Teaching your child to read in a language other than your own mother-tongue

[Anna8888]

OK. This might be a bit long.

My daughter, just three, is at a French-English bilingual école maternelle (pre-school) in petite section (first of three years). She is bilingual because I speak to her in English and her father speaks to her in French, though her English is currently more fluent/dominant than her French (she holds conversations with herself in English).

In the normal course of events, according to the French NC and her school's policy, she should learn to read in French in her first year of primary school, ie in three years' time, and in English in her second year of primary school.

She is not currently streamed at school. However, in grande section (third year) of école maternelle the children will be streamed for English and I fully anticipate my daughter being in the "bilingual" English class with other children who speak English at home with one or more parents.

I learnt yesterday that the school covertly also streams children for French in grande section. Children who are already able to read French (because their parents have taught them or they have taught themselves) are put in a separate class to the children who do not yet know how to read. There are four classes of 30 children in grande section, so we are talking about 1/4 of the children in the year group.

I really would prefer my daughter to learn to read a bit sooner than in three years' time and love the idea that she should be in the readers class in grande section. This would mean that I would need to teach her to read in French.

I am not at all sure, however, that this is a good idea/viable. My French is very fluent, but can I/ought I teach my daughter to read in French when the language we speak together is English?

I would welcome any input. Plus, does anyone know any good materials for teaching reading in French so that I can have a look at them myself while mulling this over?

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Thanks.

I was talking about this with my partner last night and saying that I wasn't keen on teaching our daughter to read in French. I'm just not motivated by teaching her French in the same way I am motivated to teach her English... passing on my own language and culture etc

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Yes, that's the way I'm going - will start off doing letters in English - she's pretty interested in them so think it should go OK.

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interesting post!

We are native french (and arabic) speakers but DS born in UK and now in expat british school.
He's 3.8 and although we read stories in french and speak it and arabic at home, his main language is English.

I'm not attempting to teach him to read in french atm because they are taught phonics method. Better let him master the concept of phonics and develop writting confidently and then explain the difference with phonics in other language (I think he already understands instinctively as he plays silly word games with arabic and has picked a few chinese words purely phonetically).

Good luck.

Hi Anna, after mulling this over on and off for the last few months, I belatedly noticed yesterday something I should have realised before.
Dd (5) has been interested in sounds and letters for a while. She recognises some words in English and is currently writing all our names on every picture she draws "in my best handwriting Mummy!" It's fun and she'll ask me, e.g. how do you spell 'hen' or bowl' and then copy the words.
However, any time I've casually and tentatively done sounds or spellings in German she stops after one or two. It's as though she's at ease with the language work we do in English because we've always done it (rhymes in particular when she was much younger) whereas she's not as comfortable with the German as we've only done that as school approaches.
I think she's holding the reality of school at arm's length; she enjoys being a "school starter' in Kindergarten and she badgers her brothers (8 & 10) into playing school with her but she's not ready to do anything concrete with me.
So I'm just going to concentrate on the English.
Sounds like a mountain/mole-hill but this has been on my mind for a while because of her patchy German skills and it's quite a relief to have decided one way or the other!

Anna8888, haven't had time to read all the replies but here's my 2p worth

Our kids are brought up bi-lingually, with me speaking German and dh speaking English. However, as we live in the UK and schooling is in English, E is her dominant language, though she understands German perfectly.

As for reading. I'll let her get to grips with English first as I was told that once she's grasped the principle she'll be able to apply it to other languages. As she's leaning to read by sounding out (and it's still a mystery to me how they can learn it with the English language hardly every pronouncing a word the way it's spelle ). Once she can read 'properly' I'll try and get her to read in German, much easier to sound out as we do pronounce most of our letters in a word .

If I were you, go with what the school recommends. After all they've done it for a while . Saying that it can never hurt trying to encourage your lo to read books with you and maybe point out high frequency words . Most of all, just enjoy books with her and don't make it a chore. I initially tried reading books in German to dd but she now refuses, and as I don't want to put her off I'm not pushing it

BTW Anna, hope your sister is OK.

Anna, what's wrong with your sister?

