so what does Griffin think about learning Spanish?

After such a positive start to his Spanish immersion preschool program, Griffin has continued to make occasional comments and ask questions that show his awareness of the mix of languages swirling around him.

"Why is Pioneer [the school] so Spanish?"

"Do you know how to say 'red' in Spanish, Mom?  I do!"

"Daddy, do you know how to count from one to eleven in Spanish?"
"No, I don't."
"Okay, well it's uno dos tres cuatro cinco seis siete ocho nueve diez once!  Now can you say it?"
"No, I can't, Griffin."
"Why not?!  I learned you how to say it!"

"I can't sing the adios song to you because I don't know the words yet."

[To a stranger in the grocery store] "I'm going to be trilingual!"

"Maman, why do you only speak French to me?"

Noticing me watching the film Coco avant Chanel: "Ce film est en francais!"

Griffin: "We sang Je suis une pizza at school today!" [This is one of Griffin's favorites; it's by Charlotte Diamond.]

Daddy: "You sang a French song in Spanish class?"

Griffin: "No, silly Daddy!  We sang it in Spanish."

Hearing a new CD, Putumayo Quebec, at home: "What's that music?"
Maman: "C'est un CD du Quebec."
Griffin: "Pourquoi c'est en francais?"
Maman: "Parce qu'on parle francais au Quebec."
Griffin: "Oh, okay."

I've also started reading books in Spanish to him--my husband has never studied Spanish, which means that my several iterations of Spanish I and II over the past 20 years make me the default expert in our casa.  (I'm not thrilled about this, because my Spanish is weak and because every time I use Spanish with Griffin is time that I'm not speaking French with him.)  (Plus, I don't pronounce the R and RR correctly in Spanish--they come out very Gallic--and when Griffin repeats Spanish words after me he makes them sound French too!  That, though, will certainly change as he spends more time in his Spanish immersion classroom.)

Anyway, we've been reading a trilingual alphabet book, ABCx3 by Marthe Jocelyn.

Each page shows a picture of an object that begins with the target letter in all three languages (including the LL and N that exist in Spanish but not the other two).  Sometimes the words are similar, sometimes not.  Some of them are actually spelled exactly the same in each language, which Griffin picked up on right away.

Griffin: "Why is jaguar 'jaguar' in Spanish and 'jaguar' in French too?"

He even notices diacritical marks!  On the A page, he saw that the French "avion" becomes "avion" [imagine an accent mark over the O] in Spanish.  "Look, Mom!  In Spanish, 'airplane' has an accent aigu!" (Ah, if only more of my college students had shown this eye for detail and excitement about spelling.)

Can you tell that I love, love, love watching Griffin's linguistic developments and discoveries?  Yep, these 4+ years of speaking to him exclusively in my non-native French have been worth it!

a new capitulo in Griffin's life

Griffin outside his new classroom

My four-year-old (mostly) bilingual son is now officially learning Spanish!

Griffin has just started preschool at Escuela Bilingue Pioneer, a public bilingual immersion elementary school which also offers preschool classes.  (Some of you may recall that we spent a year on Pioneer's waiting list before finding out that they'd have room for him starting this fall.  Now that's he's a preschool student there, he's guaranteed a spot in one of their kindergarten classes, all the way through fifth grade.  And, quite fortuitously, this school is only three blocks from our house, while our assigned "neighborhood" school is clear across town!)

At the preschool and kindergarten levels, the teachers use only Spanish with the children, who are a mix of native English speakers and native Spanish speakers.  Griffin has been remarkably, surprisingly nonplussed about the immersion experience.  Take, for example, this exchange after his first day:

Griffin: Maman, I didn't understand what the teachers were saying because they were speaking Spanish all the time.
Maman: Ah bon?  ça va? [Oh really?  Was that okay?]
Griffin: Oui, ça va. [Yes, it's fine.]
Maman: Tu voudrais y retourner demain? [Would you like to go back tomorrow?]
Griffin: Oui! 

It helps, of course, that the classroom is full of centers with activities that Griffin loves--books, manipulatives, and so forth--and a few new things, like Coco, the pet mouse.  This led to Griffin's very first trilingual sentence:

"Maman, the ratoncita was scared of all the people so she stayed in her petite maison!"

Oh, I am a madre orgullosa of my hijo, muy orgullosa!  This is going to be quite an aventura.

Profile: non-native English with Dani's son in Spain

Here at Bringing up Baby Bilingual, we hear a lot about being non-native speakers of the languages we are using with our families.  (I’m kind of obsessed with this idea, as I’ve been living it for nearly four years now.)  Regular readers and commenters like Kate at German in the Afternoon, Elizabeth at La Mother Tongue, Monika at Slices of Life, and Tamara at Non-Native Bilingualism, for example, are raising their children bilingually, as are some of the parents featured in profiles here: Tracy, THW, and Jeanne, to name a few.


But so far, we have primarily met English-mother-tongue mothers who are living in the US or the UK but choose to use another language with their children.  Today, however, I’m delighted to introduce Dani, a Spanish man living in Spain, married to a fellow Spaniard, who has embraced the challenge of teaching their toddler son his own non-native English.


Please join me in welcoming Dani and his family to my blog!

Who are the members of your family?

Papi: 30 years old, born in Madrid, working (in Madrid) for a British multinational (insurance business). As everyone in Spain, I learnt English at the school following the standard WRONG method that we all suffer in this country, i.e. memorizing lists of vocabulary, learning just through reading, no listening, no speaking… awful. Then at 23 after some intensive courses and some practice I spent seven months working in Ireland (customer attention) which meant a great boost in my fluency. Since then I have continued learning every day and now I use English at work about 30% of the time on a daily basis. I spent also 2.5 years working for a German company and I learned German until level C1 (a little above intermediate) but I’m now losing almost everything, since I stopped when my little punk was born. I also speak some Italian (only some). I found out that I love languages a little bit late, and now I’d like to have the time to study and practice more.

Mum: 33 years old, born in Madrid, works (in Madrid and one to two days a week traveling) for an engineering company. She didn’t spend time abroad but still she understands English pretty well and speaks English well enough to maintain a conversation. She is absolutely into our bilingual project, and gives support with sentences, words and songs here and there. She is an awesome mum and wife. What can I say….

In-laws/caretakers: Supporting and loving Spanish granny and grandpa. They sold a family business so now they are retired; they are the big rock upon which we stand to raise our little kid. Always helpful and tender. I don’t think we’ll be able to pay them back for what they do for us EVERY DAY. They don’t speak or understand any other language but Spanish.

Son: D. Jr. is 17 months old.  He enjoys exploring around, riding his toy motorbike, reading stories with Papi, and singing songs and dancing with Papi and Mami.  We also love to imitate animal sounds and to prowl around the house (if someone could have shown us a picture of this when we were younger and partying like crazy...LOL).  Since his birth I have tried to read stories to him as much as I could and for as long as he showed interest, in order to get him used to English sounds.  We know this is working because it's still one of his favorite things in the world now.  He is very hyperactive, but whenever there is a book with nice pictures around, he stays still and quiet to listen to the story and then interacts with it.

What languages are spoken by the adults in your household and at what level of proficiency?
Between mum and dad: Spanish, because it feels really weird to speak English between us.
Mum to kid: Spanish mainly, but lots of English words and expressions come in the way too.
Dad to kid/Dad to kid and mum: English 100%. If I don’t know a word or idiom, I’ll find another way to say the same thing, then check in the internet (God bless smartphones) and integrate the new expression/word immediately.
Rest of family to kid: Spanish.

What is a typical day in your son's life like?
On a a work day: He wakes up at 7:45 and has breakfast with mum and/or dad, depending on mum’s business trips. These days Papi makes breakfast, dresses him, and gets him ready for nursery, all in English. We sing songs in English on our way to the nursery for the 8:45 drop off. No English program  is available in the area, so it’s just in Spanish.  (We are trying to change this, but all you have read about English or bilingual education programs in Spain is 90% a lie and the other 10% is true but way too expensive).

