bilingual kids, keeping other language up to scratch especially written language

[pillowcase]

Hi all,
My kids (8, 6 and 4) are bilingual French/English and we're living in France.

I've had the niggling question for a few years now about how to keep their English up to scratch. Their spoken language is fine (a few misplaced translations etc but nothing to worry about) but they have no grounding whatsoever in written English, spelling etc. DD1 is nearly 9 and I think it's time to get her reading/writing in English but I can't seem to get myself motivated to find out how and what?

I have a vague idea that she should be able to follow the Irish (or English) curriculum for her age group with an aim to (maybe) sitting the English paper in the Irish junior cert at 15 or something similar.

Sounds like a pushy mum but she does very well in all her school subjects so it would be no stress for her really, more for me to have to plan/teach/correct

Just wondering if anyone is in a similar situation and how you have tacked it?

any other bilingual families out there?

We are bilingual English/German, soon to be trilingual as we are adding French to that mix since moving to French speaking Switzerland.

My DC are only 4 and 6yo so are just learning to read and write. I know that some of the other bilingual children are going to English classes to learn to read and write in English. I am waiting until DD is fluent in French before I consider anything like that.

I don't know about them sitting an UK/Irish exam, I suppose if you do a lot of work with them then it may be feasable.

I'll be watching this with interest. I'm pg with a future bilingual citizen, and very interested in how it all works.

FWIW I know of a bilingual family who employed a series of British/Irish students on an Erasmus year at the local university and also native English speaking TEFL teachers to come in once a week for a couple of hours to do creative writing classes with their young children.

I think they found the variety of young teachers and the fact that it was creative writing really helped to motivate their dc. Also, it wasn't mum making them write a story or a poem, but Euan (or whoever) who also rode a motorbike and so was cool.

I suspect they had already got the groundwork in of basic spelling, but it seems like a nice idea for continuation.

We have 2 bilingual English/Swedish children (8 and 5) and are living in Sweden.

Here they are entitled by law to extra lessons in their mother tonuge (English) once they turn 7. This is provided for free by the local education authorities.

Is there anything similar in France? It may be worth checking out, or perhaps I'm being a bit naive.

Hi all, have a look at this site it has lots of information and resources about raising bilingual children. HTH

I suspect my English/French speaking dd (5)will be reading fluently in English before they even get round to teaching her in French. I believe they start more formal learning in the 3rd maternelle (September) but she will be 6.5 before she starts primary level.

I buy her reading/writing work books and English magazines with puzzles etc. Our local British store stocks these for all levels, and I stock up when i go back to the UK (WH Smiths). She really enjoys these.

Found these ORT ones on Amazon I might give these a go myself.

I think I will just try to encourage her to read in English as much as possible. It is difficult to get a good balance though as I don't want to interfere with her acquisition of French.

I understand that there is more likely to be a problem there in building vocabulary as we speak English at home.

I guess it is possible to get a copy of a UK/Irish curriculum? I can see that it would be a good idea to ensure the dcs can follow it, even if you don't worry about exams...I'll watch with interest.

Hi pillowcase,

We are an English/Spanish bilingual family. DH and I are British so the language at home is English; we live in Spain and oldest 3 DC (DD1 8, DD2 6, DS 4)go to local Spanish school, so speak only Spanish there.

We felt it was important to teach the DC to read in English before they learned to read in Spanish as Spanish is a phonetic language and therefore much easier to read. This was made easier by the fact that they don't really teach them to read Spanish here until age 6. With DD1 this worked brilliantly. I bought the Oxford Reading Tree series and we tried to match where she would have been level wise if we had been in the UK. I found a link on another thread this week to a reading age test so have just tested her level now and she has a reading age of 10 years and 4 months (she'll be 9 in July), so I am pretty pleased about that. Her Spanish reading is behind her English but still average in her class. We are under pressure to encourage her to read more in Spanish at home, but I am happy to let her continue reading in English as she is now at a level where she does this for relaxation and I love that.

With DD2 we have been a bit, well, crapper for want of a better word. We have followed the same tack, but have been a bit complacent and have let her daily reading time slip to every day / twice a week etc. Having just done the reading test for her too (reading age of 6 yrs and 5 months; she will be 7 next month) I am re-motivated to keep it up. She is right in the middle of Spanish reading learning too now, so I wish I had pushed her a bit more earlier.

