Cunning linguists
What language do you read your child's books in?
Brittany2019 · 16/12/2019 09:51
Bonjour! I live in France with French DP. We're trying to bring DD (nearly 4) up to be bilingual and doing OPOL.
She has lots of books in both English and French and doesn't discriminate between them when it comes to her bedtime story. So sometimes she'll ask me to read a book in French, or ask DP to read an English book.
Up to now, I've been translating any French books she asks me to read into English as I'm reading them. But it dawned on me recently that this will be very confusing for her reading comprehension when the time comes.
So now I'm not sure what to do. Do I read the books in French, keep translating into English, or just flat-out refuse to read a book in the "wrong" language? What do other people do?
Thanks
User478 · 16/12/2019 11:14
The bilingual family I worked for read the book in the language it was printed in, but discussed it in the other language "can you see the red dog? What do you think is going to happen next?"
Brittany2019 · 16/12/2019 17:23
Oh, that’s quite a good solution, I suppose. Thanks @User478!
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