Between a rock and a hard place

[desertmum]

Hello everyone. As I schedule this year's lessons I find myself very frustrated. I am the only one who speaks Spanish in our family. DH doesn't.

In the beginning we were using the OPOL approach. Then we noticed DS was way behind in his speech (Having said that I didn't say much until I was 4yo either). The speech therapist indicated that in order to learn a language you need to hear it 30% of the time. As my husband works long hours and didn't see much of our son I started doing 3 days in Spanish and 4 days in English. Why? We lived in the UK and our ds would soon be going to a local school so it made sense that he learned English, right? Also my husband was seriously freaking out about ds not saying much.

I couldn't dig up any Spanish speaking friends so ds only gets his Spanish from me and of course he knows I speak English so he doesn't bother trying -although he understands me very well. Especially when I'm cross!

:gnorsi:

 

Now that I am scheduling his lessons (we moved abroad so we made the decision to homeschool ds) I realise that if I carry on with the 3 days in Spanish we won't get the math and reading lessons done -let alone science as ds is very much into astronomy. At the same time I don't want to abandon Spanish entirely. In a few years the window of opportunity to learn to speak as a native will close. :crying:

 

Sorry about the ramble. I feel trapped between what I think I should do (imagine we go back to the UK and the poor child can't read his own language) and my family back home complaining that I am not teaching my ds Spanish... I am tired of having arguments with my mother over the telephone twice a week now... :boxing_smiley:

 

Help?

[Rosie_0801]

I'm no expert, since a class in bilingualism and second language acquisition doesn't make an expert, but I doubt your son's language lag has much to do with bilingualism. First, you were a late talker. Second, lots of kids are late talkers. Third, it's quite normal for bilingual kids to have smaller vocabs in each language than a monolingual child.

 

Do you know why he doesn't talk much? With my daughter, it is because she doesn't care. The aim here was to bring them up bilingual in English and Auslan, but we're doing a pretty poor job of that because it's easier to make her listen than look, and even listen is hard enough because she's not particularly interested in learning language from me. She prefers to learn from dvds, oddly enough. My rellies were trying to tell me to quit the Auslan, but that really had nothing to do with it.

 

If I were you, I think I'd go back to speaking Spanish when it is just you and he at home, and use English when hubby is around and possibly when you are out of the house too. (What language do you use in your daily out of the house life for dealing with people?) There are ways to use English in the house without you actually having to use it for conversation, such as music, tv, songs, audio books and bedtime stories.

 

The "poor child" will be able to read his own language. His own language will be Spanish ;) He will also be able to learn to read English. Heaps of the others on this board have said they haven't needed to teach their kids to read English after they have become literate in their native languages. Who's said that? Ester Maria (from Italian,) Cleo (from French) and I'm sure someone else has said the same about coming from Spanish and German.

 

I know you said your hubby works long hours, but is there any way you can modify schedules so he can have more contact? My hubby has a long commute so it adds up to a very long day. He starts slightly later in the mornings so he can see the kids before he goes. They are early risers, and ds would be in bed by the time he got home even if he started and finished work earlier. Can your hubby call your boy for a chat at lunch time each day or something?

 

Rosie

[desertmum]

Actually DS talks non-stop -just not in Spanish (sometimes he mixes a bit of both). He just doesn't seem to be interested in mummy's language as he knows I speak English to dad and hubby's family and our friends. It is true that his speech (in English) has improved loads -but his Spanish hasn't. Spanish wouldn't be his first language. Both English and Spanish at the same time would be more accurate description. I read in a book about bilingual children that being exposed to two languages from birth is the equivalent of having two trees growing next to each other but with independent root systems. I guess I just assumed he would learn both languages quickly because that is what I heard children do. Not true!!!!

 

We are looking to relocate for a place closer to DH's workplace so he can spend more time with us. When we go out we encounter a mix of people who speak Arabic, Farsi, Filipino and more, so I tend to speak to ds in Spanish and English when actually interacting with people (English is a sort of international language in the Gulf -like the starship Enterprise :D).

 

In the meantime I still have to teach the main lessons in English as most likely he will enter the ps system when we go back to the UK. Maybe I can treat Spanish as a second language that needs re-enforcement? :bigear:

[regentrude]

The speech therapist indicated that in order to learn a language you need to hear it 30% of the time.

