Raising a multilingual child? Where have I heard that before? Maybe… EVERYWHERE! Let’s be honest, it’s hard to ignore this hot topic. It’s not a secret that multilingualism can open plenty of doors in your kid’s life. The list of benefits of speaking more than one language seems to go on and on. No wonder so many families want to implement techniques to teach their children two or more languages. It’s estimated that more than half of the world’s population is bilingual, according to Psychology Today. That means about 3.5 billion people use more than one language to communicate every day. In Europe, a great many toddlers learn four languages with little to no difficulty. One Person, One Language (OPOL) is the most common family language system in use, followed by Minority Language at Home (ML@H).
We want our kids to be able to have every door of opportunity open in their future. So what can we do as parents to successfully provide our kids with the wonder of multilingualism? You can take some notes because today we bring you a few stories of moms sharing their methods of success:
5 kids, 3 languages
Carrie Le Chevallier is a mom of 5 adopted bilingual children. Carrie and her husband practice OPOL to teach their kids Spanish and make use of different techniques to introduce them to French.
She explains that her husband’s first language is Spanish, and he only speaks Spanish with them. In addition to that, the kids now assist to a Spanish Immersion Charter School. She mentions, “we started with the dual language when they came home which was three 1-year olds, 2 1/2 year old, and a 5 1/2 year old.
For the French, which is Carrie’s husbands second language, she writes, “we listen to kids language songs and discs in the car to reinforce that language”. In fact, she mentions that music, learning CDs and cartoons are great ways to work on languages in kids.
She states that it has been important for her to raise her kids as multilingual for two reasons. One being the studies that prove that children that can speak more than one language grow up to learn quicker and are more creative. And the second one being that her two oldest Guatemalan children had Spanish as their birth language when she adopted them.
Traveling with kids is a plus!
Jade Matre brings a different point of view and an interesting perspective. By experience, she is convinced that no method is more effective in kids’ languages than the sense of needing to speak a particular language outside from home, especially with their friends.
Jade Matre is a mom of 4 boys and in general has always practiced OPOL. At home they speak English and French. She explained that they lived in Australia for the first few years of her children’s lives, and recently moved to France. She witnessed how this transition affected how her kids picked up French as a second language.
For her older kids, that were 5 and 3 by the time they moved, she tells, “it took them around three months to start to say words and more like 9 months to speak in full French sentences. Now, after one year, they speak comfortably in French.”
Her twins, who were 2 by the time they moved, had a different experience. They left Australia just before they started to talk. She says that their speech was delayed by twelve months, but now they speak almost exclusively in French.
What NOT to do in OPOL
Alina Adams jokes about how she failed in making her kids completely bilingual. She shared with us her story hoping that her experience will serve as a learning lesson for other moms.
She told us that she could speak Russian with the possession of vocabulary of a pre-teen. At the beginning, her plan was to practice OPOL with her 3 children plus having a babysitter that would speak exclusively in Russian with the kids. Adina’s tactic failed when she started to switch from English to Russian with her kids for several reasons. Sometimes because her American-born husband was around and sometimes because she was just tired. Despite having a Russian speaking babysitter for a while, the children preferred to communicate in English most of the time.
Moral of the story in Alina Adams’ words, “One parent has to speak the second language exclusively. No matter where they are or who else is there.”
What to DO in OPOL
Kia Martinson shares with us how she successfully implemented the OPOL with her two currently bilingual boys (now 8 and 15). Kia speaks Estonian and got married to an American. Therefore, the kids spoke exclusively Estonian with her and English with her husband and everybody else. The key is to be consistent. She tells us, “If I ask something in Estonian, then they need to answer in the language asked. If they don’t know the word and use an English word, I repeat back the word in Estonian and have them do it and we just move on”.
Prenatal fitness expert thoughts on OPOL
Brigitta Lauren is an expert in the field of pre and postnatal fitness and nutrition. Her career has allowed her to meet several foreign families that have implemented the OPOL successfully on their children. She has met clients that teach their children from 3 to 6 languages. She says, “It seems the OPOL works well and is the standard”.
Brigitta also explains how she was raised as a bilingual child practicing OPOL with her parents. She was able to speak excellent German at the age of 3 by speaking that language with her German father.
In addition, Brigitta makes emphasis on the importance of having a connection and identification to the language the kid is learning. She explains, “Learning a language you have no relation to can be more difficult unless as a child you really enjoy it”.
Contributed by Graziella Gandolfi
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Sources:
http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/bilingualkids4.htm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/02/multilingual-
benefits_n_5399980.html
http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/biling.cfm