Can children learn to read two languages concurrently?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mine did. However it did produce some issues with writing, not reading. I suppose it depends on the language. Both of my kids read/write/speak English and German. They are now college/high school.

Both struggle (still) with English spelling--German is much more straightforward in that way, although the language is grammatically more complex.

Thank you for responding! Our second language is German and while the child speaks it, I wondered if introducing “ch” and “sch” as in ach nein and Schule would confuse the phonetic principles the child learned in “church” and “sheep” if that makes sense.

My kids did French immersion and I agree with other posters that I don't think your kids will have a problem learning German now.

As for differing phonetic principles, a child reading at a third grade level will certainly have come across the words "school" and "Christmas". Now you can teach them that those words follow spelling patterns from your country and that English has lots of words taken or adapted from other languages. An awareness of word origins can help them in spelling.

[Anonymous]

My kids learned to read in the same alphabet at the same time when they were 4-6. It is really NBD. Your child is already a reader in one language so not the same situation.

We found out 10 yrs later that one of our kids actually has a language related learning disability. Learning to read in two languages that have the same roman alphabet was a non issue for him or his siblings. Being bilingual was a non-issue. (Actually being bilingual probably helped him and was why the LD didn't really show up and get discovered until later.)

People worry so much but really, when there are problems, you know there is something wrong. Don't worry about problems that aren't happening.

Go for it with the reading! My friend was reading in German (in Germany, in German school) in 3rd grade and her mom sat her down and taught her to read in English (their home language).

As the parent of bilingual kids, the best thing you can do for your child is to make sure your kids enjoy reading and have lots of material in the non-community language. Reading for pleasure in the non-community language is the best way to keep them gaining age-level appropriate vocabulary. When their interests and spoken vocabulary far exceed their reading level in one of the languages then they tend to only want to read for pleasure in their stronger language, which makes the situation worse. So get your kid reading and then encourage it for pleasure as much as you can!

[Anonymous]

Yes. I did it too as a kid. Since I taught her to read and I speak German to her, she read first in German.

[Anonymous]

Yes, most kids of immigrants can do this. I learned to read in English and Bengali simultaneously.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mine did. However it did produce some issues with writing, not reading. I suppose it depends on the language. Both of my kids read/write/speak English and German. They are now college/high school.

Both struggle (still) with English spelling--German is much more straightforward in that way, although the language is grammatically more complex.

NP. We are also an English/German household. What would you do differently? Which resources would you suggest? Thanks!