Tips on how to teach my mother language to DD while after schooling in English

[Guest Angelika]

My daughter understood most of my mother language (Hungarian) till she went to pre-k at church then started favoring English because all her friends and everyone around us only speak English (DH is American). I kind of let it go and stopped talking to her in my native tounge for a year, but realize the importance of learning another language especially a heritage language at a very young age (younger the easier). I am however concerned it will interfere with her learning reading/writing in English. i also don't have any idea how to do it (teach my language) as she will be starting kinder at PS (not my choice) and I will be after schooling with SOTW, FLL in English. I am afraid we won't have time for both in the evenings. Anyone has any experience with this?

 

Thanks!

[Rosie_0801]

Hungarian bedtime stories? Read texts in English for your afterschooling, but do discussions in Hungarian? Make a certain place for Hungarian, such as in the car, or a certain time, or a certain day? Add Hungarian as an afterschooling subject?

 

Rosie

[regentrude]

I can only recommend that you start again talking in Hungarian to her and try to consistently speak Hungarian only. Rest assured, it will NOT interfere with her English, because her dad and school will provide an English environment.

We speak German only to the kids, and they had no trouble learning to speak, read and write English - after a few months of school, it became their stronger language.

We used a lot of audio CDs in German, and it did wonders for their vocabulary. We taught them to read German from normal books as soon as they had learned to read English in school, and it was really easy. The one thing that is a bit more difficult is spelling; we got materials for German kids learning to spell, as opposed to materials for German as a second language.

[cathmom]

Do what some other posters here do - read SOTW (or whatever you're using) in English and then discuss it in Hungarian.