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.

I'll just answer your questions about Germany first. What happens in Germany is that not everywhere are kindergarten places available for all dc. They are working to change this. Families where German is not the home language thus have little means of bringing their dc's German up to the level of German dc by school age. These dc are behind from the word go and overwhelmingly they stay behind. Dc who have attended German kiga yet have a different home language still tend to fail in the German primary school system despite being bilingual when they start school. Here I think vocab is the main issue but the secondary problem is the German system which relies heavily on parental tutoring at home. Non German families may not always be aware of this, able to ensure this tutoring is provided.

Why this happens? I really don't think this is down to racism. In my experience, Germany is much less racist than most western European countries I know. In fact because of their recent history, Germans are often particularly watchful about this kind of thing.

What I think may be the problem is that the bilingual dc are not attaining adequate DEPTH in language attainment to be on an equal basis with German dc before the assessment and streaming sets in at age 10. At this age the teachers decide which type of school is appropriate for each dc on the basis of their yearly work as measured in the grades obtained in maths, general knowledge and dictation tests through-out the year.

The majority of bilingual dc and monolingual German speakers with an immigrant background will move into the lowest achieving school type - the so-called Hauptschule (life of being unemployed, factory work, manual labour). This is a dead end ticket. Hard to move up out of that into the middle type of school preparing dc for apprenticeship/office work and impossible I think to move up to Gymnasium preparing you for university studies.

There is some flexibility in Germany in that you can finish school and then go on as an adult to try and achieve tertiary qualifications by attending school for a couple more years.

This is the set-up at the moment. It is well documented and causes a great deal of concern. There is no complacency in Germany about underachieving dc from immigrant families but solving the many problems there are will take time. Btw we need to remember that sink schools in the UK will be every bit as bad as those Hauptschulen and there may be dc from immigrant backgrounds over-represented in our sink schools IYSWIM.

I'm not the big expert on this but from what you said you have 1) a home language - English, 2) a community language and 3) the language of schooling

For this to work well for your dc, I would suggest that you look for extra curricular activities in the language of your dc's schooling to reinforce it as much as possible, in particular through-out primary to get a strong basis because from my experience, such as it is, I fear the school day itself may not be sufficient to bring your dc's language skills up to the level you would like them to be. Do you speak this language yourself (the language spoken at school)?

I would also like to reassure you that it can work. I know a half-Arabic, half-German family whose dd (now 12). German is the strongest language (mother's language, community language and main language of schooling though), then French, Arabic and lastly English

Initially she spoke German at home with the mum, heard Arabic with the dad (evenings/weekend), they attend an Arabic speaking church and also an English speaking church. The dd attended a German kindergarten from 2-5. The bilingual German-French school from 6-10 and is now attending a monolingual German secondary.

English she picked up by attending the church from early on with her family and then from the age of 9 as second foreign language at school.

I can't comment on her achievement in Arabic. She does not read or write Arabic but understands when her father speaks to her in Arabic. I only ever hear her answer in German though.

She is doing great at school but I think this is helped by her dominant language BEING her language of instruction. She is top in every subject. So it can work but it can also go haywire. I know one mum whose dd has refused to speak ANY language at all (aged 7). They are Russian and she attended a German-English bilingual kindergarten. For her it seems to have been too much. YOu have to keep an eye on it and watch your dc I think.

ZZZen, thanks so much for your long posts, really interested to hear how it works in Germany, similar school set up in other countries too and v depressing imo. Particularly awful that not all immigrant children get to learn German in KG, seems very very unfair.

You are right, we have 1) a home language - English, 2) a community language and 3) the language of schooling (DH?s though time spent with DC is little ?but she does communicate with him in this language). DD has playdates c 1 X week with school friends, though no contact with family or other possibilities for contact with the language. I speak this language (and do so with teachers and other parents ? she is well aware of this) but don´t use it with DD directly (bear in mind she has little contact with any other English speakers). Out of school activities are in the community language, which is similar enough to her second language for her to get by if not really fully take part : ( We don´t have contact with English families.

It is so difficult, not being able to evaluate language skills or know how well she ?fits in? to any country / culture, not spending much time in any of them. Her KG teacher thinks she is very bright and ready to learn but I guess I want more certainty than that. I can only see that she has not had exposure to lots of the vocabulary in age appropriate story books.

I know this CAN work out very well, but am also conscious of people I have met who can not really function fully in ANY language and this scares me.

How old is your dd? So her school language is the language she speaks with her father and perhaps her second language after English? I think that should be Ok. Since you speak the language yourself, is there no way you could find out how other dc in the class are doing to make a comparison or speak to the teacher about that?

