Living abroad - teaching a child to read in English

[amyboo]

Not sure if this is the right place, but I figured book lovers might know where to point me for more advice/information.

DS is 2.5 years old and is starting to show an interest in words on the page. He already knows quite a few letters and the alphabet song and things. Obviously I'm not expecting him to be reading at age 2.5, but I'd like to encourage his new found love of words a bit. We don't live in the UK and will not be returning any time soon, so DS won't be learning to read and write English at school. In fact, where we live (Belgium) kids don't formally learn to read and write until 1st primary, when he'll be nearly 6.5 years old.

So, we're keen in the meantime to gently encourage him with reading in English, but aren't really sure where to go from here or what sort of activities, books etc we should be looking at. We read every day with him, and he has access to all the books on his bookshelves as well as his beloved Thomas the Tank Engine magazine. He's started saying "Mummy/Daddy read this word now" and pointing to the words on the pages. He can identify quite a few lowercase letters and will link them with objects - such as o octopus, s socks, w whale, etc.

So, I guess what I'm asking is does anyone know what we should be doing now? Should be be starting on sounds with him, or just carrying on getting him familiar with letters? Should we focus on the phonetic letters, or can we teach them traditionally (he goes to French speaking school, so we don't have to follow what a teacher does)? Should we be trying to do reading type activity sheets with him already? DH was looking at some books last time we were back in the UK but they were aimed at 3+, so I don't know if it's worth investing in some books anyway..... Any advice would be gratefully received!

We have a similar situation, though our DD1 is a little older. Watching with interest

We live abroad and I've been teaching DD to read, using phonics. She's 5.5 now and her reading has just really taken off. It's been a gradual process, fitted in here and there, but very enjoyable and rewarding. She started showing an interest in letters when she was about 2-3, and I just built it up gradually, teaching her the various letter sounds with lots of pencil and paper games etc. (Teach the letter sounds, not the names, and keep the consonants sounding short, i.e. say a very short c, not cuh, because when he comes to blend the letters together it's easier to hear what c-a-t says rather than what cuh-a-tuh says).

At around age 3 and older a good thing to do is to play little games that help them to start hearing the various sounds in a word - what letter a three-letter word begins with, what it ends with etc.

For the how-to-do-it, I bought the Read Write Inc teacher's handbook and the Jolly Phonics handbook - hard to say which one I'd recommend more because neither was ideal (RWI is very classroom-focused). You might want to post on the Primary Education thread and the Home Ed thread to see if there are newer/better resources for phonics teaching at home. There is, of course, also a lot on the internet - people may suggest the Phonics International site, which has some good stuff but can appear overly-complicated.

The one book I wouldn't recommend (but which sometimes is recommended) is "Teach your child to read in X (can't remember how many) easy lessons". The letters and sounds are written weirdly!

www.phonicsplay.co.uk (has a free part and a pay-for part - £12 a year I think) has lots of good online games - some are good for practising hearing the different sounds that make up a word, as I described above.

Re. reading books - it's worth getting a few of the first-level phonics readers (e.g. Songbirds, Read Write Inc's readers) to see if he takes to them when he's a bit older. My daughter didn't - I think because they didn't seem like "proper" books - so we stuck with pencils and paper, magnets etc. etc. until she got to a certain point where she could tackle harder readers that seemed more like books. For a long time, she preferred to read easy little sentences that I had written than a phonics reader. But that's def. a your child may vary area. See what his style is before spending money on lots of readers!

Here is a good sound chart from the Phonics International site I mentioned above (have just posted same link in Home Ed). In Primary Education there are some kind primary teachers posting reading-related things, which is helpful.

Wow, thanks for that vesela

One thing that concerns me is how a child (especially so young) can process that the letters make different sounds in different languages. That's the main reason I'm reticent to do very much with DD1, because I don't want to confuse and hamper her progress or her communication in Swedish. (English is very much the second language in our home, we are permanently settled in Sweden and DH is Swedish, so she is only exposed to very minimal English).

