of them? :lol: So with us, the gap between English and Arabic decoding is about 3 years. Arabic is a more phonetic language, so if we were actually Arabic speakers, I'd have taught them the other way around and the gap would be smaller. It's a giggle, anyway. :laugh: But yeah, you can learn far more in the next two years than your boy can. You know how to learn this stuff already and he doesn't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brad S Posted August 28, 2015 Share Posted August 28, 2015 If Turkish is indeed a very phonetic language, I'd teach reading in English first. We're a bilingual Spanish/English family, and DS learned to read in English first and then Spanish -- it worked great and was easy going in that direction. The Spanish seemed easy since it's phonetic and very regular, unlike English. Reading in English second might have seemed difficult for DS. Good luck! By the way, we started Spanish only about a month after basic English reading was going and that worked fine for DS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yinanyinu Posted August 29, 2015 Share Posted August 29, 2015 We did the phonetic language first because it got DS reading faster, then English. Learning to decode phonetic languages must be easy because DD taught herself! YMMV. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bwdiaz Posted August 29, 2015 Share Posted August 29, 2015 Hebrew isn't as complicated as Arabic and I'd begun the "aleph-bet" in their pre-school years. They'd been hearing spoken Hebrew from day one, so after we did English decoding we started right away on Hebrew. They were reading both languages within six months of each other. Spanish has actually been harder for us. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monica_in_Switzerland Posted August 30, 2015 Share Posted August 30, 2015 We started one language (English), then added in reading in another language (French) 4-6 months later. From then on, daily lessons in both. Never a problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monica_in_Switzerland Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 The biggest problem is not the danger of confusing things. I think the biggest problem is that your mind doesn't know which to work on when you are doing other things. And I actually think that is a huge huge issue. I'm curious about your reasoning. Do you think two languages are different than, say, processing math and language arts, or history, science, and all other topics we cover concurrently? If it's true for reading, than wouldn't it hold true that we shouldn't TALK to our kids in two languages until they are completely fluent in one (age 5 or so)? There's evidence showing bilingualism puts off the age of senior dementia onset by 5 years (if I recall correctly) because the brain actually benefits from the constant struggle to process. It builds a stronger brain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
visitor Posted November 3, 2015 Share Posted November 3, 2015 I learned my sons first dutch then arabic and now English . I think it is better TO learn a language and then learn an other . He learned arabic and English in a very short moment 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4KookieKids Posted November 12, 2015 Share Posted November 12, 2015 We started one language (English), then added in reading in another language (French) 4-6 months later. From then on, daily lessons in both. Never a problem. This is something I've been wondering about. My 6 yo went from reading almost nothing 6 months ago to reading English at a 3rd grade reading level now (thank you Spalding!!) and he's expressed interest in reading in German. I told him we could start after Christmas because I wanted to buy myself some time and because I'm still slightly traumatized by how terribly reading lessons went before finding Spalding. But we do very little in terms of real academics - pretty much 15-20 minutes of spelling/Spalding, a little math, and 15-20 minutes of independent reading a few times a week, so I've been trying to decide if I should just keep our work load as is by alternating reading lessons in each language every other day or if I should try to do both each day. If it won't mess him up academically to alternate days, I'd rather do that since I have three younger kiddos running around too, but I don't know if it'd be better for him to have a little of both each day. I plan to teach German reading more or less like I taught Spalding - I have a sound chart in German and we'll just start there. My hope is that it'll be easy since he can read in English now, but I'm nervous to confuse him again (like I said - still slightly traumatized... :) ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bibiche Posted November 12, 2015 Share Posted November 12, 2015 If he speaks German you will probably find that he can already read it - reading skills transfer. DS read in his primary language with a little bit of instruction and was able to easily transfer that to his other languages with just an occasional hint. I wouldn't worry about confusion, just give him a book and see how he does. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Have kids -- will travel Posted November 16, 2015 Share Posted November 16, 2015 This is something I've been wondering about. My 6 yo went from reading almost nothing 6 months ago to reading English at a 3rd grade reading level now (thank you Spalding!!) and he's expressed interest in reading in German. I told him we could start after Christmas because I wanted to buy myself some time and because I'm still slightly traumatized by how terribly reading lessons went before finding Spalding. But we do very little in terms of real academics - pretty much 15-20 minutes of spelling/Spalding, a little math, and 15-20 minutes of independent reading a few times a week, so I've been trying to decide if I should just keep our work load as is by alternating reading lessons in each language every other day or if I should try to do both each day. If it won't mess him up academically to alternate days, I'd rather do that since I have three younger kiddos running around too, but I don't know if it'd be better for him to have a little of both each day. I plan to teach German reading more or less like I taught Spalding - I have a sound chart in German and we'll just start there. My hope is that it'll be easy since he can read in English now, but I'm nervous to confuse him again (like I said - still slightly traumatized... :) ) ITTA with the previous poster. If your child is already fluent in German, reading follows very simply. We have never taught our ODS any reading in Dutch. He picked it up purely from being read to in Dutch. I think we mentioned once that "j" has a different sound, but strange things like "oe" and "aa" were all very simple. Vocabulary is the limiting factor in our house for understanding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tsuga Posted November 17, 2015 Share Posted November 17, 2015 My kids learned to read in English and their second language at the same time. English/German and English/Mandarin. It has not been a problem. German is very easy to read! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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