Question for bilingual families - how necessary are bilingual schools really?

[Brangelina]

I've just been to a presentation for a bilingual preschool/school as I'm toying with the idea of sending my DD there next year. DD (2.6) is bilingual English/Italian although English is her minority language at present as I'm the only influence (DP and nursery both Italian), hence my interest in perhaps consolidating her English by increasing exposure to it. It was just an idea as I wasn't entirely convinced it was necessary (plus it's v. expensive), particularly as we travel quite frequently to the UK to visit relatives or they come to us.

However, at the presentation this morning I was told that the OPOL method where only one parent speaks the language is insufficient once past the early years as the child doesn't get to develop the language beyond a purely social context and would have problems expressing themselves in the future in an academic or work context. Is this true or total bolleaux? Has anyone any direct experience with themselves or older DCs?

Yes, tutoring at a later stage would definitely be an option. I'd feel a bit bad about it, Italian schools are already quite heavy going with all that homework.

SSSandy, Italian schools are quite neolithic, nothing much has evolved since Napoleonic times. Every time they try to overhaul the school system there are protests from either teachers, pupils or parents and nothing gets done. On the one hand people graduate actually having learnt to read, write and spell properly (unlike UK schools of late), but on the other hand there is very little flexibility, even less freedom of expression and individuality is not encouraged. Ditto to a certain extent many universities.

As for other outside influences, I don't yet have Sat TV (not entirely convinced at the mo) but I do have a glittering array of DVDs and pretty much every children's book in my house is in English. Alas I don't frequent other English people as I moved away from the expat community a long time ago and the groups that do exist are not geared towards working mums anyway. I was counting on a month is the UK every summer but am at Castille's comment that even that may not be enough.

Oh it's so hard to know what to do. A lot of it will probably hinge on DD's personality as she grows as well. I think I'll go and see the monolingual school tomorrow and review the situation from then. And to think before this morning I had no doubts about DD's future linguistic progress.

Franca, what you say is true, even more so if the basis is already there. My reasoning had always been that I arrived here with very basic Italian, I never studied the grammar or reading and writing the language, yet I read in Italian as easily as I do in English and my written Italian is good enough for official letters (and I often have to correct other people's). Ditto with French (although that I studied at university).

It's just that the comment this morning threw me a bit and now I'm consumed with guilt about possibly not doing the right thing by DD.

PS - where did your dh go to school? I've been looking at my stepson's English homework, he always gets a 7 yet his English is dire and he can't even form a sentence in terza media! It must be the school you get....

I was talking about materna, elementare would be no problem I know.

Brangelina - a month in the UK every year should be sufficient to ensure they can speak English well enough, but it won't help much with their written language. Vocabulary is an issue too. DD2 is an avid reader and has a reasonable English vocab, but DD1 is less keen and I don't want reading to become a chore. TV/DVDs are good for exposure to current English but understanding new words is only the start - they need the opportunity to use them if they are to increase their word power.

What you say about the Italian school system is 100% true of France too! It bothers me, but I'm hoping we'll be able to do enough to foster their creativity and individuality at home and during stays in the UK. We can't do much else, sadly.

But don't stress too much. When they were little it was easy to imagine all kinds of bi-cultural perfection for my children, but as they get older I've lowered my sights a bit because the logistics of perfection are headache-inducing, and other things, like their personalities, friendships and overall happiness have become more important.

And I forgot to say that I also did an MA at Bristol University, I wrote essays and a dissertation in English.
I know how difficult it is to navigate the school system of a country you haven't grew up in. But the thing is that there are still excellent state school in Italy. which might not teach you a perfect English but will give you the tools to acquire it. I had a good english teacher at scuola media and a good one at liceo classico (English used to be taught only the first 2 yrs at liceo classico, don't know if it's been changed), we even read shakespeare (macbeth, I still remember quotes by heart . I really enjoyed learning the english language so I also attended courses at the British council, went to England in the summer and got the proficiency certificate. But then I was quite a secchiona (is it swot in english???) and it was actually considered cool to be smart at liceo classico in the early 80s.
Dh is another product of liceo classico.
We ruled out the possibiliy of sending the dc to sjh because we wanted them to have local friends and that they wouldn't miss out academically by going to an italian school. if they will be smart and curious enough and if this will be what they want to do they will have all the support they'll need to get to a Briish University. though maybe in 15 yrs time who knows, they might want to go to china

I agree with castille about not stressing too much...
I'm not sure if things have changed dramatically but we did lots of writing in English at school, dictation and grammar, so much so that the problem was "speaking" English rather than witing it... hence the dodgy accent

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Yes I agree, for us it is paramount to get English tv (we have just moved back to Italy after 8 yrs in the uk, and will try to maintain dc's engolish as much as possible), if only to avoid Italian tv...
I have bookmarked the bbc website where you can watch weekly programmes...
How did it go today Brange?