Then mum or granny picks him up at 13:15 after lunch, and then siesta. Wake up at 16:00 and then play in the playground/sandbox with kids and grandpa until papi/mum picks him up at around 19:00 or 19:30. Then bath, dinner, English Pocoyo, and story, and go to bed at 21:30.

As you can see, his English input in a regular day is around 2 to 2.5 net hours, and this fact hammers away at my mind all day long. My only relief is that apparently the hours that he spends with me are like “high intensity time” because of the emotional bond, so that makes English stick better (or so I like to believe).

On a weekend day, we wake up late and I try to give him as much English input as possible until bedtime. Songs, games, drawing, animals, playground--all adapted to his age. As simple as that.

Why do you want your child to know more than one language?
In the end what we want for our kids is opportunities. Speaking English fluently is something scarce in the Spanish labor market. Only four or five people out of 85 do it in my company (a BRITISH company, for God’s sake!), most of them young people. Directors, even not-so-old ones, just suck at it. (So I’ll be one of the last ones to be fired.)

Having said that, there is an obvious career perspective in my decision, and I’m sure that the working environment for my little one in 20 years time won’t be the same as it is now (the whole world speaking Chinese, perhaps?), but still I firmly believe it’s the right thing to do. As a late learner of English, I saw a whole world open up in front of my eyes/ears, and I want my boy to be able to enjoy this too. I thing it’s the best (and only at the moment) inheritance that I can pass on to him.

How well does your son understand and speak the different languages?
We perceive that he understands equally well English and Spanish. We check from time to time through identification games, e.g. we put all his animal figures on the sofa and ask him to bring us one. He recognizes them all (around 12) and responds to things like “give it to mummy,” “put it down,” and “pick it up.” He also has some kind of code with the hands for each song and every time he hears a word or see something related to the song, he automatically starts doing the song movements. And when we read a book together and he is asked to point at something he does it correctly (e.g. “Where is the spider?” he points at it, and then “Where does the spider live?” and he points at the spider web).

As he is still very young, he is producing baby utterances, sort of “ZTAH” for “STAR”, “PAH” for “PANTS” or “WUH” for “WOUND,” but you can see that the seed of an English word is there. The Spanish baby-word for “STAR” (ESTRELLA) would be something like “TEYA” or “YEYA” so you can tell “ZTAH!” is not Spanish. I keep track of the evolution in a white board monthly. He does animal sounds as well but I don’t count them as words (WUAWUA! for “DOGGY” or MUU for “COW”).

If you take a deeper look, it seems so amazing how he’s started to say things related to what he usually does with his mum and grandparents in Spanish, and those related to games and things that we do together (animals and stuff like that) in English.

I have also noticed that he is getting used to managing two words for each concept. He understands both terms, and then he picks just one of the words to name that thing, normally the shorter one or the one containing syllables that he produces already, e.g. PULPO= “PUH-POH,” for OCTOPUS (way more complicated in English, plus he now controls “POH POH” very well for POO). I’m fascinated by this process.

How have you been able to expose your child to the culture(s) where the different languages are spoken?

I’m planning to do so through periods of time in the UK/Ireland/USA as he grows up. Maybe student exchange programs, vacations, and so forth.

What resources and activities have been most useful to you? 

Definitely reading stories and singing songs together. We saw a spout the other day and he was really upset because the incy wincy spider was not inside it. He was like, “Hm! The song explicitly specifies that she went up the water spout so do NOT try to trick me you all, it’s gotta be here somewhere….” It was so fun and we (I) talked about it for a long time. So songs and stories have proven to be great English triggers. 

Do you have any advice for us?
I can identify several situations in which I have had to make decisions about my language use with my son:

Family: In my case, I haven’t had enough time to go through many experiences, but with the family (primarily in-laws), I say things first in English and then in Spanish. Everybody is really supportive so we haven’t had any problems. Plus, my in-laws are actually grasping some English.

Playground: There are awkward moments at the playground when playing with other kids. I get THE LOOK ¿(,) (,)? from other parents when they hear me talking to my boy. If you are a native English speaker and you speak English to your kids, it’s perceived as natural. If you are Spanish and all your family is Spanish too….“What’s wrong with you? Why would you do something like that to your own kid!!” or “Look at him! He thinks he is sooo cool speaking English…. They’ll get it at the school; there is no need to do that, for crying out loud! You’ll mess his brain up.”

At the beginning I felt self conscious, and even sometimes I felt like other parents could speak English better than me and correct me and say, “Look, if you want to do this, at least you could do it right” (I know, I sometimes freak out), but I care every time less about this things. I might make some mistakes, I must say that my English is far from flawless, I don’t have phrasal verbs down pat, and I only know some English idioms, but I think this is working and I feel confident enough to keep going.

Cousins: D. Jr. has several three-to-four-year-old cousins and their reaction is so fun. They look at us like only a child can look, then they go with the flow and try to say things in English to D.Jr. They ask me how to say things and then they say it! It’s so fun. In this situation I say things in English for my boy and immediately after the same in Spanish, and then I talk about how we speak English together, trying to make it normal. My sister and brother-in-law think that it’s okay, but somehow unnecessary. 

I think many people see this as pretentious and trying to be “special” (but with a negative connotation). I try to ignore all this, but it has a social impact and I’m afraid my kid will eventually perceive it. I think the key here is enrolling him in a REAL immersion school to make English part of his life at home AND out of home. We’ll see how things go.

What do you wish you had known when you started?
I tend to worry too much about this. Uncertainty is something added that you have to deal with when you make the decision of raising a baby bilingually. You can become a worrywart! Sometimes you can even lose track of the final goal. Maybe the smart thing to do is to set realistic goals. He doesn’t need to be Shakespeare and it’s not YOUR challenge, and it’s not about showing everyone how smart your kid is because he speaks English. It’s just about giving tools to your kid so he can survive in the jungle. Anything else must be left apart (I sometimes have to say this to myself).

Muchas gracias, Dani, and best of luck to you and your family--keep in touch!

profile: Franck's trilingual family, adding Chinese now!

Meet a new member of Bringing up Baby Bilingual's extended family: Franck from France, his wife Cristina from Spain, and their two children, living in the US.  Franck graciously answered my questions--and he has a question for my readers at the end of this profile!  You can also visit his brand-new blog, Early Languages, where he shares ideas for language teaching in ten-minute chunks.

Please introduce us to your family.

My name is Franck. I was born and raised in Alsace, France. I grew up speaking with my parents and friends Alsatian, a German dialect, and learned French in school.  I have lived in the US for 12 years, where I met Cristina, my wife, who is from the Basque Country in Spain. We both work in large retail and consumer goods companies and live in West Orange, NJ. We are passionate about teaching our kids languages.


Elena, our daughter, is six years old. She speaks French with me, Spanish with my wife, and English at school. She loves drawing, ballet and tennis.  Pablo is three years old and is doing the same, although with a more limited vocabulary. He is a big soccer fan.

We all go as a family to Chinese school on Saturday afternoon to learn Mandarin.

What languages are spoken by the adults in your household and at what level of proficiency?

I am a native French speaker and my wife a native Spanish speaker, which makes it easy for us to teach our languages to our children. When my wife and I met, we did not speak each other’s languages, only English. We took classes for one year so that we could communicate with our respective families.

With our kids around, I speak French to my wife, and she answers in Spanish. We speak in English in front of the children when friends are around.

How are you exposing your children to the other languages?

We strongly believe in making every moment in the day together a language learning opportunity. I usually read at least one ten-minute story a day in French. When I cook, I like to have one of the kids with me to explain the vocabulary in French. When we play soccer, I make an effort to talk a lot about how to play in French. In the car I only put French nursery songs.

