Bilingualism & learning to read

[NotHerAgain]

Not a concern really, just wondering how it usually happens.... would be great if someone could share their experience.

Dd is in y1, French/English bilingual (both her dad and I are French but we've lived here all her life) and getting more confident with reading. She tried yesterday to read one of her French story books and obviously, the phonic rules don't always quite match and there were no 'keywords' of instant recognition to help her along...

Over in France, my mum started doing some French phonics with her last summer (as a game, dd enjoys it) but I felt that it confused her a bit at a time when she was still learning to decode sounds in English, so asked my mum to slow down.
My mum argued that if you can learn to speak two languages simultaneously, then why couldn't you learn to read in those two languages simultaneously ?

I think she has a point, but on the other hand I'm also inclined to let it happen naturally... let her become fluent in reading in English first, and assume that she'll just work out French decoding herself when it's time. (Which is what generally happens when someone learns a language already knowing how to read, isn't it?)

Not an existential question, just in a hurry for her to be able to read all sorts of books in both languages so I can read mine in peace! wondering how it has happened in other people's experiences.

We speak English at home but the DC are in a Portuguese language school (we're in Brazil). We let them learn to read in Portuguese first, aiming at teaching them in English afterwards, but the English just sort of clicked automatically (once they'd figured how to read in Portuguese) and we didn't really need to do much, to be honest.

Thanks geocentric, that's how I hope it will happen... great to read it did for your dc!
Why oh why do we have to make life more complicated for ourselves???

Agreed... I had all these teaching aid books a friend lent me and my eldest just went through them for fun, thank heavens!!!! (I was dreading having to actually use them to teach!)

Funny thing is - the reading process for each language is completely different. Portuguese is very phonetic, so they read words a syllable at a time whilst when reading English they read the whole word at once. But once letters begin to make sense it all seems to work out, womehow...

I am having the same experience as Geo. DD learnt to read in French and is now starting to read in English and German. It takes a little longer but she is working it out as she goes along.

looks at unused jolly phonics book

I wouldn't try to do 2 languages at the same time, and ideally I'd introduce the more phonetically regular one first but given that reading on English is taught so early often children end up reading in English first, even in an educational system where reading is taught at 6/7 years old, because parents are accustomed to reading at 4.

That said it makes learning to reading a phonetically regular language a breeze once you know what letters match up. I wouldn't rely on working out French decoding - some form of help/explanation will probably he necessary but there are very good workbooks aimed at CP aged children with pictures and a highlighted phonememe (lap in with a picture of a rabbit and the other words ending in for example).

It balances out as long as the separation is there, just like speaking does.

My experiences are the same Geo and MmeLindt.

I tried to teach DS1(8) English and French at the same time, he's in French school, it caused him no end of trouble with his French, so we laid off the English. He's dyslexic too so that didn't help. We concentrated on the French but have lots and lots of English books lying around and I found that he worked the English out for himself when he was ready just by reading Pokemon books and he is now happily reading Harry Potter and Narnia in English having worked it all out for himself.

DS2 is in CP, we've done no English with him at all and he's only just started reading in French, no dyslexia problems with him, and at the weekend he picked up a Horrid Henry book and had a good try at reading the English.

It's very funny that when they get to a word they don't recognise they apply French rules and read with a French accent until they work out what the word is in English.

We also did alot of work on the English alphabet and reading a few words when the dc were 4 and 5 as they started school aged 6 in Germany. However I quickly stopped as I noticed even the letter sounds are different in German they did German and the English came later.

Glad to have found this thread!

After doing a bit of research on this, my intention was to wait for DD to learn to read L1 at school and then teach her to read in L2 myself to avoid getting her all confused (L2 is my native language). My research seems backed up by your experiences here.

However, DD is 2.3 yo and she is VERY interested in letters (and numbers), recognises them all and knows all their names in L2 and most of the names in L1. Her favourite game right now is asking what "noise" each of them makes so she's kind of learning that as well as a sort of home-made phonics.

So I'm wondering, do you think she 'has time' to learn to read in L2 (simple words / phrases but relatively established 'system') BEFORE she gets to school and starts to read in L1? Or do you think it's still best to wait for L1 to take hold?

I guess what I'm wondering is, would L1 suffer later on even if it's the majority language, or should we take advantage and give L2 a push now?

Very interested to read other people's experiences!

Depends what the L1 and L2 are!

Hi Snap

Sorry, L1 is English, L2 Spanish.
We live in the UK.
We are an OPOL family.
I am the one who spends more time with DD.

Okay so both the same script/method of reading (which is good and bad!).

If you think she's showing an interest in reading and she seems to know the letters (and she's already aware of the distinction between the languages) I don't see any problem introducing reading in Spanish. I'd prioritise that because a) you never really know what method they're going to use to teach English at school and b) you're the Spanish speaker who spends more time with her so it makes sense, if you're the one introducing reading, for it to be your language....but be led by your DD no matter what you do. It will all iron out eventually - the 'problem' with introducing the second language/reading method is when children get confused and try to apply L1 rules to L2 and it doesn't work. Of course many children manage it just fine without extra help because they're sufficiently advanced readers to apply the decoding method but when it comes to teaching reading for the first time it's better to focus on one of them. Which one that happens to be is a personal choice, depending on the child, the education system and its expectations and to a certain extent which language is easier to get to grips with first.

I discussed this with DD's teacher when she was learning to read. The teacher has a class of multi-lingual children BTW. Her advice was the let the one language get bedded in properly first and then start actively encouraging reading in the other language(s). It's been fine and DD's reading in English has caught up with her reading in German nicely.

Thanks Snap and Her Majesty.

I don't want to put any pressure on her, it's just that another 2 and a half years to wait may be a bit too long for her.

It does seem a shame not to take advantage for what will be her minirity language later on, and I don't want to be the one to teach her to read in English.

Her Majesty, does your daughter go to an English or German school? When her teacher said to wait until one language is established, did she mean the reading/writing or just the speaking?

DD goes to a Luxembourgish school where they learn to read and write in German from age 6. Prior to then everything was in Luxembourgish. We are a bilingual English / German family. DD's teacher was definitely talking about reading rather than speaking.

I was very worried that DD's English reading just wouldn't happen but it has and it has been pretty painless. Maybe it has happened so easily because German is very "what you see is how you say it" iyswim. It is certainly entertaining when DD does not know a word to hear her try it out phonetically and it comes out in a strong German accent. She then recognises it and then she says it with the proper English accent.

I too have a pile of untouched jolly phonics books. Maybe I will have to use them with DS!

My kids are bilingual in English/Scottish Gaelic. THey go to Gaelic school where they learn to read Gaelic from primary 1 and start English reading in the February of primary 3. By the time they had "officially" started English, all of mine had started to figure it out for themselves.

Dd1, now in Primary 6, reads at the same level in both languages and is very similar in what she reads to me at that age (voracious monolingual bookworm).

My DC are Welsh/English bilingual. They all learnt to read in Welsh first, as this is what they learn in school, but the older two had learnt to read in English too by about a year afterwards. DD is only 5 so can only read in Welsh so far, but I'm sure she will pick up English too soon. They are taught to read English in Year 3, so the older two had figured it out themselves long before then.

HerMaj
DD does that too. She says the words in a French accent then corrects herself to say it in German/English.