Mes, ils yas mes mes! Commeme.

Griffin, now age eight, just this morning learned to write il y a [there is/there are] instead of ils yas [they…uh…what?]. 

His teacher lets me pull him out of class twice a week for French lessons with me in the school hallway, and for the past few months I've been struggling with how to balance our time together: read fiction or nonfiction? focus on writing or speaking?  accuracy or fluency? and can I get through the "teaching" quickly enough to have time to play a French word game* with him every Friday, which he considers a real treat (not realizing that it's educational too, heh heh heh)?

Griffin is the second-best speller in second grade** without any particular effort on his or our part, which I had always attributed to his voracious reading--he just seemed to pick it up.  But that's not happening with French!  (Of course, while he is perfectly content to listen to me read to him, he doesn't seek out books to read in French or Spanish by himself; his appetite for books is monolingual.)

voracious and flexible!

As a result, his French spelling is based on vague notions of what letter combinations make which sounds and the firm belief that lots of letters aren't actually pronounced, which means they can be sprinkled in with impunity, especially if he throws a few accents aigus in there to jazz things up.  Olé!

This approach, of course, is completely understandable, even natural; I know plenty of native-English-speaking adults who would claim that "their are defiantly a few peices of pizza left in the refridgerater" and not loose lose any sleep about it.  And why should they, when their meaning is perfectly clear?

But then I remember reading a note from a friend who grew up bilingual in the US with her French parents.   We were both 20-year-olds studying abroad in France; I had had four years of French classes, none with a native-speaking teacher, while she had never had any formal instruction in reading and writing for the language that she spoke fluently.  She wrote "commeme," which I assumed to be slang or some other expression I had never encountered.  Turns out that she was going for "quand même" [even so], a phrase that I didn't know until we eventually figured out how to spell it.

Aaaaand that's why us would-be bilinguals need "book learning" as well as real-life conversation experience!

So how to handle this with Griffin?  Petit à petit.  Not so much spelling and grammar that it makes him dread our "French school time" together, but enough that he each time he will walk away knowing how to spell one common word or expression correctly.  And, more importantly, why, so that he can apply that knowledge to other words.

For example, he now understands that a is a verb and à is a preposition (and, yes, he knows what a preposition is--thanks, Schoolhouse Rock!) and that mes [my], mais [but], and maïs [corn] are not interchangeable ("Mais ce sont mes maïs !" he will say, just to be contrary).  Today it was il y a, and boy, does it feel good to look down at his paper and not see any ils yas any more.

How do I pick which expressions to focus on?  Whatever is written*** so unclearly that anyone other than his maman wouldn't know what he meant, or else errors that show up frequently in his writing (sometimes these overlap).  And while I only address one or two things at a time, we sometimes go back through previous summaries so he can find the mistakes and fix them on his own.  He's been ils yasing for at least a year!  

Next up: tackling "je" vs. "j'ai."  French is fun!

And so is battling your little sister with balloon swords--en garde!

*Le pendu (Hangman) or his favorite, Le petit bac (similar to Scattergories).

**Ironically, at the school-wide spelling bee last week, he misspelled a word of French origin: personnel (he did "p-e-r-s-o-n-a-l," because he didn't know what "personnel" meant.  And why would he?!).

***What do I make bribe encourage him to write about in French?  I'll save that for another blog post.

homework from his Spanish teacher: practice writing in French!

At the urging of his teacher at his Spanish immersion school, my on-his-way-to-trilingual six-year-old son Griffin is now doing homework in French!

The teacher had issued a challenge to the kids at the beginning of the school year: to read 100 books in Spanish and write a couple of sentences responding to them in a sort of reading journal.  She even provided prompts to help the young writers get started--"my favorite part was...", "something new I learned was...", and so forth.

When Griffin brought her his completed journal a couple of weeks ago, she seemed a little surprised that he had finished the 100 books already.  She thanked him, took it from him, and said that she would keep it until she had collected the other students' journals.  

Just as she turned to go and Griffin started to dance with glee about having finished all his homework for the rest of the school year, I realized that not being required to read or write in Spanish at home until August was a bad idea.  I mean, he's a smart kid who loves to read, but he wants to read what he chooses and nothing else.  And as soon as he finishes a book, he's off and running to the next one--he's not going to take the time to write about it unless we bribe or threaten (or both).

And there's always a next one waiting.

Desperately, I asked his teacher if she had a new challenge for the students who finished their 100 books, like maybe to try to read another 100 before the new school year begins in August.  Griffin groaned; I winced.

But his teacher, wonderful lady, suggested that this time, instead of doing the 100 books in Spanish, he alternate among books in Spanish, English, and French!  So now, for the first time in his young life, he is starting to read and write in French.  And I get to watch it happen!

Actually, what I'm mostly doing is trying not to interfere.  He picks the text--one of his sister's board books, an easy reader from the Bidule series (downloaded to my iPad), an illustrated article from Youpi magazine--reads it aloud with my help, and then scribbles and scratches a sentence about it (while complaining that writing in French is harder than writing in English and Spanish).

An article from Youpi about a Frenchman who circumnavigated the globe in a sailboat decades ago

I know, I know.  Developing fluency in your third language is such a chore.

(But what a great problem to have, kid!)

While Griffin writes, rendering what he hears when he speaks French into consonants and vowels and the occasional feisty accent mark, creations that vaguely resemble French words, I sit on my hands or keep a mug of hot tea in front of my mouth so as to avoid telling him how to spell things or that he should add a transition word or just give me the pencil so that I can write what I want him to say!

