gil
Posted 1250021548
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#1
Hi,
Daira
Posted 1250873001
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#2
Hi, Gil. I don’t know exactly what you mean by wondering about the timing of teaching reading and writing in a minority language simultaneously as it is being taught in a majority language at school. It would seem to me, the earlier the better. Therefore, I would certainly not intentionally wait until it is being focused on in your child’s school, nor would I wait until he/she has cemented their understanding in a majority language before then deciding to teach them. I’ve heard the saying, “Don’t put off today, what you can feasibly do tomorrow.” Having said this, I was raised bilingually and am now raising my four-year-old bilingually. Although I do not remember learning to read or to write, specifically, I know that there wasn’t a magic hour or age that was suddenly the right time to teach. I think, firstly, there has to be some understanding of the temperament and maturity of the child. If they aren’t paying attention… I began teaching my child around three, and now that she is four, she is surprising me with her reading ability, although she does not sit down to read books by herself, I can “test” her with games and questions. Our minority language is Latvian and the majority language, and spoken by her father, is English. She doesn’t thus far seem to have any problem reading words in either, though sometimes their is a slight mispronunciation due to uncertainty of the which language she is reading. Writing for her in both languages, is normal/advanced for her age, as I have had pleasure recently to observe a group of other bilingual children her age, and her understanding and writing of letters is definitely where it should be. However, although each language has some letters the other doesn’t and different pronunciation, both alphabets are comprised of Latin-based characters. My daughter is, though, starting her second year of Chinese immersion preschool, and she has no problem readily “reading” those Chinese characters and writing them. While I do not unfortunately have specific research to mention to you, if you live near a university you could check out their library and search under second language acquisition and reading, language acquisition, bilingual studies and children, etc. Also, perhaps there is a university near you which has a department of bilingual studies. I’ve found that people are generally very willing to help within their field of knowledge. They could maybe speak with you and provide some answers for you, or just point you in the right direction. Hope this was somewhat helpful for you and good luck!
Johanna
Posted 1251834888
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#3
I have a similar quandry. We live in Finland and our son is 5 y.o. I speak to him in English, his father speaks to him in Russian, and he attends Finnish speaking daycare. he also attends a Russian Saturday school and English montessori classes. I have been teaching him the English alphabet and beginning reading skills. There is an opportunity for him to start learning cyrillic alphabet and reading in his Russian Saturday school, but I am not sure if it is a good idea before he has mastered the English alphabet, since some of the letters look the same but have different phonic sounds in English than in Russian. Could this cause confusion while he is learning them? Or would waiting to learn the Russian alphabet be even more confusing as he would perhaps assume that Russian is written in Latin letters? He speaks and understands, English, Finnish and Russian all equally well. Does anyone have any experience with this?
anna
Posted 1252579147
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#4
hi Gil,
Daira
Posted 1253362952
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#5
Greetings, Johanna.
Bis
Posted 1262022828
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#6
I am ‘poking’ this discussion thread, as it is very interesting and I would love to hear more comments from parents on when they started to teach their children to read and write in the native language(s). Many teachers say that waiting to teach the second` language literacy until the local language literacy is mastered is the best option but I intuitively think that this learning can happen simultaneously. However, I have also heard that some children respond well to that and others do not. There apparently, is in the first grade or two some lag between a multiple language literacy child and his single language peers in school and some parents (and kids) become concerned about their child being labeled as a special needs or with delayed learning. How is this addressed? My idea is to have tutoring in the local language while me continuing to teach him the second language but it can be financially difficult is not an option for everyone. Please share ideas about this topic, it is very interesting!
