help! passive vs active bilingual...how do I get him to speak?

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Forums > Non-native Speakers > help! passive vs active bilingual…how do I get him to speak?

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elizabeth

Posted 09/13/10	Reply with quote #1

Help! I have a question. I an a non native speaker of Spanish who has been talking to my almost 3 year old for just over a year now (since he was almost 2 years old). We live in Baltimore and do not have significant ties with the Latino community here though I have tried and we occasionally meet up with a spanish speaking family. I only speak Spanish at an intermediate level though I have been studying it all year (and had studied it before) and will continue to study it. My husband speaks very little Spanish and my son goes to English speaking daycare so most of the time he gets English though he is a momma’s boy so I talk to him and read to him more than my hubby. This past August we spent a month in Nicaragua and my son got to attend an all Spanish speaking preschool every morning which was great. His understanding of the language definitely grew. We hope to do it again next summer. He seems to understand a lot (all the things you need to say to a toddler) but he only says a few words here and there, a bit more recently. I read to him and try to encourage him to talk and show him movies occasionally in Spanish but I’m worried he will never speak it, ie put sentences together. I do believe it will still be worth it even if he is only a passive bilingual but I soooooo want him to be able to speak. He may be starting a Spanish speaking daycare soon where the daycare provider will be Spanish speaking while the kids will be English speakers so if that works out I hope that will help. But these are my two questions..Is there anything else I can do in terms of how I interact with him to encourage a Spanish response? and what most worries me is this…Does the probability of him actually producing Spanish go down much the longer he speaks in English? Will it become an unbreakable habit? Is there any hope left after a year of doing all I can that he will eventually produce Spanish as well as English? Hope to hear from you SOON, elizabeth

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