If your child goes to weekend language schools of your heritage (Chinese, Korean, etc.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You have to force her to respond in your native language otherwise it's a waste of time and money, and she won't get the feedback she needs. Also get her books, movies and songs in that language, buy her toys and cute stuff from that country, make her favorite dishes from that cuisine, integrate it completely in your life.

Can you do playdates with other children from that class? Can you invest in a vacation in your home country, to show her how people live there?

It's difficult, I know.
It's been really hard for the children to respond in our native language, especially since school has started again. This year I have decided to stand firm, because other parents with older children have guaranteed that this is the ONLY way a child can truly progress. We also have a hard time doing playdates or even talking to other adults, because everyone is so busy with other things, but occasionally it works out.
This summer I insisted that the kids only read in our native language, and they made great strides - they were happy at their own progress, which is the best motivator!

Good luck.

Trilingual PP here. What the PP above wrote is exactly what I'm talking about. If you turn your home into an immersion environment, you can teach your kids anything. My kids know that they can't speak to me in anything but Spanish or French or I'm going to either ask them Whaaa? or make them repeat it in Sp/Fr. I only read to them in Sp/Fr, etc. I only play media (movies, radio, etc) in Sp/Fr. They spend almost no time interacting with other kids in Sp/Fr, but they speak both well enough. To learn a language to a high level, a child needs to spend about 20-30% of waking time hearing the language. And if you want your child to be able to use the language actively, and not just passively, you need to insist on responses in the languages you're teaching, or else the child will take the easier path--as will all of us.

We are raising our children trilingually as well and we have found that "home as an immersion environment" stance works only up to a certain age. Kids start school eventually and their environment shifts to English. All language is situational, and as committed as I was to only speaking my language to my children, making them translate their homework from English to Russian or Arabic to me (when they know I am perfectly fluent in English) was too contrived. Plus if you want your children to excel in American public schools, you will need to support their literacy in English - you'd want them to do well and better than well at school, and because time is limited, every minute spent speaking one language takes from the other. It's a balancing act. If they ask you to take then to a local library, will you say no? If they ask you for a story in English from the book that interests them, will you say no? If they want to go to the movies or to a theatre, will you say no? We don't. We find it pointless to pretend that English all around us does not exist.

This is when it helps to have an actual community of Russian and Arabic speakers around us - because we know whatever time we give to English at home will be balanced by their friends, playdates, relatives, other Russian/Arabic-speaking parents etc. When you have a community around you, you no longer feel like it's you against the world. The world, though, always wins, and I know my child's dominant language will be English. I'm fine with that because I want him to excel in this country, where he was born and where he will likely stay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You have to force her to respond in your native language otherwise it's a waste of time and money, and she won't get the feedback she needs. Also get her books, movies and songs in that language, buy her toys and cute stuff from that country, make her favorite dishes from that cuisine, integrate it completely in your life.

Can you do playdates with other children from that class? Can you invest in a vacation in your home country, to show her how people live there?

It's difficult, I know.
It's been really hard for the children to respond in our native language, especially since school has started again. This year I have decided to stand firm, because other parents with older children have guaranteed that this is the ONLY way a child can truly progress. We also have a hard time doing playdates or even talking to other adults, because everyone is so busy with other things, but occasionally it works out.
This summer I insisted that the kids only read in our native language, and they made great strides - they were happy at their own progress, which is the best motivator!

Good luck.

Trilingual PP here. What the PP above wrote is exactly what I'm talking about. If you turn your home into an immersion environment, you can teach your kids anything. My kids know that they can't speak to me in anything but Spanish or French or I'm going to either ask them Whaaa? or make them repeat it in Sp/Fr. I only read to them in Sp/Fr, etc. I only play media (movies, radio, etc) in Sp/Fr. They spend almost no time interacting with other kids in Sp/Fr, but they speak both well enough. To learn a language to a high level, a child needs to spend about 20-30% of waking time hearing the language. And if you want your child to be able to use the language actively, and not just passively, you need to insist on responses in the languages you're teaching, or else the child will take the easier path--as will all of us.

