Re: Raising Bilingual Kids (was: Bilingual Kids and Playgroups)
- From: lisabell_98@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: 20 May 2006 03:59:52 -0700
Much like Helen, we are a bilingual family living in Israel. My own
experience with language acquisition has been different from my kids'.
My conclusion is that there are wide variations.
I was born and raised in the London (England) as a monolingual English
speaker. My Israeli mother had decided not to speak and Hebrew to me,
so as not to "confuse" me and to ensure a good development of my
English language. When I was 2.5 dad got a job in Ethiopia, and I was
enrolled in an Israeli preschool in Addis Ababba, where I supposedly
easily acquired full knowledge of spoken Hebrew within 3 months in an
immersion environment.
A year later we were back in England, using English exclusively. I
developed very strong English skills, was an avid reader, and top of my
class in English and French. Most of my Hebrew was forgotten.I retained
only a little spoken language, used when my mother and grandmother
spoke to each other and on vacations in Israel.
At the age of 15, we moved to Israel, where I was immersed in a local
highschool. The thought was that I already had a basic speaking
knowledge of the language and would quickly catch up as I had in
preschool. Not the case. I had a *very* difficult time trying to learn
both spoken language and written textbook language in a high pressure
environment and eventually needed to drop out of school in favour of an
full time language school (ulpan) for 6 months. On the other hand I
easily acquired a very good knowledge of spoken Spanish through a
boyfriend I dated from 11th grade, and was soon very conversant in
Hebrew and Spanish.
Getting up to grade level in written and academic language turned out
to be a completely different story though. I ended up attending an
English language school through highschool, and only fully caught up to
academic level Hebrew when I went to university. Only much later did I
consider myself to be more or less bilingual, although there are still
aspects in which I am not - such as I do not enjoy reading novels in
Hebrew and rarely read anything except textbooks, work related
documents and newspapers which is not in English. On the other hand I
speak a lot more Hebrew than English, including speaking to my mother
and sister in Hebrew most of the time.
My husband is an American, who has failed to acquire more than a few
words of Hebrew despite living in Israel for several years. When our
first daughter was born we decided that we would speak to her
exclusively in English and of course she would easily pick up Hebrew at
school. Not quite. Although she began an Israeli preschool before age
2, when she began a new preschool at age 3 and I found she was not
communicating at all (other kids would ask me if she could speak) we
figured the strategy was not working.
I began to speak to her in Hebrew on the ride back from preschool and
it was like the floodgates had opened. Although she never verbalized
anything, it appeared to me almost as if she had felt we only approved
of speaking English and didn't want her to speak Hebrew. Once she began
though, she never looked back, and would speak to me in Hebrew
increasingly, to the point where it began to be difficult to maintain
adequate English. A recent trip to the US gave her and her sister a
significant English boost, but since we don't visit very often or for
more than a couple of weeks, the gain is soon lost.
Our second daughter has always preferred hebrew, speaks to me almost
exclusively in Hebrew, and is proving very difficult to maintain
English skills with, despite having a dad who understands only English
and who spends significant time with the kids every day. On the other
hand, my kids speak English better than their friends who come from
bilingual homes, who mostly refuse to speak any English at all, even if
they have a parent who addresses them exclusively in English. Another
friend of my eldest, whose parents are both English speakers, failed to
learn much Hebrew at all through preschool or kindergarten, and needed
a Hebrew tutor before first grade.
I think that one of the reasons it is said to be easier to learn a
language when you are young is that the level of language required to
be native at that point is much lower. Once you are in high school or
beyond, you need to contend with written language, a much more
extensive vocabulary, and often with a much less conducive atmosphere.
However, even for little ones, there are kids who are more language
oriented than others and will pick it up quicker, and those who are
more resistant and less quick to switch languages.
--Lisa
Mom to Gabriella (7.75) and Michaela (6)
hbar wrote:
When we were in Israel before we moved to America I spoke exclusively
in English to the kids and my husband spoke exclusively in Hebrew. DS1
went to a Hebrew-speaking day-care from 9am-4pm. I was with him from
4pm and my husband got home about 7pm. It worked very well and DS1 was
totally bilingual. When we moved to America, very quickly the kids
started speaking English exclusively (I continued speaking with them
only in English and they went to English-speaking pre-school) and my
husband (who came home from work about an hour before they went to
sleep) made the mistake of answering them in English. Within a few
months they forgot Hebrew. When we moved back to Israel last summer
they found the lack of language at pre-school/kindergarten very
difficult and the aquisition of Hebrew was harder and less quick than I
thought it would be.
.
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