 

Now that I am scheduling his lessons (we moved abroad so we made the decision to homeschool ds) I realise that if I carry on with the 3 days in Spanish we won't get the math and reading lessons done -let alone science as ds is very much into astronomy.

 

I don't buy the 30% at all. Our friends are a trilingual family; she is German, he is Italian, they live in the US, and the kids managed to be fluent in all three languages. Dad worked, too - but did special weekend outings with them when only Italian is spoken.

 

I am not quite sure what your scheduling has to do with the languages - you can simply cover certain subjects in Spanish and certain subjects in English. I don't understand why this would take more time.

 

We are bilingual, but did not move to an English speaking country until DD was 4 years old. She did not speak a single word of English when we moved, but acquired the English just fine and is perfect. It was at times a struggle to keep up the German; they would refuse to speak German periodically, but I still continued to speak and they are fluent now and can read/write.

I would talk to my kids in my native language. Have dad speak English to them, if necessary on weekends; have his family speak English to them, use movies and audiobooks.

[Ester Maria]

I don't buy the 30% at all. Our friends are a trilingual family; she is German, he is Italian, they live in the US, and the kids managed to be fluent in all three languages. Dad worked, too - but did special weekend outings with them when only Italian is spoken.

Fluent, sure, but are they proficient, with age-appropriate native-level literacy and cultural literacy? ;) Being a balanced bilingual is difficult enough, trilingual even more difficult. Not saying it's impossible, but if you know such family, they're probably an exception, rather than a rule. :)

 

I believe it's, again, one of those threads in which we need to define what's true bilingualism and what's a person that learned a foreign language - bilinguals operate with two systems equally well without preferring one on the grounds of lack of ability (they may prefer it for "aesthetic" reasons, but not because they can't handle a certain activity in a certain language), in all linguistic contexts (which includes youth slang and street talk as well as writing acadmic papers - of course, all of it age-appropriate), etc. I'm not a true bilingual myself in any language, even though I grew up learning a few and travelling in a places where a few were spoken - but I'm raising kids that ARE true bilinguals and it's a completely different world than "just" speaking a second or a heritage language. I can't fathom doing that in three languages properly - it must be insanely difficult, I know of maybe one or two such cases that worked. Every time when we tried to upgrade Hebrew to that level and go truly trilingual, it just didn't work and it was overwhelming. Kids speak Hebrew, but on a whole different level than they speak English and Italian. They're FLUENT in Hebrew with no doubt, but they're less proficient than native speakers and cannot operate with Hebrew in all linguistic contexts.

 

That being said, OP needs to decide whether she wants her son to be a true bilingual, or to "just" speak Spanish, but to be educated in English and have English as his primary language. Also, the kid is 4 years old. :) At 4 years old, I wouldn't worry much about the language thing at all and would do my best to establish a meaningful emotional connection with the child in the language I can do the best (regardless of the language in which the child responds), and then later I'd think about how to handle formal academics and cultural literacy, whether by going truly bilingual or by deciding to prefer one language with the other one being of sporadic heritage use. Regarding his lack of interest, you just need to be stubborn most of the time. :D Many kids are late talkers, this doesn't have to be related to bilingualism, and many bilingual kids start out with smaller vocabuleries and it takes more time to master vocabularies of both languages to an extent their monolingual peers know them - but once they do, they have this incredible richness of two worlds, two equally strong systems.

[regentrude]

Fluent, sure, but are they proficient, with age-appropriate native-level literacy and cultural literacy? ;) Being a balanced bilingual is difficult enough, trilingual even more difficult. Not saying it's impossible, but if you know such family, they're probably an exception, rather than a rule. :)

 

 

I was thinking of the OP's 4 year old child when I wrote this - at this point in his life, fluency would be a nice goal: being able to speak and understand both languages in daily life, to understand stories read and told to him.

I do not know the full extent of my friend's children's abilities because we have lost touch over the past year; however, I know they read all three languages, attended a German school successfully while on sabbatical and are living in Italy over the summers. I don't know whether they have the level of proficiency that you describe :)

I also don't know whether this is their goal as the kids are US citizens who most likely will spend their lives here.

 

 

A question for you: you write " I'm not a true bilingual myself in any language". In which area would you feel that your English (I assume you are a native Italian?) is not truly proficient?