We are raising our children trilingually as well and we have found that "home as an immersion environment" stance works only up to a certain age. Kids start school eventually and their environment shifts to English. All language is situational, and as committed as I was to only speaking my language to my children, making them translate their homework from English to Russian or Arabic to me (when they know I am perfectly fluent in English) was too contrived. Plus if you want your children to excel in American public schools, you will need to support their literacy in English - you'd want them to do well and better than well at school, and because time is limited, every minute spent speaking one language takes from the other. It's a balancing act. If they ask you to take then to a local library, will you say no? If they ask you for a story in English from the book that interests them, will you say no? If they want to go to the movies or to a theatre, will you say no? We don't. We find it pointless to pretend that English all around us does not exist.

I suppose it depends on your priorities in the end. Regarding homework, we don't believe it has much, if any value before high school (a belief system shared by the Finnish school system), so we only considered homeschooling or private schools with minimal homework; this was a decision we made that had nothing to do with language but with our overall educational philosophies (we're teachers). Regarding literature, my spouse handles reading in English while I handle the other two languages. Our kids do just fine there. On top of this, the research is rather clear that multilingualism increases overall vocab compared to monolingualism. In your library example, we go to the library frequently; it has plenty of books in Spanish and English. They can check out whichever books they want; they just know a particular parent will read them. Regarding movies and theatres, we happily go--we just talk about them in the language we're using that day. It has nothing to do with pretending English doesn't exist; it's simply about deciding to use the languages you want to teach.

Our method doesn't have to work for you, but it works very well for us and for a number of other families we've come across. It's not a competition, and there are many paths up the mountain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You have to force her to respond in your native language otherwise it's a waste of time and money, and she won't get the feedback she needs. Also get her books, movies and songs in that language, buy her toys and cute stuff from that country, make her favorite dishes from that cuisine, integrate it completely in your life.

Can you do playdates with other children from that class? Can you invest in a vacation in your home country, to show her how people live there?

It's difficult, I know.
It's been really hard for the children to respond in our native language, especially since school has started again. This year I have decided to stand firm, because other parents with older children have guaranteed that this is the ONLY way a child can truly progress. We also have a hard time doing playdates or even talking to other adults, because everyone is so busy with other things, but occasionally it works out.
This summer I insisted that the kids only read in our native language, and they made great strides - they were happy at their own progress, which is the best motivator!

Good luck.

Trilingual PP here. What the PP above wrote is exactly what I'm talking about. If you turn your home into an immersion environment, you can teach your kids anything. My kids know that they can't speak to me in anything but Spanish or French or I'm going to either ask them Whaaa? or make them repeat it in Sp/Fr. I only read to them in Sp/Fr, etc. I only play media (movies, radio, etc) in Sp/Fr. They spend almost no time interacting with other kids in Sp/Fr, but they speak both well enough. To learn a language to a high level, a child needs to spend about 20-30% of waking time hearing the language. And if you want your child to be able to use the language actively, and not just passively, you need to insist on responses in the languages you're teaching, or else the child will take the easier path--as will all of us.

We are raising our children trilingually as well and we have found that "home as an immersion environment" stance works only up to a certain age. Kids start school eventually and their environment shifts to English. All language is situational, and as committed as I was to only speaking my language to my children, making them translate their homework from English to Russian or Arabic to me (when they know I am perfectly fluent in English) was too contrived. Plus if you want your children to excel in American public schools, you will need to support their literacy in English - you'd want them to do well and better than well at school, and because time is limited, every minute spent speaking one language takes from the other. It's a balancing act. If they ask you to take then to a local library, will you say no? If they ask you for a story in English from the book that interests them, will you say no? If they want to go to the movies or to a theatre, will you say no? We don't. We find it pointless to pretend that English all around us does not exist.

This is when it helps to have an actual community of Russian and Arabic speakers around us - because we know whatever time we give to English at home will be balanced by their friends, playdates, relatives, other Russian/Arabic-speaking parents etc. When you have a community around you, you no longer feel like it's you against the world. The world, though, always wins, and I know my child's dominant language will be English. I'm fine with that because I want him to excel in this country, where he was born and where he will likely stay.

I'm the first PP quoted, and yes, it's always been a fine balancing act. My children are 12 and 7.

It is interesting that we three have different things that save us.
For us it's reading - the kids love to read. Despite not having a large community of speakers, and despite having only 2.5 hours on Saturdays to practice their native language in a school environment, which is really not much at all, they are getting vocabulary, grammar, syntax, a sense of culture, history and geography, from the books they gobble up. Since they read so much in both languages, they don't lose anything on the English front. I curate their book selections to include the best children's literature.
We've taken to watching the news in our native language, and that's also helped with rapid-fire conversation and also with general culture.