I would think about engaging a well educated adult to read to her and spend a bit of time with her say 2 x 1 hour after school.I realise this is an investment but I think it would give her a good start and might well pay off in the long run. I think even 6 months should make a huge difference. Is there much chance of finding someone like that where you live, perhaps a granny, student or even an elder schoolgirl?

Hi again, dd is nearly 5, difficult to compare with other kids in the class as they are all multilingual bar one, whose language skills seem well beyond her. And some dc are much younger, so hard to compare anyway..

V interesting idea to get someone else to spend time reading with her. I like it! It might be possible with an older teenager... I will investigate!

My dd is one of those immigrant children mentioned by ZZen, stuck in teh Hauptschule in Germany. It is a bit embarrassing for the HS actually, as they now realise that our family is academically high achieving - eg I studied at Oxford, as did other family members etc. DD is clearly far too intelligent for the sort of future she is facing, but she just can't manage to get the marks to get out of the HS, and ZZ is right when she pinpoints the language as one problem (Another one is that the chidlren are required to study like A level students, aged 10). 2/3 of the marks needed to get to the grammar school are given on written subjects (German and social studies).

I am now getting strong pressure to transfer dd to the Wirtschaftschule to save their face, which is yet another kind of secondary school, and one which trains your children to do office jobs like book-keeping(eg, the children dont study maths, they study book-keeping). From this school, you can't go directly to University.

I don't want this, and neither does dd. Interestingly, the current school is ready to accept that dd will never fulfil her potential, but that if she stays in Germany, her children (2nd generation immigrants) will.

At the moment, I feel like making fools out of them by letting dd carry on in the Hauptschule, and transferring her to a private Gymnasium (grammar school) aged 16 to do the Bac.

I do know one immigrant child who got to the Gymnasium after 2 years in Germany. He is an only child, whose parents earn enough for tuition 5 days a week. He is also unnaturally studious for a 10 year old, the sort of child you could imagine being hothoused to A Levels aged 11. And yes, teh Hauptschule where dd is, is full of immigrants.

pinkhouses - we have a similar set up to you although we are in Spain: English speaking household, DC in local Spanish state school, DH teaching at international school with option to move DC there in the future.

DD1 (8) has the same vocab deficiency you describe in your DS. Sometimes this is whole sections of vocab missing (e.g. domestic type words or food, as the children do not eat at school) and sometimes it is more specific (e.g. she used the word 'sentiment' rather than 'sensation' the other day without realising that in Spanish there is more than word for 'feeling' - a mistake not common in an 8 year old monolingual child). Her teacher has highlighted this as something to work on. I am trying to be fairly relaxed about it. I think she has a larger workload than her peers at the moment given that homework can take longer as we often need recourse to a dictionary. Her grades are pretty good (mostly Bs) which I think demonstrates that once she comes into contact with new vocab, she assimilates it well; it's just that she has a more limited opportunity to increase her vocab.

I don't think it's fair to expect a bilingual child to have the same vocabulary range as a monolingual child at this age. As they get older, their vocab will expand and they will also get some cross over between the two languages (This is just starting to happen for DD1).

DD1's teacher has suggested that she reads at home Spanish. DD is resisting this at the moment. As she really enjoys reading in English, I am content to let her use her reading time to relax rather than work even more (she also gets s lot of homework - too much for an 8 year IMO).

Are you intending that you DS will complete all his education in the French system? We will probably move our DC into the English system for secondary and this perhaps helps me to relax a bit about their Spanish just now.

Nighbynight, terrible situation your dd is in, I really feel for you, is just what I fear for my DD and the reason why I always wonder if English medium eucation would be better for her.. I truely hope your dd goes on to to the bac in a private school, what hope is there for her otherwise?

I also feel terribly sorry for all the other bright immigrant children who won´t get any advocate because their parents don´t speak English or other widely spoken language. Talk about a language barrier...

Also a good illustration for some posters who do not seem to acknowledge that multilingualism can have disadvantages when you are not living within a multilingual situation.

Good luck to you and your dd.

The German system sounds Scaaary

Thanks sachertorte. cory, yes it is the worst aspect of living here - it has a whole thread to itself in the living overseas section!

Thank you Claricebean. Your situation sounds reassuringly familiar. I am not too worried now,but I am glad that I had him tested and have time now to devote to his French.He has a pretty ambivalent attitude to his adoptive language,and has always furiously resisted bedtime stories in French. I am two weeks in though,and he has stopped complaining, and,as you say, he does seem to be able to assimilate new vocabulary o.k. Our future is here,and we can move him to a school where he could do the I.B if needs be. But we love the school,and he is really well integrated now,so we want to make it work.

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