Interesting question! We too are aiming to raise our dd (almost 6) and ds (almost 4) bilingually in German/English whilst living in England.

We decided to send them to an English school - we decided against the German School (or International School which offers German from primary level) as we wanted them to have local friends and feel part of the English community they are growing up in. Often, International and foreign schools tend to cater for families that are only there for a small number of years and therefore have a high turnover of pupils.

However, apart from me (mother) only speaking to them in German, they go to a German Saturday School. We also read a lot of German books, watch German tv (via satellite) and try to spend 3-4 weeks in the summer in Germany. Last summer both dc even spent a month in a German Kindergarten as 'Gastkinder'.

My dd speaks German very well and has started to show an interest in reading (and writing). It's still too early to tell how proficient they will become in German, but I do feel it is possible to raise bilingual children without sending them to a bilingual or even minority-language school. As others have said before, our main aim is for our children to be happy and have a sense of belonging while giving them as much of another language and culture as possible. Don't stress out over it - focus on what will likely make your dd happy overall!

Just a further thought after my first post. When I lived abroad as a teenager I didn't attend a bilingual school and my first two languages did not suffer. Obviously I was older, but my sister who was younger had no adverse affect either.

You can't download BBC programmes from outside the UK at the moment, unfortunately. Their iplayer service won't let you

damn!
As Brangelina knows I'm planning to install a satellyte dish on our balcony, but I'm not sure our landlord will allow it...

satellyte?

ds enjoys the german cartoons and is learning through them

would of prefered that he was in kindergarten but things are not going to plan

think the younger the child the easier it is for them to speak a different language none of the barriers that hold back adults,well me anyway

Interesting discussion!
We are in Japan, and bilingual schools are out of the question - even the less expensive international schools are out of our league. And like others have said, I wanted my kids to be part of the community and have friends locally, etc. They are not bilingual - they can understand English, and can manage when we go back to the UK every couple of years, but do not speak to me in English. I am fluent in Japanese and can read the language, so they just don't see the need to use English. I know some people pretend not to be able to speak the local language, but I really wanted to be part of the local community too - even though I am never going to "blend in"!!
We have English books, DVDs and various bilingual television programmes - even Doctor Who! My DD who is 10, can read English quite well without any formal lessons, and my DS (8yrs) is not too bad at getting the gist of an English sentence, but of course, the Japanese writing system is so different from English, they have to concentrate on that quite a lot. In some ways, I am glad they are being schooled in Japan, because they will learn to read and write in Japanese as a matter of course, whereas it was a real hard slog at university level for me. English is all around in Japan (whereas Japanese wouldn't be all around in the UK...) so they are used to the alphabet, and will study English from middle school. Its not the same as being fully bilingual, and I know that they will probably never speak English as easily as I do, but we have to make choices for our children and ourselves, and do the best with what we have.
Sorry, rambled on a bit there!

Bilingual school is not necessary, imo, but you will have to fill in the grammar and reading in the non-school language yourself.

I am teaching dd2 to read in English, and we have a lot of English books in the house for the children to read.

Just seen this thread.
My DDs are only 4.5 yo and 16mo so I don't have any experience of how things can turn out after a few years. Our situation is: we live in Spain, both DP and I speak English at home tho his first language is Spanish. Mine is English. DD1 has gone to a local Spanish nursery 6 hours a day since she was 2. (Both DDs were born here). We don't have a TV but we do have an extensive collection of chidrens' DVDs which we always watch in English (tho not every day) and a lot of books. DD1 loved her books more than anything until about a year ago when dressing up took over!
I wouldn't send her to the local 'bilingual' school because the quality is not good and it's expensive.
DD1s English is still better than her Spanish after more than 2 years in nursery and I would say it is at native level for her age. Lately she has started asking DP to read to her in Spanish which I think is a good thing as otherwise her Spanish role-models are mostly other kids so her language isn't very sophisticated in Spanish. We spend about 6 or 7 weeks every summer in the UK and have visits at least 2x a year from granny.

I think if Italian is your ML (majprity language i.e. the language of the country you live in) then teaching your DC to read and write in English is a good idea as the spelling rules are much harder than for Italian - I want to do the same here for the same reasons. Do you have any bi-lingual playgroups or could you set one up? Regular contact with other English-speaking kids is good although if they slip into default school language mode and start speaking Italian together you may have to be more hands-on and guide them in some activity to keep the emphasis on English. I set up a playgroup for bilingual kids here a couple of years ago but lack of fixed venue made it difficult to keep it going.
I think if you can't afford a bilingual school at the moment and it would eat into the budget for travelling to the UK and other activities then you should concentrate on finding other English speakers/activities and maybe at secondary level if you are still in Italy it might be more valuable to your DC to be at a bilingual school then?
IMO, and as yet limited experience, you will have to work at your DCs written and reading skills in English yourself but travelling to the UK regularly will make a big difference in the long run.
Does your DP understand English? An english-speaking friend of mine recently had to make the decision to speak Spanish when the family was all at home as her DP doesn't speak English and arguments would ensue based on misunderstandings of what the mother had said to the kids, i.e. she says no snack now it's nearly supper time and DP didn't understand and gave then a snack).
Have to go now, will check back later, sorry for the waffle.