As for the rest, well, I can't help it when they go out to play with the neighbor kids and revert to English. It's hard to translate every homework in order to discuss it with me, but after this immersive summer, my 12 year old has gotten much better at it.
I lived most of my life in countries OTHER than my native lands, so... I understand the struggle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I suppose it depends on your priorities in the end. Regarding homework, we don't believe it has much, if any value before high school (a belief system shared by the Finnish school system), so we only considered homeschooling or private schools with minimal homework; this was a decision we made that had nothing to do with language but with our overall educational philosophies (we're teachers). Regarding literature, my spouse handles reading in English while I handle the other two languages. Our kids do just fine there. On top of this, the research is rather clear that multilingualism increases overall vocab compared to monolingualism. In your library example, we go to the library frequently; it has plenty of books in Spanish and English. They can check out whichever books they want; they just know a particular parent will read them. Regarding movies and theatres, we happily go--we just talk about them in the language we're using that day. It has nothing to do with pretending English doesn't exist; it's simply about deciding to use the languages you want to teach.

Our method doesn't have to work for you, but it works very well for us and for a number of other families we've come across. It's not a competition, and there are many paths up the mountain.

You aren't actually saying anything different, you know - you'll have to discuss homework in English at high school age, and you have a parent at home who supports English literacy because someone has to. I'm not arguing that it works you - I'm pointing out the pitfalls of that approach, because all of them have flaws.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I suppose it depends on your priorities in the end. Regarding homework, we don't believe it has much, if any value before high school (a belief system shared by the Finnish school system), so we only considered homeschooling or private schools with minimal homework; this was a decision we made that had nothing to do with language but with our overall educational philosophies (we're teachers). Regarding literature, my spouse handles reading in English while I handle the other two languages. Our kids do just fine there. On top of this, the research is rather clear that multilingualism increases overall vocab compared to monolingualism. In your library example, we go to the library frequently; it has plenty of books in Spanish and English. They can check out whichever books they want; they just know a particular parent will read them. Regarding movies and theatres, we happily go--we just talk about them in the language we're using that day. It has nothing to do with pretending English doesn't exist; it's simply about deciding to use the languages you want to teach.

Our method doesn't have to work for you, but it works very well for us and for a number of other families we've come across. It's not a competition, and there are many paths up the mountain.

You aren't actually saying anything different, you know - you'll have to discuss homework in English at high school age, and you have a parent at home who supports English literacy because someone has to. I'm not arguing that it works you - I'm pointing out the pitfalls of that approach, because all of them have flaws.

There isn't actually a requirement to discuss homework in English at all. Like everything else in life, that's a choice. And the reason we have someone at home who "supports English literacy" is because my spouse is learning, but doesn't yet speak Spanish or French. If that weren't the case, we'd have left that to the schools, since it's the dominant language of the country. Similarly, if we lived in France, we wouldn't be teaching French at home, but Spanish and English.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I suppose it depends on your priorities in the end. Regarding homework, we don't believe it has much, if any value before high school (a belief system shared by the Finnish school system), so we only considered homeschooling or private schools with minimal homework; this was a decision we made that had nothing to do with language but with our overall educational philosophies (we're teachers). Regarding literature, my spouse handles reading in English while I handle the other two languages. Our kids do just fine there. On top of this, the research is rather clear that multilingualism increases overall vocab compared to monolingualism. In your library example, we go to the library frequently; it has plenty of books in Spanish and English. They can check out whichever books they want; they just know a particular parent will read them. Regarding movies and theatres, we happily go--we just talk about them in the language we're using that day. It has nothing to do with pretending English doesn't exist; it's simply about deciding to use the languages you want to teach.

Our method doesn't have to work for you, but it works very well for us and for a number of other families we've come across. It's not a competition, and there are many paths up the mountain.

You aren't actually saying anything different, you know - you'll have to discuss homework in English at high school age, and you have a parent at home who supports English literacy because someone has to. I'm not arguing that it works you - I'm pointing out the pitfalls of that approach, because all of them have flaws.