Why do you want your children to know more than one language?

We believe that learning is fun and we want them to communicate easily with their grandparents in Spain and France. It will also give them broader opportunities in the future to build relationships with people. And we believe that speaking more than one language will help build a more peaceful world.

How have you been able to expose your children to the cultures where French and Spanish are spoken?

Every year we spend one week in France and one week in Spain to see family.

What resources and activities have been most useful to you? What, on the other hand, has not been useful?

Useful: a lot of books, audiobooks in French, iPod and iPad. Playing with dolls and playing soccer also makes it fun and interactive. A lot of songs in the car. Watching a cartoon in French on YouTube five minutes per day.

I believe everything can be a useful activity if you weave in some language learning.

What challenges have you faced as you raise your children multilingually?

Finding the time. We both work full time away from home. The first one comes home at 7:30pm at the earliest. The market share of French is limited at home, and I need to find every possible opportunity to squeeze some French in.

Do you have any advice for us--for example, how do you encourage your children to use the minority/second language, or how do you cope with family members who don't speak the child's second language?

Reading princess stories in the second language works the best with my daughter, and also playing together with her dolls or puppets in French. It makes it interactive.

When my in-laws are in town, they do not understand French. So I tell things to Pablo and Elena in French, and translate it right away in Spanish. I basically tell them things in the two languages so that my in-laws do not feel left out.

If any of the adults in the household are non-native speakers of the language they use with the children, please tell us a little about how that works for your family.

My wife and I made the commitment to learn each other’s language. That was the biggest step I believe that helps us raise trilingual children.

We continue maintaining our languages. I read novels in Spanish, my wife in French (mainly on days off or on vacation). Vacation with our families is also very helpful

What do you think parents, caretakers, teachers, and/or researchers need to know about teaching a second language to children? What do you wish you had known when you started? What, if anything, would you do differently now?

I am in the process currently. However, I like to read a lot about other parents’ experiences, I learn a lot from it.  Using the iPad, YouTube, a story in French every night, CDs in the car are all ideas I got from friends.

Answer your own question now--what did I not ask about that you would like to comment on?

I would like to know if parents have used the second language to learn a third one. I am trying to teach Chinese to my son with a French method. I would like to talk with parents who have tried it and how they did it.

Readers, parents of multilingual children, do you have any suggestions for Franck as he uses his children's second language to help them learn a fourth?

I'd also like to highlight his candid statement that when both parents work long days, it is very hard to give the children lots of input in the minority languages.  When I gave a conference presentation earlier this year about raising children with more than one language, I asked the attendees what they found most challenging about the process; most of them felt similarly constrained.  I know I'm very lucky to be working part-time and spending half my weekdays immersing Griffin in his second language.  Kudos to you single parents and parents who both work full-time who still manage to enrich your children's lives with two or more languages!  And Franck, thank you for sharing your story.

Griffin conjugates in Spanish!

So Griffin has been learning a little Spanish at preschool, and he showed a lot of interest in the language during our recent trip to Mexico, but it's not something I'm making an effort to reinforce at home because I feel like he just barely gets enough French from me.  I just don't want to "dilute" it with another language yet (even though we are hoping that we can enroll him in a bilingual elementary school in two years).

So imagine my surprise when Griffin corrected his father's Spanish the other day!  Ed was singing a tune from our Music Together class called "Don Alfredo Baila," but he was mispronouncing the verb as bailo ("I dance" instead of "he dances").  Griffin looked up at him, said, "Don Alfredo baila, Daddy," and went back to making a mess with monkeys, cars, and blocks.

Wow!

Spring Break in Cancun is not a cliché when the party animal is a three-year-old!

Hola mis amigos! We're back from our trip to a family-friendly resort in Cancun, Mexico, where we spent five days relaxing on the beach.

Er, rather, five days chasing Griffin around the resort, which he saw as his own personal giant sandbox.

He enjoyed watching the sea birds and the ocean, but not actually swimming in it. (The wind was quite strong and the water pretty cold.)

(So was the pool water, for that matter.)

At 22 weeks pregnant, I wasn't able to partake of any exotic tropical mixed drinks (though I discovered that a virgin mojito is plenty tasty).

As for Griffin, he got comfortable ordering a leche at the bar.

Perhaps the best part of the trip, however, was watching Griffin develop an interest in speaking Spanish! He would hear the staff talking to each other in Spanish, watch my rudimentary efforts to ask and answer questions in Spanish, and try to read the Spanish words on the kids' placemats in the restaurants.Griffin would look around and ask me, "How do we say 'watermelon' in Spanish? How do we say 'bucket'? How do we say 'I want to take a bath'?" While I didn't know a lot of those words, I did at least teach him to say "Gracias" when a server brought us something and "adios" when we left a place. And we tried to get him to greet people with "hola," but for my bibliophile son, "hola" is inextricably linked to the book shown above, Hola Jalapeno by Amy Wilson Sanger. So whenever a staff member passed us and smiled and said "Buenos dias," Griffin would smile in return and call them a chile pepper!

Profile: Portuguese and Spanish with Marcela's family in the US

Please welcome Marcela into the Bringing up Baby Bilingual family. She kindly answered my questions about raising her children with Portuguese and Spanish in the US--no English yet at all! I know some of you are also focusing on the minority language(s) at home to ensure that your children have a strong base before they start school and are bombarded by the majority language. Marcela and I would love to hear about your strategies and challenges and choices--please share them in the comments below! Thank you, Marcela.

Introduce us to your family--
• Parents'/caretakers'/adults' names, occupations, nationality--We're the parents--Edson and Marcela. Edson is a dialysis tech at our local hospital and working on his RN degree which he'll thankfully get at the end of this year! Marcela is a SAHM that also works part time from home. Edson is Brazilian and Marcela is Chilean.
• Kids' names, ages, interests--Our kids are Lucas (3) and he LOVES anything that has to do with trucks, trains or dirt. Gabriela (Gabi) is 8 months old and she likes playing with her brother's toys and hanging out with mom.
• Where you currently live--Provo, Utah
• Other countries you've lived--Edson has lived in Brazil and I have lived in Brazil and Chile.
What languages are spoken by the adults in your household and at what level of proficiency?

We both speak Spanish and Portuguese fluently but Edson says his Spanish is "Portunol" than pure Spanish. His Spanish is good, it definitely gets him by, but it's not grammatically correct all of the time. However, when we're both home, we speak in Portuguese to each other. I learned English in school. I went to ESL classes from Kindergarten all the way through 5th grade. By that time (5th grade), I was only going to my ESL class for an hour and the rest was all English. I was pretty fluent by then and was able to test out. Edson learned English by speaking to Americans in Brazil. He worked with them in Brazil but his vocabulary was very limited to his work. Once he got here, he was able to fully pick it up.

What languages are you exposing your children to, and how?

I speak only Spanish to the kids and Edson speaks only Portuguese to them. When Lucas watches TV, it's usually Spanish cartoons, and his Disney movies are all in Portuguese. He also gets some exposure with English whenever he goes to Church or plays with the kids outside.

Why do you want your children to know more than one language?

Aside from the obvious reason of helping them in their future, we both feel it's very important for our kids to be able to communicate with their family. My parents don't speak English and neither does anyone in my husband's family. I have a brother that only taught his kids English and they aren't able to communicate with my parents and I think it's a true shame to not be able to do so.

How well do your children understand the different languages? Do they have a preference for what they speak in which contexts? How has their language use evolved as they grow?

Lucas understands and speaks both Spanish and Portuguese really well! He mixes very few words from one to the other but the amazing thing is that he knows which language he needs to speak with whom. I've noticed that when Lucas is playing by himself, he talks to his cars in Portuguese. So I'm guessing he has a preference for it. His language has evolved a ton ever since he started watching more TV (as a result of my needing to work from home), especially since he hears slang in Portuguese from the Disney movies, he just says it all the time!