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Pitchounette - I don't speak French but from the little I know of it I would agree the grammar is harder than English grammar, but I'm sure you would agree English spelling is very tricky. Spanish spelling is simple, you can spell a word you have never heard before when you hear it for the first time.
I don't know when one should start to teach reading. When the child shows an interest I suppose. I have to admit I haven't really got very far with planning a strategy yet . I don't think you need to leave 2 years between learning one and the other. That might even be impossible in some cases. DD1 is already starting to do letter recognition and can write her name but I would have had to have started to teach her properly some months ago if I'd wanted to get a 2-year start on the school system. (They start primary at 6yo here). I think we'll end up muddling through and doing both at once. i think if the two languages had different alphabets, like Japanese for example, it would be easier to leave a gap but there are enough similarities that knowledge of one language will help her with the other, I hope...
As for reading texts - maybe your DS will be happy to learn using familiar, simple texts, even if they may seem to you to be a little babyish for him? Maybe you could write out some of the stories he likes when he's 7 in a simple form and print them off on the PC instead?

A lot of interesting POVs here, most of which I agree with wholeheartedly. I went to see the monolingual International school today and really liked it. Then I saw the fees. I do wonder, though, if the fact I liked it so much was down to me found it more familiar and therefore being more comfortable with the idea. The only downsides I found were a) they didn't do naps for 3yos and b) there was no after school club so I would have had to pay for a childminder. I would also have never seen my DD as she would have been so worn out from the lack of nap that she'd be in bed before I got home from work.

I think in the light of all this (plus the not unimportant economic factor) I'm going to go with the local Italian state school, hoping we get a place. I'll face the problem of the international school or not should we not be lucky with the state school and even then it would be for 2 years max.

Pitchounette - I was planning to teach DD to read in English before she started at the local primary, mainly because English is a lot harder than Italian which is entirely phonetic. She may not be interested, of course, which will scupper my plans, but we'll see. She already knows a lot of letters from her fridge magnets and can recognise and count numbers up to 10 so with luck it might not be too hard [hopeful emoticon]

Pitchounette - I found French grammar really easy. It's one of the few languages to have written grammatical rules and everything pretty much follows a set path (thank you Academie Française).

The question as to when to teach reading and writing of two languages (whether simultaneously or up to 2 years apart) is an interesting one. From my experience with my almost 6 year old dd, we are finding the simultanous approach works quite well, and often find it helpful to have the comparison. This is because in English words are rarely pronounced as they are written (i.e. English spelling is difficult and unintuitive) whereas in German most words are written exactly as they are pronounced. As many words are similar (or at least have the same derivation), it often helps to think of the pronounciation in German when writing English words. Examples include words like chocolate or giraffe (sorry, hope this makes sense..).
However, on the grammar front, English is so much easier and German is so difficult that I would not be able (or want to) teach anyone German grammar. Hopefully they will learn some of the grammar at German Saturday School, or even whilst doing German at Secondary level in the UK (or will this be too easy/boring? - any experiences very welcome!).

I think there are all sorts of options apart from bilingual schools. I've been able to maintain dd's (11) Swedish here in the UK, though I am the only Swedish speaker locally and there are no clubs etc for her to join. She attends the local council school. But we are able to spend Xmas and summer holidays in Sweden, so she gets a lot of input then, and she corresponds with Swedish friends during the rest of the year.
Her spoken Swedish is native level. She reads it as easily as English (and she is a very avid reader). Because of her severe health problems, I have not been able to take the time to teach her to write, so she does need help with her spellings, but no doubt that could easily be rectified. After all, I taught myself to read English, with a little assistance from my Swedish-speaking mother, and I have worked as a proof reader for a publishing firm since I came to this country. One day, when we have caught up with the rest, I will sit down and run through the spelling rules.
As for grammar- how much do you need to know about the grammar of your own language, unless you want to study it academically? As long as you have an instinctive feeling for what sounds right- which comes with lots of speaking.
I am not a strict adherent of any rule when it comes to bilingualism. Anyone in our family is allowed to speak whatever they like (pretty much) whenever they like. When we are on our own, that is; they do have to address the headteacher in English and their Swedish relatives in Swedish. The only rule is that we talk lots in our family.