Multi language preschools until school starts - Will it work?

[enrich]

I have some (crazy) plans in my mind. I do not know if it will work or not. Can someone give their suggestions or thoughts on this.

 

My youngest is 2 years old. School starts only at age 7 where I live. So there are 5 years in between. My plan for my youngest is this:

2-3 years old - put in French preschool/daycare

3-4 years old - put in Spanish preschool/daycare

4-5 years old - put in local European language preschool/daycare

5-7 years old - put in English preschool/daycare

 

Eventually I want DS to go to an English international school and I want him to have an ear for the foreign languages (I'm not expecting any mastery in any of those). But want him to be fluent in English ultimately.

 

What do you think about this plan? Will it confuse him? His speech has already developed, so I'm not worried about it. Or am I being over-crazy?

 

PS: We don't speak any of the languages listed above except for English.

[Ester Maria]

I am not sure it is a good idea to do it with so many languages, especially if you have no home support for them. In order for a child to grow up truly multilingual, they have to *grow* with a language in numerous settings, and a year in a different language preschool does not mean anything on the long run.

 

Some of our friends did a version of this, but with *fewer* languages and a good support outside of school and after the child has exited the preschool. One family systematically put their children into an English-speaking daycare / preschool and kindergarten (ages 3 through 6, so children would have a continuity necessary to truly learn English, and to go through a semi-academic year of kindergarten in English), and afterward they put them into a French international school WHILE continuing to provide a strong English environment for the children outside school (I think they had an expat sitter, their children went to some playdates with the expat community whose kids were still being schooled in English, they drove them to English libraries, and made some kind of an arrangement in which children who were native or de facto native English speakers, but did not attend international school, learned English language arts together) and WHILE the children had classes in their native / local language at the French school and some outside activities in their native language. So ultimately, by the age of 7-8, those children were fully trilingual in their native language, English, and French, BUT, it was a LOT of work to ensure enough time and socialization in each language, enough reading for the language development on par with native speakers. In addition to having attended an international school as children, for English, they still insisted on sending their children for an extended stay abroad into a full-time English-speaking environment, "just in case", in spite of the children being fluent speakers, because it was still hard to keep up with native-level English without being schooled in it. After they attended French international school the equivalent of 8th grade, the children switched to the local school system which was in their native language. Their French was always a bit stronger than their English, because after all it was the language of their education, even though you could hardly tell them apart from native speakers of English due to early exposure. However, retaining their knowledge of English and progressing with the same pace as native speakers was definitely not a "given", but something the family had to actively struggle to ensure. I find it hard to imagine how it would work with three additional languages, as in your case (assuming you are English speakers at home).

 

I think a better strategy to develop an ear for languages is to limit yourself to fewer languages, but do it "properly" (for lack of a better expression), as in the example above. Besides, I think kids need continuity. If I were in your shoes, and wanted the kids to attend a school in English, I would do something akin to the situation above - I would choose ONE option until school-age, and then send them to school in English while actively providing for them opportunities to continue their growth in the other language, and if it is not the local language, also possibly enrolling them in some kind of local activities so that they can pick up the conversational minimum (assuming they would get some kind of a host country language in the international school).

 

Just my $.02. :)

[enrich]

Thanks for sharing your experience, Ester. I understand your point. My idea is very theoritical and quite impractical. It is quite stressful financially and emotionally. To add to the complexity, we are not native English speakers either :)

 

I love your suggestion of choosing ONE option/language until school age. We also would get some kind of a host country language in the international school. Now off to research one of the language options for the preschool.

[Laura Corin]

I am not sure it is a good idea to do it with so many languages, especially if you have no home support for them. In order for a child to grow up truly multilingual, they have to *grow* with a language in numerous settings, and a year in a different language preschool does not mean anything on the long run.

 

Children forget languages fast unless you continue to support them. I did a bit of research on this, and the consensus seemed to be that the immersed/bilingual child had to keep speaking the second language until at least the age of thirteen, otherwise it would be lost.

 

Laura

[saw]

We accidentally did something similar. We put DS5 into a Dutch-language daycare when he was 2.5, after we brought him home from China. English-language daycare wasn't available to us, and other childcare options were bad. We moved to France a year later and DS started Maternelle in French there. We moved from France to England a year after that. We hadn't realized when we moved to France that our stay would be that short, otherwise I probably would have gone with an English-language option. We're now in England and DS is at an English school. I did try to get him into the French school, but there were no places. He now understands some Dutch, because we speak it around him sometimes and go back several times a year. He understands French and has a French babysitter. He has consistently had English, and his English has really improved this year since being in an English school.

I wouldn't recommend this approach since I don't think DS gained much by it. It wasn't our intention, but life just happened. I'm hoping he'll retain enough Dutch or French to benefit from it eventually.

[barbarajon]

Your thought process is great and very systematic, but yes I think that will confuse your kiddo. Move ahead a little slow.

[Tokyomarie]

Children forget languages fast unless you continue to support them. I did a bit of research on this, and the consensus seemed to be that the immersed/bilingual child had to keep speaking the second language until at least the age of thirteen, otherwise it would be lost.

 

Laura

 

We had been informally told that age 15 was a magic age for the ability to retain a language if the opportunity for immersion in the language ceased. In our experience that turned out to be fairly true. I guess I'd say somewhere around 13-15yo.

 

Our oldest was 15yo when we moved to the USA from Japan. At that point she was equally proficient in both English & Japanese to a high level. We now live in an area where our exposure to Japanese is sporadic at best. She retained her language well for the 3 years before she left for college, at which point she was able to resume her study in college beginning at the 400 level. Written language was the most difficult part of study for her because she got rusty on her Kanji.

 

OTOH, her sister was 12yo when we came back. She has some language-based learning challenges but was also equally fluent in both languages. She lost a lot more of her Japanese than her sister did over the same 3 year period, though not as if she had forgotten it all. Expressive language was the hardest hit. She retained much more of her receptive abilities. She did study again in high school, including a summer back in Japan, but she needs constant use of a language to keep it to any degree so her expressive language has suffered again.

 

To the OP: we moved to Japan when our girls were 4.5 & 1.5yo and they immediately began to learn some Japanese from living in the community. Our oldest attended an English language preschool/kindergarten where she had a daily "Japanese as a second language" class. She really didn't become conversational, though, until we switched her to a Japanese kindergarten. It worked well for us to support two languages in the preschool years: Japanese in the school & community, English at home & at certain English language extracurriculars.

 

Friends of ours who were trying to support 3 languages in the preschool years were less successful. Two languages (German & Japanese) were pretty strong, but the 3rd language (English) was much weaker. It just wasn't easy to support all three languages equally.

 

We actually had a rather amusing interaction with one of the children when we visited this family in Germany after their return home. The young son didn't want to order for himself at the counter of a fast food place. So this child, whose first language is German, turns to my husband, whose first language is English, and speaks with him using Japanese. My husband then turns to the clerk, and relays the order of this German-speaking boy to the German-speaking clerk in English. Now, if that language interaction doesn't make your head spin, I'm not sure what will!

[marcie]

I'm really not sure if this will work. Children forget as fast as they learn, so maybe you should pick just one foreign language to start with?