How have you been able to expose your children to the cultures where the different languages are spoken?

We Skype quite a bit with both of our families. Lucas and Edson went to Brazil in July so he was able to fully immerse himself in their culture. My parents frequently fly out here as well, so they get their Spanish culture in as well. We also go to library readings for kids in Spanish.

What resources and activities have been most useful to you? What, on the other hand, has not been useful?

Our library has a few Spanish books which are helpful. I wish they would have more and in other languages. I would love to be able to have more books in Portuguese but unfortunately, those are hard to come by and buying them online is sometimes really expensive. The library readings are great because he gets to see other kids that speak his language as well.

What challenges have you faced as you raise your children with more than one language?

It hasn't been a problem yet but I'm scared of what will happen in the future once the kids are going to school and learning English. It will become their social language and I'm scared that they won't want to speak at home anymore and then turn into one of those kids that understand the parents' language but don't speak it. We plan on having more family vacations to both Chile and Brazil in the future but until that point in our lives, I'm scared of them rebelling against the languages. Or even telling us that since both Mom and Dad speak English, why can't we all just speak English?

Do you have any advice for us?

Just keep at it! It's very important to be consistent with the target language and if you don't know a word, look it up! That way you and your child are both learning and you're still using the language. As far as those people we encounter who don't speak either Spanish or Portuguese, we just explain the situation and have a little patience with them. We still speak to the kids in Spanish or Portuguese when we have to say something and then translate it for the other people around if they seem uncomfortable. Most of the time, I've found, people are fine with us speaking our languages to them.

What do you think parents, caretakers, teachers, and/or researchers need to know about teaching a second language to children? What do you wish you had known when you started? What, if anything, would you do differently now?

It's very rewarding! To know that your kids' minds are like sponges and can pick multiple languages up in just a snap is great! One thing to keep in mind is that because they're learning more than one language, it doesn't mean they're slow. We've had people treat Lucas like he was a child with developmental difficulties because of it. That really bothered me because he's extremely smart--he just doesn't speak your language yet. I wish I would've known to pick up more books/movies for the kids to watch. Also, I would've researched more to find mommy groups that were in the same situation so that the kids could get together and learn together as well.

Answer your own question now--what did I not ask about that you would like to comment on?

It's more of a question--I guess I'm struggling with when to introduce English (formally) to Lucas. Should I let a preschool do it? Or should it be me? If it is me, then will he not want to speak to me in Spanish anymore?

free books and stories and fables and poems and rhymes, all online, in so many languages!

While researching my articles on French language activities for Multilingual Living, I realized that I could probably stop buying books for Griffin entirely--both in English and in French--beause so very many books exist online already, and some on websites that can even boast animation and/or professional narrators!

(Oh, let's be honest. I'll never stop buying books.)

Anyway, here are some sites that I've explored lately. I hope you'll enjoy them too!

free online children's books--because you can't always find an older cousin to read to you

Tumblebooks:
I first blogged about this program three years ago; read my original post about how it works, the few aspects I don't like about it, and how you could use it in a language classroom. Briefly, you select a picture book, chapter book, or nonfiction book in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, or Russian. (Predictably, English predominates; click on the "language learning" button at the top of the page to access the books in one of the other languages.) You watch the story unfurl onscreen, with a narrator reading aloud while the lines of text are highlighted like a karaoke storytime. You can opt to have it advance automatically or manually. Many of the picture books have activities that accompany them--matching games, quiz questions, and so forth. If your public library or school doesn't subscribe to Tumblebooks, you can access it through the Lafayette Public Library's kid's stuff page.

We Give Books:
At this charitable giving site, everytime you read a book, the publisher (Penguin Books) will donate one to the nonprofit organization of your choice. You have to sign up (for free) and the selection is fairly limited (smaller than Tumblebooks), but it's hard to argue with the idea! The books, all in English, are geared to ages ten and under and include both DK nonfiction titles (which my kids in Reading Buddies love) and familiar picture books--definitely a plus. You (or your child) do have to actually read the book yourself from pages identical to those of the printed book.

Lire et RéCréer:
This site in French has short stories, fables, poems, and nursery rhymes, both classic and contemporary. The text is presented on the screen, often with simple animation and background music, but the reader is (usually) invited to pronounce it aloud (note that music will start when the site is opened).The tales are divided by genre and also by age. It doesn't have as many "bells and whistles" as Tumblebooks, but it's all in French and the selection (and variety of genres) is a lot better!

Librivox:
Like Tumblebooks, Librivox reads books to you; unlike Tumblebooks, this program focuses on books for adults, and all of the texts are recorded by volunteers from their homes, which makes the sound quality less professional. On the other hand, this means that new texts are constantly being added. (By "new," I mean "previously unrecorded." The books are limited to those in the public domain, which means nothing from the past few decades.) Librivox offers texts in just about any language you can think of, limited only by the languages that their volunteer readers around the world speak, from Catalan to Korean to Latvian to Old English to Tagalog to Urdu (click here and select a language from the drop-down menu to see what books are available in the languages of your choice). Among their choices in French, I haven't found anything appropriate for Griffin or Carl--even the fables by Jean de la Fontaine would go over their heads, at least without illustrations, and no way would I give a preschooler the original versions of Charles Perrault's fairy tales! In English, though, they have stories by Beatrix Potter, Thornton Burgess, Aesop, and Mother Goose, plus The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (and with 10,000+ texts in English, many more are bound to be appropriate for kids).

Reading A-Z:
I found this one almost four years ago, before I started working as a reading enrichment program coordinator at the library; I'll be exploring it more thoroughly now to steal (er, adapt) some of their ideas for my Reading Buddies. As I stated in my original post, you must purchase a subscription ($85/year for one classroom) to access all of their materials, but they also offer a generous number of free samples. You print out the black-line books and staple them together (then the kids can color them themselves). As the site is designed for teachers of English, the vast majority of their books are in English, but they also have a selection in French and in Spanish (both translations of their original books in English). The subheading on the home page of this site claims "Everything You Need to Teach Reading," and I pretty much believe them--everything from phonics to poetry to readers' theatre to worksheets to lesson plans to assessments is here.

Enchanted Learning:
Like Reading A-Z, this subscription-based site markets itself to teachers with printable books and worksheets. Its offerings are much more limited when it comes to books, but the site provides more printable activities, games, and worksheets. You can also access all of their materials without subscribing ($20/year) if you're willing to look at ads and not have the prettiest versions of the pages when you print them. While Reading A-Z seems very educational, the Enchanted Learning stuff strikes me as more fun. Check out their materials, including short printable books, about Africa and Kwanzaa, in American Sign Language, about Canada, about China and the Chinese New Year, in Spanish and about Cinco de Mayo and Dia de los Muertos, in French, in Swedish, in Dutch, in German, in Hebrew and about Hanukkah, in Italian, about Japan and Japanese crafts, in Portuguese, in Russian, and about geography in general. Enchanted Learning's materials in English are divided into categories on the home page.

So now it's your turn!  What do you think about sites like these?  Do you prefer the interactive ones or the simpler text-based sites?  Which are your favorites (and least favorites) (and why)?  What others do you recommend?

Note: Do check out the comments, where readers have recommended many more worthy sites in the past two three years!

profile: non-native Spanish and French with Michael's family

Meet Michael Fee and his wife Karen, both Americans, who are learning Spanish and French along with their children! Thank you very much for letting me profile your family.

