Language delay in bilingual child.

[pinkhousesarebest]

My 7 year old d.s is in a french school,and we saw the speech therapist today because he mixes up some sounds. She found that he had a vocabulary that was almost three years behind his peers.He was born in France,but we speak English at home.We are going to have some intensive s.t now,but I was just wondering if we are ever going to catch up,and if this is part of raising a bilingual child. He did talk very late,just before his third birthday. She thought that was significant.

speaking from my own experience with multi-lingualism in a monolinguistic school environment I stand by what I said, if the ds is not being schooled in his dominant language in such an environment, he is quite obviously at a disadvantage v-a-v the monolingual dc whose schooling is in their dominant language. Naturally the dc for whom this is not the strongest language will be unlikely to express themselves in literary subjects both orally and in written work to the same standard as monolinguistic dc (with all the support mechanisms I mentioned previously, such as being well-read and having meaningful adult linguistic input etc).

I have seen many dc falter in the German school system as a result of this type of situation and it is a generally recognised FACT in Germany unfortunately, that dc from non-German speaking family backgrounds are over-represented, dramatically so, amongst those who do not suceed at achieving school goals. The schools as NN said are not geared towards dealing with/redressing this problem. Within their 3-tiered school system many of these dc are sent to the lowest school type not expected to achieve much beyond manual labour post school.

If you have a bilingual dc at school in France in a purely French speaking school environment and this is not his dominant language as OP says, I would work hard to ensure that he is receiving extra help with French, however it seems best to you to go about that. How can this harm him even if he is bright and generally doing well, I do think hearing he may be approx 3 years behind monolingual co-pupils would motivate me to work on expanding his active vocabulary in some way

excellent post ZZZen.
I agree completely.
I have a ds age 7 in the welsh language school stream,he is bright and doing well.HOWEVER he has not got the same level of welsh vocabulary as his 1st language welsh classmates,even though he is on the same reading level as them and equal or higher in maths.He is basically still learning the language and atm i am quite happy with this as it is a means by which he can be fluent in welsh,as we are not welsh speakers or at least pretty basic.This is with the proviso thathe is happy,not falling behind,and understanding and learning,also the teachers are excellent and for self expression for eg an exciting story to tell,they can speak in english[or if upset etc].
My other dcs went thru the bilingual stream[conversational welsh but reading and writing in english]and by now were able to write poems,stories,diaries etc which my ds can't yet do.
I accept there is more to take in and progress will not be the same as in the english stream and so I try to expand his welsh as well as continuing his english.

This is my personal experience but is echoed by other parents who are non welsh speaking but in the welsh educational stream.
It will be interesting to see what happens when english is introduced next term as children who are 1st language welsh andwelsh speaking at home must have to learn english virtually from scratch.

The most difficult part is creative writing work which requires constructing your own sentences and descriptive vocabulary,i know myself as i'm fluent in french this takes a while to achieve.

Also if a child were dyslexic or weaker linguistically i wouldn't dream of doing this as it would be incredibly hard for them[i also have experience of this]

she's not really into pussy-footing, I reckon I'll be skinned alive, still I stand my ground. It seems to be my day for having uncomfortable talks. Am kind of dreading a phone call atm as it is. So this will be light relief

she's not really into pussy-footing, I reckon I'll be skinned alive, still I stand my ground. It seems to be my day for having uncomfortable talks. Am kind of dreading a phone call atm as it is. So this will be light relief

Hmmmm... never mind the vocab. Just come back to the mixing up sounds and the early language delay. Which sounds in particular are getting mixed up, and was the reason for the early delay ever diagnosed?

Was the delay due to transient hearing loss, eg due to colds etc? As I understand it, there is some theory that the demporarily deaf child stops noticing and babbling many of the sounds he doesn't hear. This is the same process as the normal babble drift from containing all the sounds in the world to only those he hears in the languages around him.

So, he may not be hearing those sound differences fully clearly. So it may help for him to work on listening to distinguish those sounds. ie in a very quiet environment hearing them. And then he will also need practice to pronounce them if they are difficult for the mouth muscles too and if he hasn't been using them.

Does that seem plausible Moondog, anyone?

HTH

I do actually teach in a bilingual school,so I have a choice, should I want at some stage to take it. They do the I.B. At the moment, though, we are happy for him to be exclusively schooled in French. But I will fire on with the SALT, and do all the follow up work that she recommends, and will also tip the balance at home towards French for a bit. And we will see how it is in 6 months.

Thank Nighbynight.I have just read your post. All the activities he does are in French, he plays in the local football and tennis clubs, spends all day Saturday at matches etc. When they watch T.V they do watch CBBC, so that is something we could change. Not that French t.v is particularly enriching.

Agree about French TV. DD doesn't watch TV here in France - she has a little library of DVDs in English that pass muster with me but I am hard pressed to find anything at all that I think it is worth her while watching in French.

I even find that I have a harder time finding her lovely books in French than in English - we live close to both a huge FNAC, several independent French bookshops and to WHSmith on rue de Rivoli so there is no difficulty of access to books in both languages.

RidgewayLass, the SALT has advised us to check out his hearing, although she did not think there was a problem as the test she ran on sounding was age appropriate. He never has had an ear infection. As a young child he would never mimic anything. he would watch our faces as we said car half a dozen times, and never try to say it himself. We accepted the well versed line that he was late to speak because of the two languages. He did need glasses, and his speech surge coincided with getting them just before his third birthday. I often wondered could he not actually see our mouths as we made the sounds. Anna, yes the book thing. I know we massively prefer literature in English. It is just more fun.

I don't think language delay is due in any way to the two languages,because I would say he would communicate all the words he knew,maybe of both languages.Theres a big difference between language delay in onset of speech and language written work at school in second language.