We are just starting out with DS - letter sounds etc.

As for writing, we have been more laid back about this. At one point I did try and get DD1 writing stories in English but with her Spanish homework etc it all seemed a bit much. We have decided instead to concentrate on her reading, figuring that she will, passively at least, pick up spelling and some idea about written language through that. She does sometimes write English stories off her own accord now.

Having said all that, we are planning to move them to the international school DH teaches at for secondary, so they will do IGCSEs there. As such, we don't have your issue of working towards a qualification at home. That does sound like a fairly mammoth task depending on homework and extra curricular activities.

If I were you (and I am no expert, just basing it on our experience!), I would start by concentrating on the reading in English. I think this is the key to accessing the written side of the language. If you can instill a love of reading (and are prepared for the cost of providing a small library in your DC's bedroom!) then you are setting them up brilliantly.

Oh, could I ask one of the French speakers to have a look at this thread for me, to check if I have translated something correctly.

Sorry for the hijack.

It doesn't have to be following a curriculum though, does it?

I learnt English (as a foreign language) through reading Ladybird books. Am sure the high quality of the illustrations (in those days!) were a major determining factor.

Dd (12) who has been an avid reader since Yr 2 gradually started picking up Swedish books to read.

She is learning to write it not through me, but through joining an internet forum where she corresponds with Swedish youngsters.

Was going to get her to do Swedish GCSE (which would involve a certain amount of pushing), but find there isn't one.

I found this book very useful, it gives practical examples of what you can do.
www.amazon.co.uk/Growing-Up-Two-Languages-Practical/dp/0415333326/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=124 0513293&sr=8-1

cory, I think the reason I talk about following a curriculum etc is because I regularly decide to read more with them and then let it fade, so the curriculum would be to focus me more than anything.

wrote a reply earlier and lost it, will try again. Gonna look at the amazon book, I do find this an interesting topic.

Thanks for all replies, some interesting thoughts there.

I did like some of you and started them on English reading before they started French in school. It worked out well in that the dds can read in English, not sure at what level though. Now their French reading is superior though, but it is easier to read...

claricebean, you mentioned the reading test, where could I access that? Then at least I'd have an idea where we are.

I have contemplated sending them to someone for creative writing but a) they do other activities so I hate adding another hour on there and b) it's a pity to pay for something you could do yourself, I do have the time and teach TEFL also, although it's not the same!

I agree that reading a lot is key, so I will stock up more on magazines etc when we go to Ireland. We do have plenty of books in teh house but they tend to favour their French ones, I think because it's something in common with their friends. One advantage is that English is so important and they now realise that even though they know HIgh School Musical in French, the original is in English, as are the songs.

mammya, will have a look at that site, thanks.

One thing that worked well for us was subscribing to a children's magazine. Something that comes through the post for them is always a big hit. Though I am sooo pleased to have seen the end of the ghastly bear Bamse and his revoltingly well-meaning friends. Still, it did help them to acquire contemporary Swedish child language.

Also the internet has been a great help.

I tried to keep DS1 (6.5) up to scratch with his reading and he'd started reading in English before he started to learn to read in French at school. However, this has caused him some problems in learning to read French at school and also he has dyspraxia which makes it very difficult for him to remember the patterns and sounds of letters, so for the time being on the recommendation of the occupational therapist we've stopped reading in English and are concentrating on the French. However, DS2 (4) is ready to start learning to read and he will learn in English and will probably be reading quite well before he even begins to learn French. When I discussed this with the French occupational therapist she said that the majority of children were perfectly able to learn to read and write in both languages, it's just the odd ones like my little chap who can have a few problems.