Perhaps you do, but not everyone else does. We used our home languages for that and our kids turned out just fine. I agree with PP that it comes down to priorities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I suppose it depends on your priorities in the end. Regarding homework, we don't believe it has much, if any value before high school (a belief system shared by the Finnish school system), so we only considered homeschooling or private schools with minimal homework; this was a decision we made that had nothing to do with language but with our overall educational philosophies (we're teachers). Regarding literature, my spouse handles reading in English while I handle the other two languages. Our kids do just fine there. On top of this, the research is rather clear that multilingualism increases overall vocab compared to monolingualism. In your library example, we go to the library frequently; it has plenty of books in Spanish and English. They can check out whichever books they want; they just know a particular parent will read them. Regarding movies and theatres, we happily go--we just talk about them in the language we're using that day. It has nothing to do with pretending English doesn't exist; it's simply about deciding to use the languages you want to teach.

Our method doesn't have to work for you, but it works very well for us and for a number of other families we've come across. It's not a competition, and there are many paths up the mountain.

You aren't actually saying anything different, you know - you'll have to discuss homework in English at high school age, and you have a parent at home who supports English literacy because someone has to. I'm not arguing that it works you - I'm pointing out the pitfalls of that approach, because all of them have flaws.

Perhaps you do, but not everyone else does. We used our home languages for that and our kids turned out just fine. I agree with PP that it comes down to priorities.

Thank you for chiming in with experience. If I had a dollar for every time someone said "you'll have to do X or Y" incorrectly, we'd have fully funded college funds by now.

[Anonymous]

I am bilingual (English and Russian). I was born here but my parents are from the Soviet Union. I never went to language school but I speak fluent Russian because we always spoke it at home, and I taught myself how to read Russian at 12. My mom only spoke to us in Russian and my dad spoke to us in English and Russian as he was fluent in English but my mom wasn't. She was fluent enough to talk to teachers though. My sister doesn't know Russian as well as I do. I think talking to her in Korean and having her watch Korean TV, etc. will help. How did you learn your first language?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am not sure if you only asked for input from the Asian families so if the following is not relevant to you, feel free to dismiss.

We are a two-immigrant family and we are raising our children to be fluent in both languages. On my end, DS, who is now 7, has attended mostly immersion Russian-language preschools where he got to fluent conversation, solid reading and some writing. I only speak Russian to him at home but this is changing as his schooling becomes more demanding. At this time, my take on this is that language learning has to have relevance and context to children to be truly appealing. Otherwise it's competing with so many other things and not always winning.

So for us, the context and relevance is achieved in several ways. Most of his preschool friends come from families with at least one Russian parents; his three closest friends are fluent Russian speakers. We have a solid library of children's books in Russian, and before letting him have screen time, I check if the cartoons he wants are available in Russian (they often are). He attends an afterschool lesson group one day a week where they take Russian and math in a small group setting of 4 to 5 kids, with a great deal of homework. We also have weekly conversations with family members who speak no English at all. All of this is to show that language has to be more than a merely academic pursuit to be appealing.

My son is very young and I'm sure that a day will come when he will rebel against his Russian half in some way. He is already beginning to address me in English but that is normal. We live in an English-speaking society and can't really get away from this. But for now we're doing all we can to preserve his birthright language as a gateway to culture, future opportunities, and more intimacy in our relationship - I don't especially want to be forced to speak a foreign language with my flesh and blood.

Is it in DC area? If so, would you mind sharing the name/location of the afterschool? I am trying to free up at least one day during the weekend and with the Russian school, it gets to be too much.

[Anonymous]

I just pulled my kid from Arabic because he hated it. He had taken five years of it. He's in 5th grade.

He hated it so much. And now his regular school has stepped up in difficulty and he has ADHD. I want him to be able to focus on regular school and I don't want to add the pressure of nightly Arabic homework.

I'm sad he's missing out on this opportunity, but we have other priorities right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am bilingual (English and Russian). I was born here but my parents are from the Soviet Union. I never went to language school but I speak fluent Russian because we always spoke it at home, and I taught myself how to read Russian at 12. My mom only spoke to us in Russian and my dad spoke to us in English and Russian as he was fluent in English but my mom wasn't. She was fluent enough to talk to teachers though. My sister doesn't know Russian as well as I do. I think talking to her in Korean and having her watch Korean TV, etc. will help. How did you learn your first language?