I find that only thing I can not do in English is write poetry.

[Ester Maria]

A question for you: you write " I'm not a true bilingual myself in any language". In which area would you feel that your English (I assume you are a native Italian?) is not truly proficient?

I find that only thing I can not do in English is write poetry.

Actually, English was not my strongest foreign language most of my life; it's only the life circumstances in the recent decade or so that made it go up a few levels.

 

The problem with English, as I see it, is that it's one of those "fake easy" languages (Italian and Spanish are in this group too, btw.): they start out very easy, it's easy to hit intermediate and get your point across and start understanding people, but get very complicated once you're aiming to reach the levels of native speakers. English has all those little hues and shades that are virtually impossible to master well unless you speak it as your first language and/or have spent a lot of years living in an active anglophone environment. While you might say that I did the latter, I actually circle a lot among European expats, where among French (mostly), German, Hebrew (in case of Israelis and Jews all across the board) and the rest English is usually neglected, i.e. I never fully lived in English, even while living in the US, while I did live in, say, French or Hebrew, in some earlier periods of my life (as crazy as it might sound in this very English-centered world). Restaurant orders and similar 'communication' aside, I spend more time actually communicating with people in English on these boards than in real life.

 

So, there are still innumerable subtleties that I haven't mastered - not that I claim to have mastered those in any language, but with English I generally feel less competent due to the lack of active usage and the lack of academic usage, at the end of the day, being that I come from such an Italian-specific field. I guess that if you gave a handful of my posts to a native speaker in a nitpicking mood :D they could soon find a whole lot of article misuse (articles in English aren't used in exactly the same fashion as in Italian), subtle mistakes in syntax, clumsy wordings, etc. In spoken language too: my vowel qualities differ (obviously), despite the fact my accent is quite reduced for an Italian.

Edited September 6, 2010 by Ester Maria

[regentrude]

This is very interesting.

I actually do "live in English". I am a college instructor and have to lecture, discuss with students, write exams etc in English. We do not live in a very cosmopolitan area and all interactions outside of work happen in English, too (except for in our family - but we have no German speaking friends around).

 

I have not managed to fully get rid of my accent, though. I blame this on the fact that I speak German every day at home. When I lived the first time in the US and did not have any kind of German contact for a few months (not even by phone), my spoken English was much better and it was actually noticeable to my German friends upon my return that I spoke German with an accent. This, of course,went away after a few days, and (sadly) I never managed to get there again.

[OlgaLA]

 

Now that I am scheduling his lessons (we moved abroad so we made the decision to homeschool ds) I realise that if I carry on with the 3 days in Spanish we won't get the math and reading lessons done -let alone science as ds is very much into astronomy. At the same time I don't want to abandon Spanish entirely. In a few years the window of opportunity to learn to speak as a native will close. :crying:

 

 

 

Why can't you do lessons in English, and then carry on daily conversations in Spanish? And why can't you do math and science in Spanish? The specific vocabulary is not that big anyway, and for English and Spanish it probably sounds similar anyway (OK, I don't know Spanish, so I may be way off here). In any case he'll be able to pick it up any time. Or do it in English on English days, and in Spanish on Spanish. It will help him build vocabulary in both languages on a higher level.

 

As for him preferring English... I just make round eyes when my daughter switches to English and tell her that I have no idea what she is talking about, unless, of course, I have any reasons to suspect that she genuinely doesn't know the Russian analog. And in our case it helps that she has a 3.5 yo brother who speaks Russian only. She has to speak Russian to him. Unfortunately, this window will close very soon, and he will have no reasons to speak Russian at all.

[gordalopez]

I was raised in the US. My mother spoke Spanish to us at home. I went to public school and learned to read and write in English. We went to visit family in Mexico about twice a year. I speak both languages with equal ease.

 

Now I have two boys of my own. I speak to them only in Spanish. Their father speaks English with them, although they see him a lot less than they see me.

 

Things are going well, I'm pleased to say. My older son (6) is reading in Spanish, and picking up English reading on his own. I only teach Spanish reading so far. Math, science etc all in Spanish.

 

My sons speak Spanish to each other. But, we live in the US. All their play groups are in English, and the surrounding environment/community is English speaking.