We're in Italy and dd is bilingual English/Italian. Tbh, I always worry about her Italian not being as up to scratch as her English, as all the books we have are in English, all the dvds etc, and when she gets home from school, she is with me, so if she's doing any writing stuff, she does it in English....Would definitely agree with pp's that reading is the answer, read, read read....

where are you in France pillowcase? I recall we have a nice MNer in France who wrote that she had started an extra-curricular English programme for her own dc and a group of dc from bilingual families in the neighbourhood employing a qualified UK teacher to work with them. It looked very good but I can't remember her MN nick or where she was located. Could you ask on the living in France thread? Maybe that would suit

I did all that myself, after dd learnt to read German, I taught her to read English and I used the "100 Words Kids Need to Read by 1st Grade" workbook whicn she loved and it helped a lot with recognising frequent sight words, also teaches the spelling through practice. Each chapter covers 10 words and they use them over and over. They're quite nice books from Scholastic. It didn't bother me that they were American but it might not be what you want?

Then I used the grade 2 book from the same series and after that Flashkids reading skills grades 3-5 and from Evan-Moore "Read and Understand Nonfiction" and "Read and Understand Science". My dd was happy to use them all. I think if it is just 1-2 pages full of interesting facts with some comprehension practice it is not too demanding on you and quite pleasant for them to do.

btw if you wanted to view any of those books, they are all on the American amazon.com site where I think they all have that facility where you can look inside the book to get an idea of what they are actually like.

We are a bilingual family living in France and DD (4.5) goes to a French-English bilingual school in Paris. I am, however, about to get her started on reading lessons in English and I fully anticipate having to give her additional literacy lessons (ie above and beyond what school provide) right through her primary education.

ZZZen, I'm in Gers dept but there are very few English families around and they all have younger children so haven't come up against this yet.

I've made up my mind that we'll read more together from now on. Keep letting that slip. Both are very good readers in french (even if DD2 only started officially this year), and I did work on a book with them when they were about 3 or 4 (How to teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons) so they do have the concept of reading in English, just not so much practice.

I think the idea of subscribing to a magazine is a good one. Am going to read about those workbooks on Amazon too.

yes I think just keep on and on reading to them, whatever keeps their interest up and I wouldn't worry too much about the 4 year old. I think it might be enough to just concentrate on the French there.

With the older ones, just find some topic that interests them then they will want to read about it. They may even like Tintin or something like that, reading it first in French and then English. What I wouldn't do personally is a grammar style, what is an adjective etc book at that age. They can be a real turn-off.

Another nice book which dd enjoyed is "The Complete Book of Maps and Geography" although it has a strong American focus with a lot of work on the different states, she enjoyed learning about time-lines, hemispheres and doing floor pans and reading maps etc

Science is good, so are biographies things like the Wright Brothers and if you're Irish (?) maybe look for a nice social studies book on Irish history, famous people, parts of Ireland. I think they would find something like that interesting. There is a huge amount of good material out there once you start looking around.

actually having written that about the COMPLETE book of geography etc , I realise I don't have a clue where the Gers dept is! However I can now locate Colorado on a map of the US

glad i found this thread - just starting to encourage reading with ds1 (4.6) - we're just moved to germany and i presume since he wont go to school for another 18 months that he needs to be taught to read at home. dd went to school for 3 years in the UK and all the direction about reading came from the school. She used the oxford reading tree books and loved them - think i might order those ORT workbooks!! or i saw another book on a different thread about teaching your child to read in 100 lessons - maybe i'l just order them all - we've got another younger ds so they'll get used in the end!!

ZZZen

canella, we used that book and I found it very good. it's very american, and it's very structured - but it does work.DD1 was very interested in letters/sounds so we started that when she was about 4 I think, just did 20 mins most days over the summer holidays, usually with her begging for more! We did a bit more in the halloween holidays and you could say she could more or less read anything at that stage.

We are a bilingual family living in France with children aged 11, 9 and 2. The older two can speak, read and write both languages. DD1 learnt to read English while we were still in the UK (we moved back to France when she was nearly 7) and I taught DD2 myself using Oxford Reading Tree books while she was in Grande Section.

I also found a native English speaker to give them a weekly English lesson with an emphasis on creative writing (which is sorely lacking in French schools). I'm really glad I did it - I don't think they would have taken it so seriously if I had tried to do it myself and we have had 2 excellent teachers that the girls have loved - they still have the lessons now and both really enjoy them.

So I can thoroughly recommend employing a teacher if you can find one. My girls take it all so much more seriously than they would if it was just me trying to get them to concentrate!