Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Bilingual or English only?

Bilingual household here, kids are learning two additional languages .
Do not believe when they (teachers, that is) tell you to not read or speak in another language. Do what is natural in your house. My kids were never, ever confused by languages.

I did a brief search this morning and managed to track down at least some of the literature on the effect of second language immersion on reading acquisition. I'm sure there's much more than I found, and I can't guarantee I am reporting the consensus view. But the papers I looked at generally seemed to agree that there is no harm at all to letting your kids learn to read in their first language at home at the same time (or even before) they are learning to read in the immersion language at school. A lot of the research seems to have been done in Canada, since there are a lot of state supported French immersion schools there attended by native English speakers. (You can imagine the political hot potato that one must have become.) One of the papers does report that for kids who begin French immersion in K, their English reading skills in 1st and 2nd grade are a bit behind those of peers in English only schools. But this is not so surprising, since English reading is not taught in 1st or 2nd grade in the French immersion schools. When English reading instruction begins in 3rd grade, however, they catch up and often even surpass their English-only peers. (This paper is in Reading Research Quarterly and is called "English Reading Skills of French Immersion Students in Kindergarten and Grades 1 and 2". It is probably not the latest word, since it was published in 1987.)

BB

BaseballDad,

Thanks for doing the research. I've heard similar things about DLI program results. They do seem very encouraging and it's one of the reasons we choose to stay.
I'd like to find research that looks at the process by which the students learn and what types of struggles/successes are typical. There are different models and most look at the end results of the programs. I've seen test results given at certain points in the program (ie. end of 2nd) as well. It would be interesting to see what happens at different stages, like a year-by-year developmental chart, to understand what a child in immersion may go through. Maybe it would be an oversimplification of a complex and individualized process -- but I'd still like to see one!

The Center for Applied Linguistics has extensive information about two-way (dual language) immersion.

http://www.cal.org/twi/

This would be interesting. I also wonder if GT kids would follow the sequence or would have their own paths.

Hi,

I just want to pipe-in (is this English?) to say that DD (and DS but he does not speak much yet) is learning 4 languages at the same time, Spanish, German, Dutch and English. Every time she has the opportunity to improve in one of them (for example when we do a trip to Spain to see grandparents), the other languages improve as well.

Another thing, some time ago I did my own research about bi-literacy and learning to read in more than one language. The recommendation I got was to teach to read (and write) DD sequentially.
Well, that what the 'book' says....
and as usual, DD is going to do something else. I see her starting to recognize words in all four languages, and I am pretty certain that once she starts reading she will do it in all four languages.

Greetings form HOT Spain !

Introspection has been leading me to think that in our minds there is 'no such thing' as seperate languages. (My own mind, anyway) I seem to have a huge vocabulary list of words and phrases in my head, and they seem to be linked to various people, so that when a person is in front of me, all the words they are likely to understand are 'highlighted' and the words that I don't expect the person to understand are like a dark button on a webpage - visible, but not clickable. It's not just about which language, but about what sorts of words a person is likely to know. I am noticing this because my ideas about what words DS12 know are noticibly wrong lately. His working vocabulary is much bigger than I expect.

hope this helps,
Grinity