Teaching bilingual child to read

[MargotBamborough]

I hope this is the right place for this thread.

My son is being raised bilingual, we are doing OPOL and English is the minority language. He started speaking at around 21 months and he is now two and a half. He speaks a lot less English than his community language, which is French, but his understanding is very good. Other than speaking to him in English, the main tool I am using to improve his language acquisition is reading, which he loves. We read to him a lot in both languages.

I was a pretty early reader and was able to read simple phrases by the age of 3, so I know that my parents must have taught me the alphabet and how to read some words when I was around the age my son is now.

If we lived in the UK and English was his community language then I don't think I would hesitate to start teaching him about the alphabet and letters soon. But we live in France and next September he will be going to school where obviously they will start teaching him to read in French.

Will I confuse him if I start teaching him to read in English and then he goes to school and they start teaching him that different sounds go with the same letters?

I didn't find that my children were confused, they were able to understand quite easily that in x language, this makes x sound, but in y language, it's y sound.

Thanks, this is helpful to know.

What age did you start reading with your children?

I suppose my son is very able to understand that the words for the same things are different in French and English, so there's no logical reason why the same understanding shouldn't extend to reading.

We taught ours to read English about 4 so well ahead of CP. The first two had no problems separating the two languages and the only issue was the next school year their GS teacher telling us they could read in french - which we denied having anything to do with.

Third child could not get all the 'e' sounds right and mixed up English and French constantly even though we used the same method and we abandoned teaching her English until she'd learned French in CP.

Ironically she's now the biggest reader in English.

I never taught my kids to read in English (they were schooled in French). Once they learnt to read in French, they transferred those skills to reading in English. One is now studying at university in English having never had any formal education in English. They will be fine and will pick it up in good time. Continue to speak to them and read to them in English!

We're the other way around, so mine were learning to read English at 4/5. I found because they were learning phonics, it was so easy to transfer that to French with the explanation that certain letters/combinations are different in French. I waited about 6 months after my son started Reception to start with reading French, so that he had the concept of phonics and blending already.

I wish I'd kept it more equal between the two languages, as sadly now he's such a fabulous free reader in English he gets annoyed with having to do a bit of sounding out in French. However he can pick up a book and read it so that's positive and he continues to improve.

I'm not entirely sure what I'd have done if mine were starting later like in France! Think it depends if they are showing an interest.

They start school at 3 in France now so it is going to come up soon even though he is only 2.

There's no long term reading benefit to a child learning before they go to school- except, of course, interest i.e. once you allow for other factors, it's no indicator of later educational success. So don't feel like you need to!

However, EAL kids do tend to learn literacy skills slightly later than kids with only one language. This isn't, in itself, a worry. They just have a lot more going on.

Learning to read in one language does seem to give them the underpinning skills to transfer that learning to other languages- particularly if it's phonetic. So I wouldn't worry.

I've been working with kids today who have learnt to read in Russian, and Arabic. They're transferring all their knowledge to English ridiculously quickly!