 

I was the only Spanish model for my older son. The younger one has me and his older brother as well. I feel confident that one can raise a bilingual child even if there is only one model for a specific language. I lived it as a child and I'm living it again as a parent.

[stripe]

Fluent, sure, but are they proficient, with age-appropriate native-level literacy and cultural literacy? ;) Being a balanced bilingual is difficult enough, trilingual even more difficult. Not saying it's impossible, but if you know such family, they're probably an exception, rather than a rule. :)

I have really enjoyed the internet magazine (which has branched out to a website/blog) Multilingual Living and the discussions about how many people don't have exactly even knowledge in both languages, but may have competence in different areas. For example, someone may have medical conversations / rich vocabulary in English, cooking conversations / rich vocabulary in Hindi, and so forth.

 

Incidentally, they recently had an article on bilingual homeschooling.

 

To the OP: I would try to tap into your mother's zeal for Spanish and put your son on the phone with him to chat instead of arguing with you!

[desertmum]

I am guilty of not following a thread I started (I am house hunting at the moment). I guess the problem is that we live in the Gulf and I am homeschooling. So he doesn't get A LOT of English from native speakers. On the other hand I am the only source of Spanish. When we lived in the UK I couldn't find any Spanish speaking friends. In the future we may travel to Spain for a holiday but there is no way I can afford to do it twice a year.

 

I think I follow the suggestion of teaching something like math in Spanish. We also do crafts in Spanish. I must say ds understands children's stories in Spanish very well. As a matter of fact, if I am cross with him he only takes me seriously if I scold him in Spanish!

 

As a curious note, even if the Spanish has suffered my ds no longer has horrible tantrums now he can finally say what he wants even if it is in English. God, I am so embarrassed.

[Ester Maria]

As a matter of fact, if I am cross with him he only takes me seriously if I scold him in Spanish!

:lol: That's hillarious!

There is this certain... passion in Romance languages that makes them a lot more fiery and fervent. My kids are also a lot more compliant if I tell them off in Italian. Unless they get all fiery back, in the spirit of the language and culture.:tongue_smilie:

[cathmom]

:lol: That's hillarious!

There is this certain... passion in Romance languages that makes them a lot more fiery and fervent. My kids are also a lot more compliant if I tell them off in Italian. Unless they get all fiery back, in the spirit of the language and culture.:tongue_smilie:

 

I'll never forget the first time I spoke Spanish fluently without thinking about it at all. I was in a college Spanish lit class and we had read something called "El Sofá." My professor was going on and on about her interpretation of it, which I COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY disagreed with! I began speaking and words just poured out of me, giving my interpretation of it. After a few minutes, I noticed everyone in the class staring at me with their mouths hanging open. They had NEVER heard me talk like that! Probably not even in English. :lol:

[jld]

 

I have not managed to fully get rid of my accent, though. I blame this on the fact that I speak German every day at home. When I lived the first time in the US and did not have any kind of German contact for a few months (not even by phone), my spoken English was much better and it was actually noticeable to my German friends upon my return that I spoke German with an accent. This, of course,went away after a few days, and (sadly) I never managed to get there again.

 

Dh lived about 15 years in America, working in an English-speaking office every day, speaking English with me, in stores, etc., and will never lose his French accent. He spent 22 years growing up in France and he's never going to shake that. And why should he? What's the shame in that? I think it's okay to be what we are.

[stripe]

Dh lived about 15 years in America, working in an English-speaking office every day, speaking English with me, in stores, etc., and will never lose his French accent. He spent 22 years growing up in France and he's never going to shake that. And why should he? What's the shame in that? I think it's okay to be what we are.

There's a difference between having an accent, and speaking in pidgin or some sort of unintelligible Pepe le Pew type voice! I agree that everyone should not have to sound like a Minnesota radio announcer. I do know people from other countries who've COMPLETELY rid themselves of their accent, but I don't think you get there without serious and deliberate work.

[Ester Maria]

I do know people from other countries who've COMPLETELY rid themselves of their accent, but I don't think you get there without serious and deliberate work.

At the end of the day, an accent is about a combination of psychology (identifying yourself with the population that speaks with a certain accent enough to strive, even subconsciously, to imitate them) and of muscle memory (learning where and how to produce sounds and then doing it so much it becomes an internalized, automatic process). It's totally learnable, with conscious focus, for a lot of people, possibly even for the majority.