And when he's done, and when I've found something to praise about the content of his sentence, and only then, do I pick out something to explicitly teach him about.  Tonight, for example, he asked how to spell "canoe" in French.  So I told him about the tréma, the two dots over the second letter in a pair of vowels that indicates that the second vowel gets pronounced separately, as in Noël, thus giving him canoë.

Griffin's writing journal entry about the Youpi article "Seul autour du monde": "Ma conexion est que je suis alle den une canoe avec ma maman.  et je vu un lacke."

And while where-to-put-two-dots is perhaps one of the least important rules to bother teaching someone who is learning to read and write in French, it's relevant to what he was trying to describe; he understood right away (comparing it to bilinguë in Spanish); and now he has an "Accents en français" page in his writing journal.  I hope that the next time we read together in French, we'll come across other words with that same diacritical mark, and he can add them to the list.

So I anticipate continuing this way for the next month or so--reading to him in French every day as usual, encouraging him to read to me more, and insisting that he write a sentence about it in his reading journal two or three times a week.  Each time, I'll find one thing to point out about grammar or syntax or spelling.  When appropriate, I'll make a new page of hints and examples and lists for his journal that we can add to.  (For example, "The Gazillion Ways to Spell the Sound 'Ay' in French," or "Consonants  at the End of a Word Which We Actually Pronounce, At Least Most of the Time," or "Hey, Look at That, What's That Adjective Doing in Front of That Noun?")

My notes for him about je vs. j'ai vs. jeu vs. G, which are all pronounced similarly but mean entirely different things

Over the summer, once he's out of school, I will try to increase gradually the amount and frequency that he reads and writes in French.  And the more we read and write together, the more I can point out how my previous teaching points appear in the texts.  And eventually--ideally--it will be Griffin who notices them and pays attention and incorporates them into his own writing.

So, no dictation.  No memorizing lists of irregular past participles.  No expecting perfection (or even coherence, in these early days).  Read what he wants to read, write what he wants to write, talk about it together, and hopefully develop in French the confidence and ease that he has in English and Spanish.  He's just a kid, an on-his-way-to-trilingual kid, and I want him to enjoy the journey.

bilingual? trilingual? try triliterate! and throw in some trying behaviors.

Friends near and far, in person and online, have asked me how Griffin is doing at Escuela Bilingue Pioneer, his English/Spanish dual language immersion school, and what that means for his French.  I'll tell you (and it might sound like we're showing off--but then you'll see that I'm not).

a trilingual letter for me in February 2014: "I love you a lot mom thank you for leving me notes in my lunch box.  gracias  Love, Griffin  P.S. Hope you have a graete day.  je teme mamon."  I think I'll leave this on the fridge until he graduates from high school!

Two-thirds of the way through his kindergarten year, he communicates clearly in Spanish, both orally and in writing.  He reads at nearly the second grade level--in his third language, mind you!--and understands his teachers and classmates as well as he reads, maybe better, although I'm not sure how he would handle, say, watching cartoons in Spanish, or conversing with people he doesn't know.

He can also communicate in writing in Spanish:

"I like to play with my friends at recess.  I like to watch Broncos games.  I like to read with my family."

This school year, Griffin has read 95 books in Spanish at home (easy readers at the G, H, I levels, plus some picture books) and written one, two, or three sentences about them using prompts from the teacher (mostly "what this book reminds me of") in his reading journal.

(Griffin goes to a first grade class for literacy instruction each day--the school doesn't actually expect kindergarteners to do reading and writing homework!)

90% of his instruction is in Spanish--the school teaches the kids to read and write in Spanish first, English later--so I don't actually know what his English reading level is.  But he devours books, both fiction and nonfiction, with the Magic Treehouse series being his hands-down favorite.

Griffin's first chapter book!  He picked it out as a prize at the library last summer and then started reading it to himself.

He also has started participating in my Reading Buddies program at the public library and meeting monthly for a parent-led book club!  (Both in English.)

Brainstorming at book club before acting out a readers' theatre version of The Stinky Cheese Man

His teacher has been giving him one-on-one math instruction in multiplication and division in Spanish, but he does the problems in English.  He and I play math games in French on my iPad, and he talks about these in English, too.  His numbers in French are weaker than his numbers in the other two languages, especially above 60.

In fact, it is fair to say that all his skills, except perhaps listening comprehension, are stronger in Spanish than in French at this point (and strongest in English, obviously).  However, he does read in French too, and he has even attempted to write in French:

a thank-you note to a francophone friend, February 2014

"Emile meci pur le livre de magic tree house jeme bucues les lir ton amis Griffin."  ("Merci pour le livre.  J'aime beaucoup les lire.  Ton ami Griffin.")

English is where he excels, though:

apology letter to a classmate, March 2014

"Dear Jorge, Sorry I hit you in the library.  I was trying to get to the palitos.  I should have waited for you to get out of the way.  And I am not supposd to run in the library or inside.  And David [the librarian] should pick who takes the palitos.  I am also sorry for when I tagged you too hard in china [a recess game] and the other times I hit you.  I wont do that again.  From Griffin."

"All the other times I hit you"???!!!

This is why I haven't written much about his schooling this year; we have been too busy dealing with his unexpected behavior challenges.  And this is why I can promise you that this post is not intended to brag about Griffin's school skills--because if he can't share markers with his classmates, chat with them in the lunch line, or ask to join their games at recess, it doesn't matter how many languages my son speaks.