Introduce us to your family--

• Parents' names, occupations, nationality
o Michael Fee -- Managing Director of Lango, a company which offers French, Spanish, and Mandarin classes for kids ages 18 months to eight years old in 17 states across the US. (For more information about local classes or if you are interested in becoming a licensee and bringing classes to your own neighborhood, visit http://www.langokids.com/.)
o Karen – Associate Development Director for Lighthouse Community Charter School

• Kids' names, ages, interests
o Mack – 10, mountain biking, soccer and travel
o Catie – 8, soccer, music, sewing and languages
o Declan – 4, soccer, t-ball and Spanish

• Where you currently live
o Oakland, California

• Anything else relevant?
o Extensive travel in Europe, Asia and Africa
o Karen and I met doing Teach For America in the Mississippi Delta

What languages are spoken by the adults in your household and at what level of proficiency?
• We’re both learning! I started Lango because I had a classically American language-learning experience: started late (high school), wasn’t immersed, and never lived overseas. We want better for our kids! So we’re all learning Spanish, and my daughter and I are also learning French.

What languages are you exposing your children to, and how?
• Spanish and French. They’ve gravitated towards these, and most of all, we want them to love learning languages. At times I wish they were learning Mandarin, because I do believe it will become very relevant in the coming years, but I don’t want to push them to the point of discomfort.

Why do you want your children to know more than one language?
• So many reasons! Intellectual, cultural, practical…but most of all, we believe that borders between cultures are eroding, and to get along in this shrinking, “flattening” world, whether in business, politics or travel, we all need to take the step of reaching out and communicating in other languages, not just assuming everyone will speak ours.

How well do your children understand, speak, read, and write the different languages? How do they feel about them?

• We’re getting there. My daughter has shown the greatest proclivity; she retains vocabulary well, and her accents are spot-on. We’re all becoming more comfortable with speaking only in our new languages at dinner and other uncontrived situations.

How have you been able to expose your children to the cultures where the different languages are spoken?
• Living in California we’re exposed to Spanish all the time. My older son plays on an all-Spanish-speaking soccer team, and my younger son has a preschool teacher who’s from Mexico and speaks Spanish with him (even though it’s not an immersion school). We go to the market in Oakland’s Fruitvale District and hear nothing but Spanish when we buy our vegetables!

What resources and activities have been most useful to you? What, on the other hand, has not been useful?
• Lango classes, of course: learning new languages from native speakers alongside peers and engaged in dynamic, thematically-based activities.
• “Real-world” activities – incorporating new languages into our everyday life, such as dinner or chores around the house.
• Playing traditionally English games, but speaking Spanish. The kids are comfortable with the games so don’t mind experimenting with the language.
• There’s some good software out there, but we haven’t found that it holds their attention for long. Also, most of it is translation-based, which really confuses our youngest child.

What challenges have you faced as you raise your children with more than one language?
• Mostly it’s not speaking it fluently ourselves! When we’re trying to get through daily life – chores, pickups and drop-offs, meals – it’s a lot easier to speak the language we are all familiar with.

Do you have any advice for us--for example, how do you encourage your children to use the other languages, or how do you cope with family members who don't speak the child's second language?
• Be patient. Don’t force it. Becoming fluent takes years, and any form of early exposure is going to move your child towards bilingualism.
• Try to expose them in a variety of formats – in a class, with family and with friends, through music and media, in everyday life. They shouldn’t see their new language as something that only happens in certain contexts.

What do you think parents, caretakers, teachers, and/or researchers need to know about teaching a second language to children? What do you wish you had known when you started? What, if anything, would you do differently now?
• Start early, and stick with it! There will be times your kids will push back, as with anything new or anything that takes a long time to learn. Without forcing it, just keep at it and it will take hold.

Answer your own question now--what did I not ask about that you would like to comment on?
• I love seeing all the new ways to learn languages come onto the market – but nothing replaces communication with real human beings, especially native speakers. Watching their mouths move, seeing their expressions, gauging their responses and not just pre-formulated statements – learning a language needs to be real.

Here, here! Thanks for sharing your experiences with us. It sounds like your whole family is invested in learning languages together--how wonderful!

Don't do this! (not that any of you would)

In my Reading Buddies program at the library, there's a 9th grade girl who has been a volunteer for several years. She has a Latino last name and parents with Spanish accents, so on occasion I have asked her if she'd like to help a child from a Spanish-speaking home practice reading en espanol. Each time she shakes her head and reminds me that she herself doesn't speak Spanish.

A couple of weeks ago, a mom who doesn't speak English wanted to sign her son up for the spring session of our reading enrichment program, but I hadn't updated and printed the Spanish applications at that point. I was using my best librarian Spanish to try to tell her that I would mail her the Spanish info in a week or two (a la "Me Talk Pretty One Day," probably saying something along the lines of "I you letter the solicitation in one weeks and you me it give in desk in bookstore to put the boy in the program"), when the above-mentioned student shyly joined us, picked up the English application, and translated each question for the mom and helped her write her responses.

Afterwards, I thanked her profusely, and then asked why she had always denied her bilingualism. Here's what she said:

"My mom always makes fun of me when I speak Spanish. So I don't."

storytelling in Spanish

Cody, a bilingual dog, delivers a Spanish story to your computer or your ipod once a week via the website Cody's Cuentos--for free! This clever pup has even convinced professional native-speaker storytellers to read the tales. His human is also collecting links that relate to Spanish and bilingualism.

(Want to listen to stories in English, French, Spanish, and a handful of others? Check out Tumblebooks!)

Profile: Boca Beth's family learning English and Spanish in the US

This week's profile of children growing up with more than one language comes from teacher and entrepreneur Beth Butler, aka Boca Beth. I think you'll find her situation particularly interesting, as she speaks as a mother who frankly admits that she wishes she had done things differently when her children were younger. Beth is also a non-native speaker of the language she teaches (Spanish) and has a monolingual spouse--very similar to quite a few readers of this blog!

What is your language background and history? I took 8 years of Spanish as a second language, lived in Chile and Mexico as a summer exchange student, and was married to a Latino man for almost 7 years. I have enjoyed Spanish as my second language, being a conversational and literate bilingual person, for more than 30 years.

What languages are you exposing your children to, and how? My three children (18, 16, and 8) are all bilingual at varying degrees. Both boys (the older children with the Latino heritage) have been Spanish student of the year in Middle and High School levels and they understand a lot in Spanish, but to get them to verbalize is difficult, even living in Florida. My new husband is monolingual in English so we speak mainly English around the house, with post-it notes up reminding us all to “Habla Español”! It’s easy to default to English when it is still the majority language in our home, schools, and community.

Why do you want your children to learn more than one language? All three of my children understand the respect needed for other cultures and languages and experience the media attention given to these topics. They very much dislike the ‘English-only’ mentality that some people still have the nerve to hold on to and speak about. I find that my children, surrounded by a feeling of acceptance of all races, cultures and languages, have been given a true jumpstart on not only learning another world language but also on being prepared for a very global economy.

How well do your children understand, speak, read, and write the second language? What do they think about it? Do they have a preference for certain languages in certain situations and with certain speakers? How has this evolved as the children grow up? Our 18-year-old is the most resistant due to the fact that his Latino dad really never emphasized the Spanish in our home while we were married; hence our son did not have the exposure my other two children had at a young age. By the time I remarried and the kids heard Spanish A LOT daily, our eldest had really moved on mentally to another stage in language acquisition. Our middle son and young daughter both understand tons, speak quite a bit, and read to levels of getting by in Spanish.

How have you been able to expose your children to the culture(s) where the second language is spoken? The Travel Channel and momentos and slides from my life in Chile and Mexico have been the only exposure to date for our children to experience Spanish and the culture combined. My former in-laws still have many celebrations to which the boys are invited which allow them to experience some of the native Latin American fiestas, and our neighbor from Ecuador is also a great connection to the culture of his country. We intend to travel next summer to a Latin American country for one week of immersion with our two youngest.

What challenges have occurred as you teach your children two world languages? The ability to default to English has been the biggest challenge. With a monolingual spouse, it’s more convenient to speak English even though he himself asks to learn more Spanish by hearing it more around the home.