[desertmum]

At the end of the day, an accent is about a combination of psychology (identifying yourself with the population that speaks with a certain accent enough to strive, even subconsciously, to imitate them) and of muscle memory (learning where and how to produce sounds and then doing it so much it becomes an internalized, automatic process). It's totally learnable, with conscious focus, for a lot of people, possibly even for the majority.

 

 

I have tried my best to sound like Stephen Fry but I sound far more like comedian Paul O'Grady (he's got the most hilarious Liverpudlian accent). I think learning a second languageand be fluent and sound like a native are two very different things. I am amazed that for 3,1/2 years I spoke to my ds in Spanish 100% of the time and yet he's got an English accent saying the few words of Spanish he does know. I am sorry to sound so down but...hey, I feel down.

[Ester Maria]

I have tried my best to sound like Stephen Fry but I sound far more like comedian Paul O'Grady (he's got the most hilarious Liverpudlian accent). I think learning a second languageand be fluent and sound like a native are two very different things. I am amazed that for 3,1/2 years I spoke to my ds in Spanish 100% of the time and yet he's got an English accent saying the few words of Spanish he does know. I am sorry to sound so down but...hey, I feel down.

:grouphug:

 

You know how monolingual kids sometimes have issues with their only language? The other day a fellow member here posted a thread on her son's TH; many kids in Italy struggle with R; and so forth - it takes some time to adjust to each particular sound AND to the "flow" of the language / intonation as such, before you're native-like from that point of view.

 

That being said, even if not mastered in early childhood, one can later consciously work on these things and reduce, or even completely eliminate, their foreign accent. Maybe not everyone, but most don't consciously work on it either, because if you can speak correctly and coherently, a slight accent is usually not a problem.

Just keep on speaking Spanish to him, he's still very small, needs to adjust to the language, the chances are it'll sort out with time. :)

[desertmum]

:grouphug:

 

You know how monolingual kids sometimes have issues with their only language? The other day a fellow member here posted a thread on her son's TH; many kids in Italy struggle with R; and so forth - it takes some time to adjust to each particular sound AND to the "flow" of the language / intonation as such, before you're native-like from that point of view.

 

That being said, even if not mastered in early childhood, one can later consciously work on these things and reduce, or even completely eliminate, their foreign accent. Maybe not everyone, but most don't consciously work on it either, because if you can speak correctly and coherently, a slight accent is usually not a problem.

Just keep on speaking Spanish to him, he's still very small, needs to adjust to the language, the chances are it'll sort out with time. :)

 

Thank you, first of all, for the massive hug. I needed it! :) I realise I need to take a :chillpill: and step back before I actually antagonize ds against Spanish. Family pressure is immense. DH wants ds to speak English like a scholar like now, and dm (darling mother of mine) wants ds to speak Spanish like Cervantes, well, like now. She forgets I could not say the "tr" sound for ages! To me, if ds understands Spanish (and he does) it means speaking is sure to follow. Of well, I guess I feel better today :D

Edited September 11, 2010 by desertmum
can't type and chew gum at the same time.

[regentrude]

At the end of the day, an accent is about a combination of psychology (identifying yourself with the population that speaks with a certain accent enough to strive, even subconsciously, to imitate them) and of muscle memory (learning where and how to produce sounds and then doing it so much it becomes an internalized, automatic process). It's totally learnable, with conscious focus, for a lot of people, possibly even for the majority.

 

Do you think so?

I always thought it had a lot to do with how well a person is able to perceive and differentiate sound. I would think it should be easier for a musical person to get rid of the accent than somebody who is tone deaf - because they can't hear their feed back and might not ever be aware of the fact that, for instance, their vowel quality is completely un-english. (case in point: both DH and I have spent the same amount of time in the US. My spoken English sounds much better than his; I am a singer - he is tone deaf.)

 

This said, it always amazes me when I talk to people who have been in this country for decades and who sound as if they learned their English in a German classroom from a German teacher and never heard a native speaker ;-)

[Ester Maria]

I would think it should be easier for a musical person to get rid of the accent than somebody who is tone deaf - because they can't hear their feed back and might not ever be aware of the fact that, for instance, their vowel quality is completely un-english.

