April, 2004

 

 

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7. Teaching a Second (or Third) Language to Your Child
by Patricia Briones

Has it happened to you? You're reading your child her favorite bedtime story (for the 28th time) and YOU fall asleep. Or, you're trying to skip 2 or 3 pages of a Dr. Seuss book to get to the end sooner and his sweet voice says, "Mommy, (Daddy,) you forgot something". Yes, all that repetition bores us to tears but to our children repetition is essential for the mastery of language. Their innate love of repetition, of hearing the same language patterns over and over again, insures that they learn to understand and communicate in the language that they hear spoken. According to Maria Montessori, this insatiable desire for repetition is present during the "sensitive period" for language - from about 1 1/2 to 3 years of age. 

Dr. Montessori, the creator of the Montessori method of early childhood education and the inspiration for the Montessori Schools movement, identified the "sensitive period" for language after years of observing little children whose supervision was assigned to her by the Italian government. She developed the concept of the "absorbent mind" to explain the child's ability to take in (or soak up) stimuli from the environment and, by means of repetition, transform them into knowledge and behavioral development. We, as parents educating our children at home, can take advantage of Dr. Montessori's discoveries by introducing our children to many things, with the faith that the child's inherent need to learn and develop will insure that s/he make best use of those stimuli.

If we examine how a child naturally learns her/his first language we will see how to best help her/him learn a second language. The child listens to speech for months before attempting to duplicate the sounds. To my husband and me it seemed that our children duplicated the intonation of a phrase before they attempted to say words. We would hear a string of unintelligible sounds but we could recognize it as a question or an imitation of the intonation of a phrase they had just heard from an adult. This natural drive to imitate can be maximized by ensuring that your child's environment is filled with the sounds of the language you want her/him to learn. Of course if one or both of the parents speaks another language you need only be sure that you use that language when communicating with the child. Many bilingual parents worry that exposing a child to two languages will be confusing or perhaps hold the child back in English, which s/he will need when starting school. According to child development expert, Jan Faull, it is not detrimental to teach two languages to a small child. In fact, if you want to make a child functionally bilingual, you must start in early childhood.

Other parents believe that, since they don't speak a second language, they would not be able to teach one to their children. I don't agree. There are so many audio and audio-visual materials available that, in my opinion, it is an excellent idea for parents to present a second language to their children and to begin to learn that language right along with them.

Some concepts of second language learning that parents should keep in mind are the following:

1) Listening comes first and the model must be accurate. Don't try to read a story to your children in a language that you do not know well.

2)There must be understanding inherent in the model - conversation about real objects that the child can see, audio tapes with both English and the other language or video tapes or books with the visual representation (pictures) of the objects and situations that the child is learning to talk about.

3) The child must be comfortable with the sounds before s/he attempts to repeat them. Forcing a child to say something before s/he is ready will bring up the affective barrier (emotional resistance) and the child will become resistant to the learning.

4) Only after a word or phrase has been heard and spoken with understanding should it be read and written. Listening and speaking with understanding come before reading and writing. Dr. Montessori's technique for teaching beginning reading and writing which I used with my children was to cut alphabet letters out of sand paper and teach the children the sound of each letter as they traced the letter with their index and middle fingers - the fingers which will later guide the pencil.

Dr. Montessori stresses the importance of allowing a child as much repetition of an activity as s/he seems to require, without interruption and, conversely, the importance of not insisting that the child stay with an activity to the point of boredom I think both these ends can be achieved by keeping your child's aural environment rich with sounds of the new language that s/he can listen to while playing - audio tapes or CDs of songs and rhymes, videos that are short enough to hold her/his attention and, if you can pronounce the language accurately, picture books to listen to. When the child has a vocabulary of basic words, s/he can begin reading and writing them with the help of reading games and illustrated activity books.

We must not delude ourselves into thinking that our children will become completely conversant in a language in which no one actually converses with them. However they will master the pronunciation while their ears, palate and tongue are still sensitive to the formation of many different sounds. They will have a huge headstart in vocabulary building and, perhaps most important, they will be encouraged to value a language and culture different from their own or a language and culture that belonged to their ancestors.




The types of language learning materials mentioned in the above article can be found at www.TheBilingualChild.com a web site designed by the author of the article, Patricia Briones,in order to promote English/Spanish bilingual learning and literacy. Mrs. Briones has taught at all levels from pre-school through community college and is convinced, after spending years teaching teenagers and young adults, that second language learning should begin sooner. Parents and children can learn Spanish together at www.TheBilingualChild.com.

 

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