What resources have been most useful to you? What, on the other hand, has not been useful? Since I have my own language learning program for young children, this has been the greatest asset for my two youngest children. I started the Boca Beth Program almost 6 years ago, so both of them have had lots of exposure to the bilingual presentation we support. We have not found the CDs for only auditory learning (Pimsleur) to be helpful at this point for my husband nor for the kids.

What do you think parents, caretakers, teachers, and/or researchers need to know about teaching a second language to children? What do you wish you had known when you started? What, if anything, would you do differently now? Today’s parents need to really understand that earlier is better when it comes to introducing a new language to young children. The myths surrounding language learning need to go away so that parents can prepare their children for this very global society in which we live. I wish I had not listened to my first husband and had given our two boys a stronger foundation on Spanish and English in our home. I would have presented every item possible to those babies in English followed by the Spanish word for it. Ahhh, hindsight 20/20!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer your own question now--what did I not ask about that you want to comment on? Immersion is truly not the reality of the majority of homes and classrooms across the United States (or any country for that matter). Most of us live in a home or go to a classroom where only one language is spoken fluently. That is why the bilingual approach is the reality of today’s approach to introducing new world languages to young children. The experts agree that it is just as easy to introduce two words for one item as it is to introduce only one. That is why we at Boca Beth chose the true bilingual presentation of Spanish and English for parents and teachers to use with their children. The baby, toddler, and preschool age child is still learning his native language. Experts agree that you should continue that language acquisition while adding in the new language introduction right alongside it. Make the learning interactive and fun, and the repetition that is so necessary for long term retention will easily follow. Click here to read many articles I have written and published on this topic.

Beth, thank you so much for your candor and willingness to share your experiences! As the wife of a monolingual man myself, I'm also curious to hear more about how your second husband reacted to the idea of a bilingual household. And was hearing you speak Spanish around the house enough to teach him the basics, or has he done any formal study as well besides the Pimsleur CDs?

dancing with español; or, sleep-deprived ramblings of a would-be trilingual

Estela, Cynde, and Katie, you'd be so proud of me: I'm taking a "Spanish for Librarians" class! I want to be able to communicate with the Hispanophone parents of my Reading Buddies without having to resort to tortuous circumlocution. Class started today--and it just felt so good to be taking a concrete step to learn how to communicate for real (not just conjugate) in another language. Seeing how much I could understand from the teacher's rapid-fire all-Spanish directions and explanations turned out to be fun--a welcome change from the challenge of understanding Griffin's all-baby coos and cries. (Unfortunately, he doesn't come with a bilingual infant-parent dictionary.)

Oh, that's one of the new words I learned today! Unfortunately. "Desafortunadamente." What a mouthful! It's so long you regret deciding to tackle it once you get to the middle, but unfortunately, you must continue to the end. "Desafortunadamente." It sounds like a dance--the Macarena, but morose.

But I digress. The teacher kindly told me that my vocabulary and grammar were great considering how little Spanish I've formally studied, but that I sound like a French person when I speak Spanish. Yet isn't that preferable to sounding like an American?! At least they're both Romance languages. (Yay for cognates!)

Don't ask me how I have time for this with a baby around plus my library job plus my tutoring. (I don't. My blog is suffering from neglect! Sorry. And it's been a while since I read my favorite blogs--but I promise I'll drop by soon, Jeanne et al.!)

Oh, and I have a new tutoring client in French: an adult who hopes to study in France eventually. She wants to work primarily on conversation. I can't wait! I think we'll use newspaper articles and websites as a springboard for discussion and to explore French culture.

Okay, I'll admit it: while I love my job at the library, I do miss teaching French (and speaking it to people who don't drool copiously and holler incoherently in my ear). Griffin's adorable, but it's hard to hold a meaningful conversation with him.

Here's Griffin doing the Desafortunadamente dance. See? I told you he was adorable!

All righty, enough of this. It's late and I'm getting loopy. I must go to bed. Desafortunadamente.

profile: Marisol and Diego learning English and Spanish in the US

Here's another example of a family successfully raising their children bilingually! Muchas gracias to Neza and Demetrio for their thoughtful, detailed responses and for letting me profile their family!

• What is your language background and history? We are a married couple. Neza is from Minnesota. She studied Spanish in school, then went to Mexico as a college student, where she met Demetrio. Demetrio came to live in Minnesota in 1996 with Neza and he only started learning English at that point. He is now fluent in English. We have two children, Marisol, 5 and Diego, 2.

• What languages are you exposing your children to, and how? Demetrio speaks mainly Spanish with the children, and Neza speaks mainly English. There are some words which we only use the Spanish term for, (like ‘tina’ is the bathtub, milk is always ‘leche’) and some things are always described in English. We are very loose with our policy on which language to speak. We don’t make it an issue--but the children hear both languages. It’s just a natural part of our family life.

• Why do you want your children to learn a second language? It’s essential that our kids understand the language of their father. Also, they have a large family in Mexico, which we have visited, and we don’t want the kids to be alienated from their own grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins. Language is not only about ‘talking’-- it also connects you to a culture of a particular place. You can’t fully understand the language of a place without learning its culture (and vice versa). We want our kids to feel attached to the Mexican culture. They have a right to it as part of their identity. It’s also one of the greatest gifts you can give your child.

• How well do your children understand, speak, read, and write Spanish? Our children speak mainly in English, because that is the dominant language here in Minnesota. They do understand Spanish--but what comes out of their mouths is English. We review the alphabet in Spanish at home, and read books in Spanish. We expect them to learn to read and write in Spanish as they do English, but we will have to teach it ourselves at home, since they don’t have Spanish reading lessons at school. (They’re only two & five years old).

• How you been able to expose your child to the culture(s) where Spanish is spoken? We have taken trips to visit family in Mexico. We try to visit Mexican businesses and events here in our city. We listen to music in Spanish and watch Spanish TV.

• What challenges have occurred as you teach your children a second language? We haven’t been able to get our kids comfortable responding fully in Spanish, although they understand when spoken to. Also, we don’t have enough other people speaking Spanish to them, so they mainly hear it just from their dad. We’re lacking the ‘community’. Also, Marisol has a Spanish teacher who comes to her school once a week, just as an enrichment program. The problem is that the teacher, although very nice, is an American who speaks the Spanish from Argentina. We teach our kids the Spanish spoken in Mexico, and Marisol sometimes gets confused.

• What resources have been most useful to you? For a while, I took the kids to ECFE (St. Paul Schools program for Early Childhood Family Education). But I went to the one for Spanish speakers, only so my kids could be exposed to the language in another environment. I was the only ‘American’ parent in the class, but I had fun, and my kids got to play with other kids speaking Spanish.

• What do you think parents, caretakers, teachers, and/or researchers need to know about teaching a second language to children? It’s really important to connect to the CULTURE of the country the language comes from. Without the culture, learning a language is just a bunch of memorization. Also, teachers need to stay up-to-date with the modern culture of the country they are teaching. I was really bored by my Spanish teachers in school giving us old information.

• What do you wish you had known when you started? What, if anything, would you do differently now? I became frustrated and bored studying Spanish in school. But it made a huge impact on my life when I actually went to Mexico and lived the language. You have to live with a language, and it’s culture. The way that my husband and I are teaching our children now is the best we can do with our specific family and lifestyle, and I don’t think we would change anything about it.

• Answer your own question now--what did I not ask about that you want to comment on? We don’t have a Spanish immersion school nearby, but there’s a French, a German, and a Chinese school not far from where we live. I have wondered if it would be good to put the kids in any of those schools, even though we don’t speak those languages as a family. Because so much of our child’s learning is at home, I don’t know if I would like my child learning a language at school that I couldn’t understand…Seems silly, but honest.