But of course - I thought it was implied in what I brought up about muscle memory: if you can't hear or don't know where exactly the sounds are made, you will learn and internalize the making of the sounds the wrong way. It's still possible to unlearn it as an adult, though.

 

Vowels are a killer in English - they're the MAIN problem that most of the foreigners face. English has something like 3x the numbers of vowels in Italian, for example, and many of them are about nuances (feet or fit? etc.).

[stripe]

Vowels are a killer in English - they're the MAIN problem that most of the foreigners face. English has something like 3x the numbers of vowels in Italian, for example, and many of them are about nuances (feet or fit? etc.).

You're right, and I tease (torment?) my husband about this on occasion. ;) He has some small consolation that I can't hear at all a few nuances in his language.

[Ester Maria]

You're right, and I tease (torment?) my husband about this on occasion. ;) He has some small consolation that I can't hear at all a few nuances in his language.

What's his language? :)

[Renai]

 

I think I follow the suggestion of teaching something like math in Spanish. We also do crafts in Spanish. I must say ds understands children's stories in Spanish very well. As a matter of fact, if I am cross with him he only takes me seriously if I scold him in Spanish!

 

This is what I did with my daughter. Certain subjects were in English, others in Spanish. Actually, when she was 4, her prek year was all Spanish, as I thought she would be put in school the following year and she'd be placed in English. I wanted her to have a good base in Spanish. Needless to say, we continued homeschooling.

 

Starting in K, I taught her reading and math in Spanish. My disclaimer is, I am not a native Spanish speaker, but fluent. My daughter is bilingual. Science and other topics were done in whatever language I could find books in. She talked about her schooling to her dad (native Spanish speaker) often, and he sometimes joined in on a science experiment or two on the weekends. We watched Discovery channel (now it's PBS) in both languages and got videos in both languages. I wanted her to have the vocabulary in both languages, but it took time. She could tell me about flores, but not flowers (and I knew something was up when she knew what cerveza was but not beer. anyway...). Reading, writing, spelling were all in Spanish. I began to teach English reading in earnest somewhere in the end of 2nd/beginning of 3rd grade.

 

Around the middle of 3rd grade, I was no longer comfortable teaching math in Spanish. I'm native English. I made the decision to teach it completely in English, and there have been no problems switching. By this time, she has most of the academic vocabulary she needs to operate in school. If not, I give her the vocabulary. Simple.

 

I say teach what you are most comfortable in. I was comfortable teaching reading in Spanish, because it was something I'd done before- I'd never taught anyone to read in English. When it was uncomfortable to teach math in Spanish, I stopped. The science I did in Spanish consisted of reading Spanish books or watching Spanish tv (or talking to dad).

 

And, besides, the native language is the heart language. There are just some things you can't express from your heart in your second language (how in the world do we make it with our spouses anyway? :lol:). Keep speaking your heart language to your son. It'll pay off.

[Renai]

I'll never forget the first time I spoke Spanish fluently without thinking about it at all.

 

I remember the time I was in the car listening to the radio, when it dawned on my I was listening to it in Spanish and was understanding it! It was like when I'm listening in English. I also remember the first joke I cracked in Spanish that was a play on words and made sense :tongue_smilie:.

[desertmum]

I remember the time I was in the car listening to the radio, when it dawned on my I was listening to it in Spanish and was understanding it! It was like when I'm listening in English. I also remember the first joke I cracked in Spanish that was a play on words and made sense :tongue_smilie:.

 

The best is when you start dreaming in both languages.

 

Thank you so much for the practical advise about teaching certain subjects in different languages. I am not a native English speaker but I have worked as a translator and done plenty of simultaneous translation in the past. I teach ds reading in both languages at the risk of him picking up my accent (although the speech therapist said this is unlikely). DS wants to read to badly he is actually started to do it on his own so I cannot hold him back -and I don't think I should either! I can manage feet and fit nicely but other words defeat me, like bubble and bauble. :tongue_smilie:

 

I try to compensate for my accent by getting dh to read to ds as often as possible weekends (dh works until late and drives 1,1/2 hours to get home).

This morning ds announced to dh what he wanted for Christmas: "I want a train grande!" So he mixes quite a lot. Poor dh can only say "2 cervezas por favor" and "paella". ;)