Raising Bilingual Children - How are you teaching your children? Your experiences?

what I am taking away from his post is that he has adopted English because his children are not able to string a sentence together as compared to other children. It is no surprise that kids that learn one or more languages at the same time will fall behind- but when the ultimate goal is speaking more than one language than who cares. Seriously- who cares if the journey is longer as long as they get to the final destination?

It is the "now" mentality. In order for something to be perfected it needs to be worked on- there will be highs and lows along the way- such is life.

If you are like most parents you will pray that they will someday start talking until they do, then pray that they will someday shut up! :->

Kids always learn to speak differently to different people. The way they say something to Mom is not the way they say it to Dad. And the way they talk to kids at school is not the way they speak to the teachers. Why not take advantage of that and the presence of native speakers during the time of life when they are most receptive to learning language?

The child may!

If we are talking about younger children thats fine. An older child of say seven ( I have experience of this) from Poland, depending on the parents, arriving in England, is going to be at a significant disadvantage. It appears the Polish children are not only educationally behind, but emotionally also. They are immature. The English children will have experienced a minimum of 2 years eductaion and in a lot of cases more. This represents a huge problem as this child needs to catch up just to stand a chance of leaving school at 17 with minimal qualifications.

This is a huge burden for a child so where do you start with this? In our experience, my partner has spoken in Polish to the children, and as time has passed by, the children have gone from answering in Polish to responding now in English. Sounds really odd to our Polish friends and most can't keep up. My partner was determined to keep them speaking Polish, but it is what the children are more comfortable with that will prevail. It appears English is winning. This is fortunate because it has made it easier to help the older child catch up. I would say after 2 years we are a year behind with the older child meaning he has caught up 2 years but it has been incredibly hard work with constant communications with the teacher. It's much easier to teach a younger child and my partners younger child is speaking fluently in both languages with only the odd tense error in English,odd incorrect structure in Polish sentences and an English accent. She has left her ESL peers way behind and most of her English peers. I feel the difference between the children is partly because the younger one is more interested because she has less distraction and because the boy is older he has missed the ideal opportunity to get him interested in writing and reading. There are more interesting things to distract him. Obviously this is not the same for all children but I should think it applies to the majority.

I don't mind what language they speak at home to be honest, although I don't speak Polish, I'm just happy they are getting on and will have the same chances as their English peers. I do think the older child will lose his Polish as he is already asking me how to say things in Polish; like hand, but as he is living in England and is unlikely to return to Poland other than for holidays, if he can't speak to gran, so what. It's him thats important not her. If I were to move to Poland with young children, my first concern would be to do everything possible to get them speaking Polish. No English school for my kids.

I do believe parents should explore every option before uprooting their children and placing them in a foreign country when thay have just started their education. It's sad to see children that will never achieve through no fault of their own, purely because their parents do not have the resourses to help them. There are too many round here.

My child was born after the previous post in this thread was written, and he is being raised trilingual. It takes a lot of discipline on the part of both parents to keep this up, because we both tend to default to English since it is the easiest of the three to communicate in.

What does make this little boy happy? Doing Polish lessons (he's so sweet lol) :):

fb.watch/n72pVnOCDm/

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Raising Bilingual Children

In Poland - a wonderful idea but only if the other language is American.

In the US - child abuse.

The benefits of raising children bi-even trlinguallly cannot be overstated. I for example was raised in a bilingual German-English household and as a
parent, I've tried to raise our daughter in both languages. When she finally made it over to Germany during her first year of grad school, she quickly realized that her half-year experience abroad was all the richer for having studied German:-) In our global economy, it's scarcely enough to claim mistakenly that the world is an English-speaking society! This is a dangerous myth which ought to have been debunked long ago.

You're right, in our village everyone speaks only German.

With English, you can communicate with 90% of the world. With German - .0003%. No, thanks. Not worth the effort.

When you speak English, you don't need another language. Just as if you have a billion bucks, you don't need to wait for sales, collect coupons, or "invest wisely".

My daughter and her husband (neither speaking a word of Polish) spent three days in Warsaw without any problems. The same when they visited France, Denmark, and Sweden.