Exactly. It's about using it consistently and expecting the kids to use it with you too (which is harder than just allowing them to use the dominant language over and over again).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am bilingual (English and Russian). I was born here but my parents are from the Soviet Union. I never went to language school but I speak fluent Russian because we always spoke it at home, and I taught myself how to read Russian at 12. My mom only spoke to us in Russian and my dad spoke to us in English and Russian as he was fluent in English but my mom wasn't. She was fluent enough to talk to teachers though. My sister doesn't know Russian as well as I do. I think talking to her in Korean and having her watch Korean TV, etc. will help. How did you learn your first language?

Exactly. It's about using it consistently and expecting the kids to use it with you too (which is harder than just allowing them to use the dominant language over and over again).

Nope, not really, this poster used Russian with her mom because she had to as mom spoke no English. It's a lot harder when the kid knows you speak English perfectly well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am bilingual (English and Russian). I was born here but my parents are from the Soviet Union. I never went to language school but I speak fluent Russian because we always spoke it at home, and I taught myself how to read Russian at 12. My mom only spoke to us in Russian and my dad spoke to us in English and Russian as he was fluent in English but my mom wasn't. She was fluent enough to talk to teachers though. My sister doesn't know Russian as well as I do. I think talking to her in Korean and having her watch Korean TV, etc. will help. How did you learn your first language?

Exactly. It's about using it consistently and expecting the kids to use it with you too (which is harder than just allowing them to use the dominant language over and over again).

Nope, not really, this poster used Russian with her mom because she had to as mom spoke no English. It's a lot harder when the kid knows you speak English perfectly well.

Yep, I have friends whose children are adults now told me that the only students from their kids' weekend Chinese school who are truly bilingual now came from families where the mother hardly speak any English. It is a very powerful incentive to speak to your mother. Pretending not to speak English doesn't work when the kids get older. Having grandparents work to a certain extent, but not nearly as useful.

It also really depends on the language. I don't think, for example, anyone can teacher themselves how to read in Chinese. It is impossible without years of consistent practice to memorize thousands of characters that many may be similar in shape but drastically different in pronunciation and meaning. There is a reason why retention of heritage language is the lowest among second/third generation Chinese immigrants per some studies.

Having said all that, if a child is really motivated they can and do achieve reading and writing fluency in Chinese living in the US. It is just very difficult. They should all be able to understand/speak, but even that is not a given.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just pulled my kid from Arabic because he hated it. He had taken five years of it. He's in 5th grade.

He hated it so much. And now his regular school has stepped up in difficulty and he has ADHD. I want him to be able to focus on regular school and I don't want to add the pressure of nightly Arabic homework.

I'm sad he's missing out on this opportunity, but we have other priorities right now.

I'm the PP who is raising children trilingually with Russian and Arabic. For whatever reason, our experience has been that the Arabic instruction in the area is very, very lacking. What schools do exist are either too religiously influenced, or if they aren't, they are haphazard, or if they aren't that, they are too rigid and structured. It's strange because there are so many Arabic speakers in the area but there really isn't a good, solid market of preschool and early-elementary age immersive education to serve them. I don't really know what the reasons are - maybe too many Arabic-speaking families prefer to keep kids at home till school age, or maybe there isn't a home country tradition of strong early education, or who knows.

So different from the Russian-language education market where so many good, pedagogically sound options are available, especially in VA. I talk about this with my DH all the time and it truly boggles the mind. Our DS is in a Saturday program but I can't say it's a huge hit so if I don't see much progress this year, I will consider pulling him and just getting a tutor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am bilingual (English and Russian). I was born here but my parents are from the Soviet Union. I never went to language school but I speak fluent Russian because we always spoke it at home, and I taught myself how to read Russian at 12. My mom only spoke to us in Russian and my dad spoke to us in English and Russian as he was fluent in English but my mom wasn't. She was fluent enough to talk to teachers though. My sister doesn't know Russian as well as I do. I think talking to her in Korean and having her watch Korean TV, etc. will help. How did you learn your first language?

Exactly. It's about using it consistently and expecting the kids to use it with you too (which is harder than just allowing them to use the dominant language over and over again).

Nope, not really, this poster used Russian with her mom because she had to as mom spoke no English. It's a lot harder when the kid knows you speak English perfectly well.

Some people aren't up for consistency. However, there's nothing stopping you from doing this if you actually prioritize it. We raised our kids trilingually in English, Japanese, and Swedish. The kids got constant reminders that we spoke English because we used it with each other but never with them. They still learned all three because we made it clear from day one that they needed to speak to us in not-English. If you don't want to try that hard, that's fine.