Any experiences there?

surround IME, it is easier not to mix up the sounds for younger kids than for yourself, you are transposing an adult point of view to your child. She will probably take it in her stride, and notice the difference between the 2 and be amused. It will definitely not hamper her swedish, unless she already have some trouble with one language.

Here, they teach 2 foreign languages from 3 yo in kindergarden (1 hour of each/day). When the children all learn to read at 6, DD1 and her classmates started to learn to write and read in 2 languages simultaneously with no problem. The adults put you to shame with how many languages they speak almost perfectly.

So phonics is definitely the way to go then? I thought it was just because that's how they taught it in primary school in the UK. Is it really the best way to teach it? We've been doing the alphabet song and things with DS, so I'm a bit worried that he'll be confused if we start doing the phonic sounds now. I'll have a look at the resources mentioned though - sounds like some good stuff is available online, which is kind of what I was hoping.

Agree with LMA - have found the same. It doesn't seem to be any more difficult than the adjustments they have already learned to make in realising that there are two (or more) different words for dog.

I assumed that DD would learn to read in Czech once she started school. However, because the actual process of blending sounds together is the same in both languages, she has picked up how to read in Czech as well as a by-product of learning to read in English. (She's learned Czech letters and sounds partly at preschool, partly with us when it comes up. It's a pretty regular language, so not as many sound-letter correspondences to learn). Her Czech reading isn't as fluent yet because she doesn't get as much practice, but she can make her way through a sentence.

She knows that c in Czech is [ts], and in English curly c is [k] or sometimes [s]. Now that she's learning to spell in English, I'll sometimes draw attention to the differences - for example, I've told her that the [k] at the end of a word is usually written ck in English, but that in Czech there would just be a k.

If she's sounding out an English word and there's a j, she'll occasionally pronounce it y, but then correct herself when she remembers that's Czech /realises the word doesn't make sense with a y in the middle.

(If there is interference between the two languages, it's in her spoken English, in which she sometimes uses Czech word order. I'm guessing that's a fairly normal thing to do, though).

As all of us with bilingual children know, none of it is as falling-off-a-log easy as others sometimes assume, but for a bilingual child there's a lot more that you need to process than the differences between letter sounds, if you see what I mean.

amyboo - it's definitely the way to go. The reason they teach it in the UK now is because it does make it easier. It's like this - lots of children can work out the "rules" of what letter combinations are used for what sound, regardless of how they learn to read, i.e. regardless of whether they have them formally pointed out to them. This is what happens with children who just learned to read by looking at books, or all the children who learned to read when phonics wasn't taught very systematically or at all.

Some (about 10-15% I think) can't work it out for themselves so well, though, and it's to reach those children that they're now using (or rather, returning to) phonics in UK schools. These were the children who were failed by the look-say approach etc.

However, pretty much all children will benefit from having the different sounds and how we can write them pointed out to them - it makes learning to read easier and quicker for them.

p.s. don't worry if he already knows letter names - you can either just forget about them for now, or if he's very keen on using them you can say "that ay says a."

I think phonics is the recommended method for bilingual children, not least because most other European languages are pretty much entirely phonetic. I did that Teach your Child to read book mentioned above and it worked quite well. I didn't much like it and it is very American, but it certainly did the trick. I then consolidated some of the more difficult letter compositions (igh, ought etc.) using Jolly Phonics and a rhyming dictionary.
From that, DD picked up reading Italian straight away with no input from me and was reading fairly fluently when she started school at 6. I had planned to lay off the English while she consolidated her Italian in her first year but I found that as her Italian reading improved so did her English and she now reads fluently in both languages, with no crossover with the letter sounds. I haven't concentrated much on spelling and writing though. There was not much point with the writing as she learns the local script at school and I was hoping that with the increased reading some of the correct spelling would sink in but apparently not :-(

I'm going to put the other point of view forward.