Bottom line: The multitude of languages in Europe is the number one problem and the reason why Europe had two world wars. There is a reason why Hitler treated Austria better than Poland.

I hate when I have to do the translation within family, I speak English when I should be speaking Polish and Polish when I should speak English. Pain the neck!

As for bilingual kids you need to hire a specialist otherwise they will end up speaking the langauge of a country they live in much better, and the second language won't be on par with the first/main one!

Yes. The language of the playground is always more appealing to children than mom and dad's (when there's a difference).

If parents want to make sure the children don't just have some passive knowledge they need to take steps to cultivate the language. Years ago I had a Asian colleague whose daughter preferred to speak Polish but also attended special classes to keep the original language in shape (and regular trips back home as well).

I've had some students who partly grew up in Germany and they often say the parents' decision to move back to Poland was a language struggle (one could still understand Polish but could barely speak when the parents decided to return) and it was a real uphill battle to reach the level needed for a university student.

I follow the rule that says: Don't sing if you can't sing well.
That's why I gave up tennis years ago.

@Rich,
Is it honestly worth the nonchalantly stumbling, bumbling daze of misunderstanding, when taking the time to communicate in the other's FIRST language will yield 100% rather than a mere 98% clarity? Scarcely! Every day abroad oughtn't have to turn into an ESL nightmare. The following is a scene at a reception desk in some unnamed European country.

English native speaker: Pardon me, may I please have your name?
Foreigner (who likely was forced to learn English in school, hating every moment of it): Please?? Do I have a name? What it means?
English native speaker: Oh, I just wanted to know whom I'm speaking to, that's all.
Foreigner: OK. Thanks, have a nice day!

etc...

Lyzko, learn how to write well in English.
Your posts are painful to read.

Ditto! That what I have been saying for years!

Come on, guys. Lyzko is a poet. We, simple engineers, just don't understand him. ;)

But his poems don't rhyme.

@Alien

English poetry is based on rhytm rather than on rhyme (it's similar to Latin poetry in this regard). There's no rhyme in "to be or not to be that is the question" but it's still poetry, isn't it? ;)

But at least this can be understood.

Even a poet should be able to say Fu*ck you, a*shole. I hate your guts clearly.
Or: I am a slimy coward and have no damn idea how to defend my wife when a couple of drugged-up idiots invade my house.

Simple is good.

Funny you have a problem with Lyzko while your own posts are unbearably tangled by your dyslexia.


Lyzko writes as he speaks. Learn to understand the spoken written language at last. :):)

I am anal about things but I never have any problems with Iron's posts.

Lyzko's make me want to vomit - especially when he dispenses advice about guns in America, a country with 400,000,000 of them out there and almost as many deranged morons on fentanyl or just drunk.

So it isn`t his English but opinions which unnerve you.

I said "vomit", not "unnerve". Two different things.
As with any leftist, Lyzko can't last past question 2. What unnerves me are his stupid leftist opinions based on his pacifist inclinations.

Since this thread is about languages, this should make his head explode...

My default language, like yours, is English. After 50 years of absence from Poland, I often would find it easier to communicate in English than in Polish! The reason: when I speak in English the other person does the same and gives me the advantage because then he or she speaks slower, and uses simple words. No, it's not my age. I never miss a word in America.

That's exactly what happened at Gdansk station where the background noise was terrible and that bullet-proot glass didn't help any. So, out of desperation, I switched to English, and from this point on all went quickly and well.

No. Apart from stomach disorders, one vomits when they are stressed. Ha!

@Rich & Ironside, you're both merely projecting your own lack of English skills.

Exactly.


Not pacifist but deeply reasonable inclinations of a decent person who knows that wide access to guns only contributes to more violence instead of reducing it.


That`s natural. If you spent 50 years on a desert island, you wouldn`t speak any language at all.
Just look at you , happily grinning coz you are devoid of any communication problems whatsoever.

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Language interference is natural!
Anybody who's been away from their first or native language for a certain amount of time is going to begin thinking and reacting in the second language.