Ruben learning English, French, and Spanish in the US

Carolyn, who comes from a multicultural and multilingual background, has already started using her different languages with her nine-month-old son, Ruben, despite the fact that her husband (like mine!) is a monolingual English speaker--and it sounds like it's going very well. I'm so glad that she agreed to complete my questionnaire--it's very inspiring to those of us who are/will be helping raise infants with more than one language!

What is your language background and history?
I was born and raised in Geneva, Switzerland by an American father and an Ecuadorian mother. At home, my mother spoke Spanish to me and my older brother and my father spoke English to us. When we were all together, we spoke English together. Initially, Spanish was my strongest language, but French soon took over when I started preschool at which point I started to speak French with my brother. Growing up, there were often three languages spoken at the dinner table (even though my father preferred for us to all speak English), which certainly made things interesting for visitors. I was slow to acquire English, which remained poor until my parents and I moved to New York City when I was 15 years old (I understood it well, but spoke it poorly and with a strong French accent).

What languages are you exposing your child to, and how?
I speak mostly French to Ruben (who will turn 9 months on October 23). His father only knows English, so that is the language he speaks to him. I was a little hesitant to speak French to Ruben when the three of us were together, but my husband was very encouraging and it is now second nature for me to speak French to Ruben at home. I must admit that I sometimes lapse into English when I’m with English-speaking friends, probably out of a desire not to appear rude, even though I am sure most people would not have a problem with it. I get together with a small group of French-speaking mothers and their children about 2-3 times per month and take Ruben to a gathering of French-speaking families once a month. In addition, we now have a French babysitter that takes care of Ruben one afternoon per week. With regard to the Spanish, I am exposing Ruben to it mostly through playgroups. We attend 1-2 Spanish playgroups per week. During those times, I speak Spanish to him. We also have a Spanish-speaking babysitter who comes one afternoon per week. I have decided to speak Spanish to Ruben myself only when I am around Spanish-speakers. When my mother visited us from Switzerland, she spoke with Ruben exclusively in Spanish. When I talk to her on the phone, I give the phone to Ruben briefly so that she can hear his grandmother sing a song to him and say a few things in Spanish to him.

Why do you want your child to learn French and Spanish?
It was never an option for me not to speak French to Ruben, since that is a language that is very much a part of me and I feel a strong connection with the francophone world (I continue to try to read books and magazines in French and listen to French radio, for example). I also want him to strongly identify with his Hispanic heritage and learn Spanish. I am not sure how much Spanish he will learn with our current system, but I hope that he will at least have a good basis that he can build upon later, perhaps at school (ideally through a dual immersion program).

How well does your child understand French and Spanish? Does he have a preference for certain languages in certain situations and with certain speakers?
Ruben gets very excited when he hears people other than me speaking French to him, as though he recognizes that that is “Mommy’s” language. Of course, that could simply be wishful thinking.

Have you been able to expose your child to the cultures where French and Spanish are spoken? How?
We have not yet traveled to a French-speaking or Spanish-speaking country with Ruben. The only way he has been exposed to those cultures are through books, songs, and nursery rhymes.

What challenges have occurred as you raise your child trilingually?
It is challenging to trust that things will be OK with regard to our child’s language development as he grows older, especially with three languages and the fact that Ruben does hear me speak the three languages at different times. Since most books on multilingualism do not address this particular trilingual situation, I hope that Ruben will not be confused by our language arrangement.

What resources have been most useful to you? What, on the other hand, has not been useful?
Internet groups that explore issues related to multilingualism have been extremely helpful. It has also been helpful to talk to local parents who are raising multilingual children. Reading French and Spanish books (adult and children) and conversing with people in those languages has helped me remind myself of words and expressions that I had not heard/used in a long time. Books on multilingualism have not been overly helpful due to the fact that they have not really answered my questions about our family’s particular language system.

What do you think parents, caretakers, teachers, and/or researchers need to know about teaching a second language to children? What do you wish you had known when you started?
Initially, while I truly wanted to speak French to Ruben, it felt very unnatural, because I had been so used to speaking English almost exclusively for over ten years. I was reassured that this was a common experience and that it would soon become very natural. I am happy to report that it has. I think it is also important to discuss with one’s spouse before the child is born what the language system will be and try to come up with a system that feels good to both parents, but also be open to “tweaking the system” if things are not working out. For example, while most things I say to Ruben right now would likely not be overly interesting to my husband or important for him to know, I can imagine that there will come a time when Ruben is older when it may be more important for his father to know what Ruben and I are discussing. I am not sure how we will approach this, but trust that my husband and I will be able to come up with a solution that works for us in terms of keeping family relationships harmonious and also continuing to successfully support multilingualism.

Answer your own question now--what did I not ask about that you want to comment on?
I’m wondering if readers of your blog have any additional ideas about exposing Ruben to Spanish.

Merci beaucoup, Carolyn!!! I'll check in with you next year as Ruben starts to talk--it'll be fun to see what languages he uses with whom. Readers, please share your brilliant ideas and past experiences with us--what can Carolyn and her husband do to help Ruben acquire more Spanish along with his English and French? Now is definitely the time to start--research shows that babies and toddlers don't get confused when they're exposed to several languages (unlike us adults).

linguistic epiphany!

I started my new job at the library in earnest this week--the grant that funds the Reading Buddies program was finally approved (later than the official notification date)--and have been running around recruiting participants and teen volunteers, updating brochures, revising the training manual, making plans, learning my way around computer programs that are new to me, and so on. (I have to ask lots of questions about things that seem so basic--where they keep the phone book, how to make the photocopier do what I want, how to check my own voicemail, etc. This is my first new workplace in nine years! I don't like feeling lost and inept. Fortunately those unpleasant feelings are already starting to recede.) Our first Reading Buddies meeting is Monday already, and I've only managed to recruit and train two teen volunteers to work with the ten elementary school students (they're supposed to be paired one-to-one)! But I'll keep looking and I think we'll be all right.

Anyway, what I wanted to post about today is an unexpected work-related conversation I had in Spanish. I took two semesters of Spanish in 1991, and then a Spanish review class about five years ago. (Katie was my teacher!) I also shared an office for a few years with native speakers who often conversed in Spanish among themselves. So the combination of the formal classes, the exposure from my colleagues, and the similarities between French and Spanish means that my knowledge of the language is better than most people who have only had a year of Spanish class.

But I've done almost nothing with Spanish in the meantime, even though I have good friends who are Spanish teachers and/or native speakers. Katie and Estela both offered to help me brush up my Spanish, but I never took them up on it. I've never spent time with the books I've bought in the meantime (simple stories, vocabulary lessons via comic strips, etc.). I don't listen to Spanish-language radio or watch movies in Spanish.

So just imagine the panic I felt when I called a parent on the waiting list (she wanted to enroll her child in the Big Buddies program) and discovered that she spoke very little English! But I actually managed to carry on an entire conversation--on the phone, which means no help from visual cues like facial expressions and gestures--and tell her who I was, when the program starts, and how to sign up. (Okay, for the latter I had to say "come to the library and write your son's name" because I had no idea what "register" or "sign up" was, but I think--I think!--she got the idea.)

It was exhilarating. This is why we learn other languages--not to conjugate verbs on tests, but to communicate about real things, in this case something that will help a child become a better reader!

It was also exhilarating to push past my insecurities about my pronunciation and lack of precise vocabulary in Spanish and just get the ideas out, although imperfectly. I wish that all of my former students from my French classes could have opportunities like this to challenge themselves, to realize that they can make themselves understood after all, that feeling too shy or embarrassed to speak French means missing out on a chance to share real ideas and exchange meaningful information.

update: Guatemalan adoptees learning English

Last month's post about my friend Katie who will be tutoring three children from Guatemala who will be adopted by a U.S. family generated lots of response, both in the comments section of the blog and also to my "Baby Bilingual" email account. I'd like to thank everyone who wrote in to offer suggestions and cautions--it's important for me, Katie, and Kirsten (the children's mom) to see as many different sides to this issue as possible (the issue being how to best teach them English while not losing their Spanish). Click here to read the original post and comments.