I was in a similar situation to you when we moved here. DD1 was 3 and loved booksµ. After much tought and research I decided to leave teaching reading to the experts (ie her teachers) and concentrate on her spoken languages.

She learnt to read at school at 6, and by a year later was easily level with her british peers in her English reading (despite me doing little teaching to help) and her French reading was well above average.

She is now 13 and a verocious reader in both languages. I have done the same with her 2 sisters. DD3 is now 6 and has just started to learn to read at school. She has been learning some words with her sisters for the last 3 years but on a very half hearted basis. I would be surprised if she were not reading easily by Christmas.

So my advice is leave it. Read to him and enjoy books together, but don't make a special effort to teach him to read.

Totally agree with Frenchfancy. As long as you are reading to your ds regularly and engaging him in conversation, then he will find his own way in English.

We're in Belgium too and dd (now 9 yrs) was born here. She has been educated bilingually in French and Flemish from 2.5 yrs (submersion system). She speaks and reads fluently in both languages although she favours Flemish atm and written grammar is improving in both. Formal learning began at 6 yrs although she did lots of 'psychomotricitie' language related activities before then : pricking out shapes of letters with pin in paper (v. popular activity here as you probably already know!) - music and movement using legs and arms to form letter shapes etc etc

We speak English exclusively at home except when her friends are over and I read to her regularly in English and she has just picked it up as she has gone along. (Like Brangelina's dd - she seemed to just pick it up by osmosis at the same rate she was learning her other languages).

I deliberately haven't (so far) introduced formal English learning because I haven't wanted to cause any conflict with school work, particularly before she was properly established in French and Flemish.

But her spoken English vocabluary is as good as any of her peers back in the UK (very, very occasionally she will use a French or Flemish word when she hasn't learnt/doesn't know the English one yet) and she can easily read books meant for her age group in English. The only thing we need to work on is her English spelling which is pretty much phonetic (although improving) and I have only recently started to introduce the odd rapid-fire English spelling test at odd moments which she finds fun. But personally, I think reading in English is the key here; her spelling will improve as she continues to read widely in English and I'm just lucky I guess that she loves is obsessed with books (like her ma!)

So I would personally be a bit cautious personally, of introducing too much formal English letter/sound work before your ds has established himself properly in French. Must emphasise that I have absolutely NO professional experience with this though whatsoever so am probably talking through my hat - this is just what has worked for us - and the needs of each individual child are different. ( I have friends here with pre-school children who are actively using computer programmes to train their dc in English.) Have you tried asking the school for some advice?

You can do that, too, if it's working for her by herself. Or you can teach her. It's up to you. Much as I love reading to DD, it's very handy for me that she can now pick up a book and read it by herself as well (she's only been able to do this for the past couple of weeks - we flew back to the UK last week and for the first time she sat and read books while I did too. I did read to her as well, though - in fact I'd be most sad if she told me she didn't want me to any more :)).

I can understand about not wanting to conflict with any learning in the other language. However, DS was born here and has been in a FR speaking creche since he was 5 months and is now in a FR speaking maternelle. I don't really have any concerns about his acquisition of French, and as he seems keen to know what words are etc, I think it would be good to encourage this a bit. I certainly don't intend to force anything, nor do I expect him to be reading in the next few months. I guess I really just wanted some pointers about where we should be heading with him.

I guess for the moment we might just continue reading showing him letters and words and see how we go. Interesting to hear others' experiences of it though - especially those going through the Belgian education system.

Amyboo Yes, as ever with parenting, best to trust your instincts as to what is right for your ds. As I said in last para I'm just bumbling through with the best of them and offering purely personal experience/opinion so it really is each to their own with this sort of thing, partic as each individual dc has different strengths. I know people who have consulted professional educational linguists (if that's the right term) about this sort of issue and have come away with conflicting opinions from them too!

Sounds as though your ds is naturally well set up to benefit from brilliant language opportunities here which is the most important thing.

Just to clarify though - the point about not interfering with other languages - I personally didn't want to offer any conflicting 'formal' teaching prior to six years when formal written language learning starts but again it's an individual decision and dd was being immersed in two other langs which I felt was more than enough at the time.