My sister's husband is causing her a lot of grief . She is looking for a counsellor, but it's proving quite hard to find somebody appropriate - she's English, he's French, they live in the Netherlands and they have all kinds of other cultural baggage (US, Spain and other still) between them... lots of history to unravel...

Oh I'm sorry to hear that Anna. I thought things were working out well for her in the Netherlands. Hope she finds the help she needs and they come out of it all with their marriage stronger.

My sister actually really like the lifestyle in Amsterdam and is very happy that they moved there. Her husband is a total workaholic, though, and that has a big impact on their family life.

Anyway, thanks for the messages

Reminds me of my days in Amsterdam!
Not easy being an expat, sometimes I wonder wether it's we are running away from something rather than trying to find something better if you know what I mean?

I certainly don't feel like moving anywhere new any more. Been there, done that .

Left off most of what I actually wanted to say this morning
You mentioned you're not as motivated to do it in French.
There's the 'passing on my own language and culture' aspect.
Your dd is happily taking first steps with Maisy's ABC and who can say how far she'll be in say, 2 years? She may make equal progress in French with little input from you on that side, having picked up certain skills in English.
I'd go with your gut.

That said, I can see why you'd contemplate it because of the streaming.
I'm just paranoid that I've a half-German child who's lived here all her life and speaks like she just arrived! Er, and starts school in 8 months...

finknottle - LOL there are quite a few half French children, born in France, at my daughter's school, who speak terrible French. Don't worry about it . They all pick up the language of the country pretty quickly once they are at school.

Am at you having a bilingual school at all
I leave you with the consoling fact that both our boys (who showed less interest in sounds & reading before school than dd) taught themselves to read English in what seemed like a matter of hours once they'd cracked the 'decoding' element in German.
Am shelving the topic of reading and bravely devoting myself to the task of getting the boys to massacre learn to play "Lass uns froh und munter sein" on the violin and piano by Sunday for a Christmas concert. At least music transcends language

www.starfall.com/n/level-a/learn-to-read/load.htm?f

Finky, maybe she'll like starfall? Click on the top where it says "more holidays" and do the gingerbread man one maybe. Dd spent ages doing that one or the ten snowmen over and over and over again.

If you use the left hand column "an" etc, they practice sounds. It's American. Somewhere on there is a song with the starfall van on it: "Go for a ride on the starfall vAAAAAn" which was driving us all desperate but dd seemed to love it.

You can also start with the ABC and the sounds they make:

www.starfall.com/n/level-k/index/load.htm?f

Let's make it 3 in a row...
Anna, could you ask some of the mums at the school who have older dc which books the dc used?

Site looks interesting

OK, will do.

SSSandy, we did use Starfall a while ago an he loved it. Thanks for the reminder.

With my two children I was surprised to find how much of reading was transferable knowledge- and that's between Swedish and English which in some ways are even more phonetically distinct than English and French. I didn't teach either of my children to read at home, as they start very early here in England- ds was only just 4. Ds has struggled with all his school work (nothing to do with bilingualism IMO), but I was surprised to see him pick up a Swedish comic last night and read it with very little prompting from me; he seemed to remember very quickly the differences in pronouncing various letters.
I have helped both children with homework, and not found it at all difficult to assist them to read in what is not my language. But then I don't have a consistent approach with what language I speak to them in the first place. I've never noticed this to confuse them, I think they'd be more confused if they felt that they were expected to be bilingual and I wasn't.

My kids are native English speakers but we have chosen to educate them through the medium of Gaelic, which I have the smallest amount of and dh has none at all.

I have just had to force myself to learn Gaelic phonics along with my kids - got them to teach me a sound whenever they learned it and I can now read it (but with no understanding). Dd1 reads a page of her reading book and then gives me the simultaneous translation!

But realised that a lot of the skills are transferable today. We were out for the day and it was freezing cold so we went to a cofe shop for hot chocolate. Ds, who is in P1, looked at the cup adn sad "this is a costa!". He managed to read it and and he's only been in school 3 months - I was very impresed.

Its worth pressin on with - I see the benefits in my own kids every day.