Completely clueless about when to teach DD to read and write in french!!

[toffeeapple]

Hi I'm French and my husband is english, my dd started first school in September 2008 and is learning some writing and reading (in english obviously).
I haven't dared to introduce anything in french yet in case she gets confused, and I'm clueless as to what to do.
Anyone in a similar situation who knows what to do?

P.S: She's 4 and a half and she has an excellent level of french (speaking), and I always speak french to her at home.
Thank you very much in advance!!

I would buy her French reading books. There are bound to be books for her age & reading ability.

Maybe speak to her teacher and see what advice they give.

We're doing it the other way round. DD is learning to read in English at home (aged4.11) and the French part I will leave to the school. I figured if she can switch with ease in the spoken language, the written one will follow...

Do you read to her in French?

Can you start encouraging her to join in, read along, spot words ...?

I would not teach her to read French until she is reading quite fluently in English tbh. I found they pick up reading in another language very fast once they have grasped the concept of decoding writing. There is no need to rush it I don't think. If she starts reading French now, it will take her longer to master it because she's very young and still working on the English recognition with the mad way we have of writing words includes a lot of recognition of sight words as well as phonetic decoding as they learn it at school.

If she is older and already a very fluent reader in English, you'll find she'll pick up reading in French in a very short time.

My dd learnt to read in German at school but she was older (5 1/2) and was reading chapter books (Magic Treehouse) after 6 months (aged 6). Then I started teaching her English which is harder because English is less phonetic but she took less time to learn to read English since she had built up a certain reading stamina and grasped the concept of reading already.

After about a year of English, a year and a half of reading in German, she learnt to read Russian (age 7)- which is different again with the different alphabet and that took no time at all (once again more phonetic spelling than English).

My advice is leave it for a bit.

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btw these are all not foreign languages but like your dd with French and English, she spoke these languages already. Not sure if I explained myself very well!

From my experience with our 6 and 5 year old bilingual English/German children, it is best to wait until they can read and write well in one language (English, as we too live in the UK). As someone mentioned earlier, once a child can read in one language (and can speak the other one), it is very easy for them to learn to read the other one.

My dd is now 6 (in Y2) and has learnt to read and write in German almost by herself (with a little help from German Saturday School), having the understanding of reading in English from school.

My ds (Reception) is just starting to learn to read and write in English, so we are helping him with this (English), but I am optimistic that in a couple of years he will pick up German reading and writing fairly easily.

So, while talking to your dd in French, I would encourage and help her to master English first. I'm sure she will have no problems learning written French later.

what annasmami said

GREAT!! I'm so happy about that, I feel so much better, I was worried that if I left it too long she might be seriously behind with French reading/writing compared to English reading/writing.
I am so grateful to have received your experiences, that's what I needed.
Pitchounette: Are you from the south of France?
Thank you all I will follow your advice. I read in French to her every night and her level of understanding is very high (she understands "les malheurs de Sophie" from La comptesse de Segur), so I'm sure it will help a lot for when she starts to read and write.
Also she tells me that she prefers to speak french than english, although she's started to "tell me off" if I speak french to her in front of english only speaking people.

I am in the opposite situation to you (same as Portofino)

DS is just 6. He learnt all his English sounds at home when he was 4/5 and all his French sounds at school when he was 5.

He has been able to read sentences in both languages for the last few months.

So far it is pretty level and he doesn't get confused between the different languages.

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