He did have a language delay at the onset of speech. However I suppose what I am really trying to get my head round is if he does have a speech delay now, or does he just have a normal imbalance in the quality and range of his vocabulary because of the fact that he comes from an English speaking home. Which to me seems more likely. His written work at school is sound, but they do not do much on the creative writing front as yet. That is where he would have difficulty I suppose.

Does he read and write in english too?

Yes, and he is stronger in English, but he has been reading in English for longer.

pinkhousesarebest - it really does sound as if English is his dominant language to quite some extent.

Have you had him assessed for speech and language development in English, to see how he measures up to monolingual English children?

is there someone at the bilingual school you work at who could assess that for you and tell you whether there is any cause for worry or if it is in fact within the normal range?

I can relate to this in terms of my ds also reads better in english and has done for longer,altho i used to leave it mainly for the holidays and weekends in order to consolidate the welsh reading.

So in what area in school is he actually behind as he sounds ok on the surface of it?

He is behind in vocabulary. One of the words he missed yesterday was sieve, for example. His comprehension is where it should be. Unfortunately there is nobody at school who could shed any more light. He seem to me to be fine in English. I taught his age group at home for a long time, and he has no problem with any of the work I give him. However it might be valuable to have him tested when we are next home as my sil is a SALT.

Ie he didn't know the word for "sieve" in French though he knows it in English, and he lives in an English-speaking home? I think that sounds very understandable and nothing to be fundamentally worried about.

I have got several of those imagiers books for DD and we read them in bed with DP - she tells me the name of an item in English and then DP asks her to tell it to him in French. That's quite good for vocabulary and it's quite good for self-esteem too as we are totally unable to hide our pride from her!

Any recommendations?

PinkHouses, just to clarify, I'm not suggesting he has a hearing problem now. What I mean is if he had a cold (not even an ear infection) during the language learning window before ten months old. You know the way sometimes when you get a cold and it sometimes sounds like you are in a swimming pool - you aren't totally deaf but you can't hear things clearly either.

Funny about the eyesight thing. I suppose the other side to that too is that if he couldn't see things clearly he might not have always been sure what he was looking at, or also imporatant what you were looking at when you named something. hmmmm.....

I think BonsoirAnna's last question is quite a crucial one - what do you aspire to for the future for him? If it doesn't matter which language is most dominant, then don't worry about it - is it just that he gets through school in France? Are you intending to stay here permanantly? I also have a 7 year old DS here in France, and DH and I only speak English at home. Since starting CP in September his teacher asked me if I thought he would benefit from an extra session after school, focusing solely on the kind of vocabulary his peers may hear at home but that he doesn't. I thought it was a great idea, and we did it up until Xmas, when she told me she didn't think it was neccessary any more....we try and listen to French story CD's at home, although I only ever read to him in English (mainly as a I don't want to inflict my bad accent on him) the balance for us seems to work fine at them moment, but I am aware his French is slowly becoming more dominant - he often speaks onyl French to DS2, and when he plays, the chatter is alyays French. I agree you have to keep monitering the progress constantly, and work out what your eventual goal for him is...

my ds says f for th and he and about half the class have had a sheet home last week going thru the sounds such as th,dd,ff,ng,rh,[welsh] so he can't be the only one.
You could do your own sheet of his difficult sounds and he say them twice a day.
I think its all a matter of degree and maybe you need more information from his teacher regarding her concerns,and then try and work out if this is a problem or if you would expect this as it is his less dominant language.Sorry not to be more help but good luck!

That is interesting Jenpet. I have a friend with three d.ss and they speak exclusively in French to each other. D.s has always been very rigid about English, and only English at home. He cannot bear my husband to speak French within earshot,although in fairness whan you hear my husband it is a perfectly understandable reaction. D.d who is 4, seems much more flexible and plays in both languages quite happily. However, with his friends d.s seems perfectly fluent,and never seems constrained in any way. We are here long term, and so I suppose it is not enough for him just to get by.

I could imagine that given time French may become his dominant language and overtake English in terms of vocabulary development as he becomes increasingly peer-orientated. This may then all resolve itself, if indeed there really is a problem.

Have you considered narration? I expect you might need a French native speaker to do this with him, have him read small texts (something that interests him) and narrate back the text using if he can, some of the new words. They do seem automatically to seize upon the new words. If you can speak with a wide vocabulary, you will be more likely to use it in your writing.

I have been thinking that where he is not getting the same vocab input as his French classmates is in terms of adult French input at home in the evenings so he is obviously fluent and therefore copes fine at school but the others have this edge in that they have adult French language usage modelled to them at home.

Whereas you can get by fine at school with other children saying: "that metal thing over there with the holes" and everyone understands you, at home a dc might hear "oh the colander" and thus expand their vocabulary in that manner.

How about drama or anything really is speech-based French language activity preferably involving well educated adults I suppose.

I find this thread very interesting. My DS is in a Welsh speaking unit, but we are a completely non-welsh speaking family. I found trying to learn Welsh incredibly difficult as a child and can understand French better even though I have lived in Wales most of my life.

DS happens to be in the Welsh unit because the local primary is mainly Welsh speaking with a tiny English speaking unit. I very much feel that he will not be able to meet his full potential in reading, writing and especially creative writing for a long time (he is 4.11). This concerns me greatly as his English language vocabulary is very rich.

Other fluent Welsh speakers in the class seem to come out with the majority of the merit stickers and reading books. We have been reassured by the school that the kids pick up a second language very easily and will all be fluent Welsh speakers by the end of year 1. However I sense that as a family you have to be very dedicated to bilingualism in order to provide a richness of vocabulary in both languages and sadly I feel I just dont have the time or knowledge to do this.

Regretfully I think I will move him into the English speaking unit next year. OP I hope you are a ble to find a solution if one is needed .