I had promised an update, but there's not much to report yet, as Kirsten and the children have just now returned to the U.S. Katie will be meeting them this week (informally, not for an English lesson yet) to assess how much English they already know so she can figure out where to start. (She's started to accumulate some materials, like a good picture dictionary for English Language Learners, although the ESL Symtalk book she wanted to use is out of print and she can't find a copy, and she's also contacted some ESL elementary school teachers for suggestions.) Much of the advice my readers have shared will be more applicable to Kirsten as she begins homeschooling the children with her other kids (Katie will see them only once a week for ESL lessons).

Hopefully the fact that Kirsten and some of the other kids in the family have studied Spanish (the oldest daughter even spent three months living at the orphanage in Guatemala with her new siblings) will mean that they still have opportunities to interact in Spanish at home. (In fact, they should probably establish a consistent routine, like using Spanish at every, say, lunch, and whenever they're in a certain room or sitting on a certain piece of furniture (like a couch covered with pillows from Guatemala), and whenever they're talking after watching a movie/video/program in Spanish. And I (and many of my blog readers) think that Kirsten, when doing homeschooling lessons with the kids, should draw upon her knowledge of Spanish to help them understand the connections between the languages and figure out how best to present the material. But for the private tutoring, when Katie has such limited time with them, I'm still inclined to say that she should immerse them in English and not give them a reason to think they can speak Spanish to her.

The readers who wrote to me off-blog all encouraged Kirsten to help her new kids maintain their Spanish, emphasizing the importance of keeping them connected to their original culture and language. Emily, who adopted two children from Guatemala, says that "use of the native language can become a bridge to learning English …. There's increasing amounts of recent research on the benefits of building on the first language to access the new language…. They could quickly lose their Spanish in an English-only environment. (There are some few and far between studies on language loss and acquisition in adopted children too). Emotions and language can be pretty tied up - I think the continued use of their first language while acquiring English could smooth the transition….Memories and emotions are connected to our use of language - personally, I feel it would be hard to lose that in the midst of such big changes, wonderful though the changes may be."

One reader recommends the book The Bilingual Family: A Handbook for Parents by Edith Harding-Esch and Philip Riley (originally published in 1986; updated in 2003) for suggestions on how families can maintain two languages.

Emily also recommends the following articles: "National Literacy Panel on Language Minority Children and Youth;" articles (and books) by Fred Genesee; and a Quincy Herald-Whig newspaper article called "Dual language learning benefits students" which "highlights Illinois research about the gains made by students in dual-language programs. This seems to be one of the few educational programs that has strong research to support it - we've been having to look closely at work at the research on English Immersion, Sheltered English, Transitional bilingual, etc. as we revise our state ELL regulations. There was also a report by the National Governor's Association last year citing research support for dual language learning and also for the positive influence of native language use in English acquisition programs."

Additionally, Emily relies on the OELA (Office of English Language Acquisition) daily newsletter which shares relevant articles; their website also offers searchable archives of past newsletters. It is published through the National Center for English Language Acquisition (NCELA), part of the U.S. Department of Education. (Here is their mission statement from their website: "OELA provides national leadership in promoting high quality education for the nation's population of English language learners [ELLs].... OELA's mission is to include various elements of school reform in programs designed to assist the language minority agenda. These include an emphasis on high academic standards, school accountability, professional development, family literacy, early reading, and partnerships between parents and the communities.") Emily also recommends browsing the Center for Applied Linguistics website and works by Deborah Short and Diane August.

Thanks again to everyone who wrote to share their thoughts on helping Kirsten's family with their linguistic transition! Please let us know if you have other resources to recommend or other approaches to try (or a different perspective on maintaining the children's Spanish). For those families with adopted children, can you tell us about how you're keeping them bilingual--or how you tried and it didn't work?

Stay tuned for another update when Katie starts doing ESL lessons with the three kids.

exciting update!

The Lafayette Public Library has just purchased a subscription to Tumblebooks! Click here for their Kids' Stuff page which will let you access this very cool website.

Hey kids! Why watch cartoons when you can watch animated storybooks on your computer?

Don't want to plop your children in front of the boob tube? Want them to hear stories instead? Want them to hear someone besides their parents speaking English, Spanish, or French? Want them to interact with the material? Want to pay big bucks for the privilege? Then sign up for TumbleBooks, "e-books for e-kids"!

I'm currently previewing a very intriguing website that offers animated stories read out loud in the three languages mentioned above. The pictures are cute, the animation is simple but effective, the narration is lively (and differentiates between voices for different characters). It's done karaoke style--as the narrator speaks, the words are highlighted. (The fact that the words appear on the screen is a strength of the program in my opinion, making it more valuable than, say, watching cartoons on television.) Many of the stories (though not all the French ones) indicate what reading level they're on and how long the presentation lasts. Some stories have multiple choice comprehension quizzes or non-linguistic games associated with them (memory and picture puzzles).

The site also has some longer works--novels and plays--for adolescent and adult readers in all three languages. Unfortunately, these consist simply of the text on the screen rather than brought to life. On the other hand, there's also a nifty book report feature that asks open-ended questions about the story and either displays your answers on the screen or prints them out in a worksheet format.

I've spent more time with the French part of the site. While only 27 picture books exist in French, I was impressed by the fact that most of them are honest-to-goodness French children's books rather than French translations of the books the site offers in English. A couple even seem to be set in Africa (two books about a giraffe, and one lovely story about a boy who lives in the desert and has trouble picturing what the ocean must be like, Raconte-moi la mer). Surprisingly, TumbleBooks only has 12 children's books in Spanish, and their authors have very gringo-sounding names.

Here's what I didn't like about the site: sometimes the background sounds (monsters roaring, for example) drowned out the narration. The French books don't all have difficulty level indicated. The games are not varied enough or content-oriented for my (albeit teacherly) taste. Worst of all, the French text has too many typos and misspellings for a program this pricey. The animation and narration are so good, and the website itself is so professional, why would they bring down the quality of the product by leaving out accent marks and not proofreading?

I've mentioned the price twice--so how bad is it? $399 per year. It seems like they're targeting institutions like schools and libraries rather than individual teachers, parents, or homeschoolers. (The latter could really take advantage of this site, though! What a shame.) On the other hand, if your local library or school district subscribes, then you would probably be able to access TumbleBooks from their homepage regardless of where you are.

Exciting update! The Lafayette Public Library has just purchased a subscription to Tumblebooks! Click here for their Kids' Stuff page which will let you access the site from your home without a password.

If I were an elementary or middle school teacher (doing French or ESL), I would enjoy having this site as one of my resources. It would be great, for instance, to hook the computer up to a projector and show the story to the class on the big screen as if it were a movie. And as viewers can watch either on "automatic" (the story proceeds at the pace of the narration) or "manual" (the viewer "turns" the page himself when he's ready), it lends itself to lots of "teaching moments" where I could pause to ask questions and point things out or flip backwards. As I'm a big proponent of using context to help kids learn to read, I can see myself asking the students to first describe the picture on the screen, then look for the words in the text that describe the picture, then having the narrator read the page, and finally asking the children to read the page aloud. (I'm just brainstorming at this point, since I've never actually taught elementary or middle school.) I can also see taking the class to a computer lab so each child could pick out his own book to read and watch online. (I'd take advantage of the book report feature in that case.)

But as long as the number of books in French is so limited and the price so high, I can't imagine subscribing and using TumbleBooks with my nephew and my future bilingual baby. Too bad!

Can any of you familiar with the site share your ideas about it with us? Click on "comments" to do so! And to see a post on Reading A-Z, a cheaper program offering more downloadable books (but without the narration and animation), click here.