Would bore expound further on subject if had more time but late for appt

Good luck with it all!

Yes, I'd go with the flow and just do a bit of introducing letter sounds instead of names.

At DD's preschool, where they do reading preparation in Czech, the teacher asked me if I wanted them to do it with her (because she knew I was doing stuff in English at home). The teacher and I thought for a moment, and then she said - well, you can't really hold her back from wanting to do it (in Czech as well) if she wants to, can you? And I agreed. (It's a Montessori nursery so that's their general approach). The teacher added that half the time her son wanted to know how to pronounce Italian etc. words on food labels!

Not so long ago, bilingualism itself was often discouraged on the grounds of "confusing them." Which again isn't to say it's all easy - just that I wouldn't worry too much about the conflict with school work unless some is actually happening and you can see it's a problem.

and strictlycaballine - I can see your point about three languages. There is the question of the time available to spend on things (at any particular point).

I agree with Frenchfancy too. The method my dd learnt in her French speaking school was letter sounds/whole word recognition rather than phonics. She transferred the technique to English and now reads well in both languages. It was a bit disconcerting that she did not start til 6.5 - but they catch up really quickly.

"As all of us with bilingual children know, none of it is as falling-off-a-log easy as others sometimes assume, but for a bilingual child there's a lot more that you need to process than the differences between letter sounds, if you see what I mean."

I agree, and one of the problems I have encountered bringing up a bilingual child is that non-bilingual teachers are often very ill-informed and misguided about which bits of becoming bilingual/biliterate are difficult and which aren't!

Lots of them can work out the rules by themselves (which is what happens when they learn to read using whole-word) but some children need the correspondences to be taught more explicitly. And it makes things easier for pretty much all children.

Bonsoir, what assumptions have you found that teachers have, out of interest?

Some of the major myths:

Myth 1. That it will always be easier for a bilingual child to learn to read in the language of the environment than in the language of his/her home. Fact: children learn to read most easily (all other factors being equal, in particular proper phonics instruction!) in the language they speak most fluently.

Myth 2. Proper phonics instruction should only be given in the first language in which a child is taught to read. Phonics instruction in a child's second language could confuse them. Fact: phonics are critical to learning to decode efficiently, and also to learning to encode (spell) correctly. Phonics rules are different from one language to another and a child needs explicit instruction in phonics for each of his/her languages (this goes for second language learners as well as for bilingual children).

Myth 3. Learning to read sequentially in each language is a less risky strategy for bilingual children. Fact: the benefits of bilingualism are greatest for balanced bilinguals with an equivalent mastery of listening/speaking/reading/writing in both languages. Learning to read simultaneously in two languages is the most appropriate way of learning to read for a bilingual child and ensures the best long-term reading and writing outcomes.

Myth 4. Bilingual children will be bad at spelling in both their languages. Fact: spelling is most easily mastered when explicit instruction in spelling takes place in phonics-based lessons, in addition to wide reading. Bilingual children need to receive equivalent amounts of teaching and do equivalent amounts of reading in both their languages.

100% agree with everything Bonsoir.

We are in the situation wherein Dd is reading beautifully in English (the home language) and now needs instruction in the phonic code of the environment language. I am uncertain as to whether the local school will provide this instruction but am in no doubt that she will still need a proper grounding in French phonics. I am working on ways to ensure this, with or without the school!

I disagree quite strongly with bonsoir. Are you an expert? If not then what gives you the authority to say what is myth and what it fact?

My DD reads in both languages equally, just as she speaks both languages with equally fluency. She has not been taught to decode using phonics in English any more than I was. Children do not need "explicit instruction in phonics" in order to read. If one did then half the population would be illiterate.

All children learn differently. Some will need more help than others, some will need different methods. In any case the OPs child is 2.5 which is pretty early to be think about reading in any language.

And how is your DD's writing in English, frenchfancy?