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?

Thanks Pillowcase! I'll look it up.

I am always wary of books with titles like '10 lessons to learn to read' or the like. The one you have bought may be great; I don't know.

I do agree with other posters who have said that the most important thing is to model reading in English. If you don't value it, they won't.

Don't make reading and writing in English a chore; try to make it fun and rewarding. It should certainly be part of every day life, not a 'bolt on' to be fitted in after other homework is finished.

There are hundreds of really good English children's books; much better, in my opinion, than the often rather dull literature offered to French children.

Do lots of reading in English together. Play with words. My sister hated reading at her rather old fashioned English school and learnt with 'The Cat in the Hat'. Read poetry and nonsense and build on it. Add your own lines and characters.

Pie Corbett is brilliant - he has done lots of training and writing to help English primary school teachers with creative writing. I used to find Jumpstart very useful, but I would recomment anything he has written.

I do agree that the level descriptors as recommended by Tea are more useful than a simple reading test and that reading and spelling in English has to be a way of life, not another task.

teafortwo - aahh, SATs. Now I'm with you. Sorry, lack of acronym fuddled my brain. I will have a look at the link though, thank you. I know more about the controversy surrounding them than their actual content.

Racingsnake - the Jumpstart book looks good, I might get that.

Pillowcase - sounds like your DC have a good grounding in English reading from which to take off. It is certainly true that the books around these days for kids are absolutely fantastic. We spend happy hours in Borders as a family whenever we go back to the UK. Also, the Book Depository is a great online resource as they don't have delivery charges.

Loving all the comments here.

Decided to reinstigate 'reading time' last night. First I read a short story to ds in English, then DH read him something in French while the dds and I went to another room with a copy of Roald Dahl's The Twits. We took turns at reading and it really was a pleasure. We had a great laugh and they were quick to ask when they didn't understand a word. Am going to try to keep the dreaded TV off at night from now on.

I notice intonation and proper pauses are learned gradually too. DD1 can read and I don't need to follow the words. She uses the punctuation marks and even stresses important words etc making it pleasant to listen to.

DD2 hasn't yet grasped all that. She reads in monotone and doesn't pause at full stops or drop her voice at end of sentence etc. Very hard to follow without watching teh words with her.

Reading without expression can be a "by product" of having learnt to read in French. The French read out loud (and indeed speak) with much less expression than Anglophones, and in particular than the British.

I actually cannot cope at all with French radio news and the expressionless voices. It bores me silly.

French is more explicitly punctuated too.

Naturally purely English speaking readers pause at the end of phrases within sentences without them being punctuated in anyway. We choose which phrases we pause at depending on what we want to emphasis and what feels natural to what we are reading as well as factors such a the way we are speaking and who we are reading to when we read. This is difficult to 'get' if you learnt to read in French first. For these children this skill needs to be explicitly taught while for most children learning to read first in English it tends to just happens quite naturally....

CB - Yes - Attainment targets are used to grade SATS but are also used on a fairly regular basis for a teacher's own assessment.

They are very useful to know about.

I find my DD2 still reads on a monotone without always using the punctuation. It seems to me that this is pretty normal when you start learning to read, even for monolinguals. Expression and using punctuation to help you is a secondary skill, I think. I have heard many children starting out in reading doing the same. DD1 (who could read well in English before she started learning to read Spanish at school) did the same, but she now reads out loud beautifully.

Well done, OP, for taking an active step towards what you're trying to achieve. It sounds like everyone had a great time.

I notice the lack of expression with my bilingual charge - does anyone have any fantastic ideas about getting him reading expressively?

I've tried getting him to identify the most important words in the phrase, I try (it sometimes works) to get him to read things emphasising difference words and talk about how it changes the meaning, I model expressive reading, we do a lot on expression when he has poems to learn for school but he was reading "HP and the Chamber of Secrets" aloud to me the other day and it was a really dramatic bit read in a rapid, fluent monotone!

I think that to learn to read expressively (and indeed to speak expressively) it is vital to listen to other people reading and speaking expressively very frequently and from an early age. I have read (can't remember off hand where) that children can lose the ability ever to learn to speak/read with expression if they do not learn at an early age.

I'm very careful about the DVDs I buy my DD - I want her to listen to a wide range of expression - and French TV is not allowed!

He speaks expressively so I hope we haven't missed the window but reading is whole different ball-game! I'll continue reading aloud to him and hope he picks it up.

Maybe you need to (over)exaggerate the expression in order to make your point? I think some children just don't "get" the expression thing unless you really make the point to them.

Frannikin - Perhaps you could see if this helps...

Choose a book charge loves and perhaps even knows by heart.

For a surprise for Mummy/Daddy/Granny/Aunty etc he is going to read it very well. You will record it and give the recording to chosen person as a present so his performance has to be as HOT as a baked potato feels in the middle of January. It must be expressive!!!

Now you type and then print out the text onto paper and bluetac over the words. Carefully over several sessions go over sentence in great detail using high-lighters and silly symbols to show how you are going to read each word. Have a code for whisper, shout, scary voice, funny voice, babyish voice, slow voice, fast voice etc depending on what the text is like... Take time to try out different ways of reading and discussing which is best before putting pen to paper. Keep going back over previous work to practice.

When charge feels ready to record his reading (he might need you to read with him)- get him to listen back and say where he really made it expressive. He might want to record it several times to get it jut right.

Send/give the tape to whoever it it is for. Be very dramatic about this - wrap it up beautifully and send a letter saying the great lengths charge went to to prepare the tape. (Their respone is going to make the learning very real and concrete)

After this whenever he is reading very flat ask him how he could make it as good as that time you made a tape for ...........? Does he think making his voice slower, faster, higher, lower, quieter, louder would make the story a bit more interesting?

• Hope this helps.

Hi all,
Just thought I'd update here on our progress.

DS (4) is very enthusiastic about learning to read so he haunts me with the '100 easy lessons' book every day, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day. We're on lesson 62 and he can read! I think that book is great.

(I can't seem to post a long message ever on this site so have to break it up into 3 messages, sorry)

DD1 and DD2 and myself have been reading The Twits, then an awful book we stopped reading,then the Famous Five. We're each taking turns to read aloud and reading a chapter in one sitting, so not too stressful or long. DD1 reads very very well, and I'm delighted that she also stops and asks what something means. DD2 has surprised me, she can read fairly well, but still without expression or punctuation pauses. She doesn't really understand what she's reading though so we do have to go back and recap after she's read. The most important part though is that we all enjoy it. Being transported back to the world of Julian Dick and Anne, George and Timmy the do-o-o-og!

DD1 also wrote a couple of postcards to friends in English too, so I can see her spelling is not too bad.

Oh, a result of our reading together is that now DD2 takes DS aside and reads him his own (easy for her) books, so she gets practice and gets to feel like the big girl, and he gets the benefit of more reading. Win, win!

Good on you taie d'oreiller! o:

We'll be bringing up ours biligual... I'm British and my partner is Dutch but we both speak both languages. There's a few options about how to deal with it out there and I've found some great advice here: www.multilingualchildren.org/index.html

good luck!