Después de un año sin poder entrar en el Blog he encontrado
la forma de hacerlo.
En esta actualización hablo de sus progresos como siempre,
las fuentes del idioma, influencias americanas y ¡como planificar la semana
para estar con tus niños!
After a
year without being able to get into the Blog, I’ve finally found the way to do
it.
This is a
brief update of the last year with the usual tips and learnings for other
parents, both native and non-native.
UPDATE
The biggest
change I’ve noticed over this last year is Marc changing from child to older
child both cognitively and behaviourally. There are many subtle clues in the
maturing process, in the complexity of language and its use, social interaction
and becoming more autonomous (finally).
Examples of languages
The
difference between a monolingual native and a bilingual native is that there’s
always going to be an influence from the two or three languages. It’s a
trade-off that’s always worthwhile. There will nearly always be the main
strongest language which will be the language of the place you live.
I hear
cross over language in English and Catalan that’s often because of direct
translation.
In Catalan
“ una carta vermella” (a red card in English) instead of “targeta”, or in
English “How is it like?” instead of What is it like?
His English
is complex and native like in both language use and pronunciation.
Language
examples: a wobbly tooth, I scraped the back of my hand
Expressions:
He’s is bloody tall; Don’t get me wrong… ; She’s gonna fricking gonna fall
off her perch (American euphemism), I was like a sore thumb at a finger party
(American expression and new for me!). It
won’t be OK, it’s Murphy’s law. It’s lashing it down in Terrassa (raining hard.
An Irish phrase I use) The list goes on and on.
The higher
the exposure from both the native speaker parent(s) and other media, the richer
and more complex the output language will be.
At school
this year I’ve asked the English department to push him further, especially his
writing skills. He’s already completed a long essay in English and we checked
it together. The main area to work on is spelling and that’s going to be our
objective till Christmas.
Planning language exposure
Some
parents might think that planning to be with your child to give exposure to a
language is somehow too scientific. You can look at it as planning to be with
your child(ren) and that will help them speak the language better! If you’re
raising your child in a minority language where you live, it makes sense to
keep in mind language learning opportunities and keep exposure as high as
possible as this is the only way to increase language level.
Weekly Planner
As I’ve
said before having a calendar where you plan times to be with your child is
really useful and can make sure that you prioritise your child(ren) over work
for example (when possible). Instead of sitting at your desk you are obliged to
organise your time to see your child.
In my case
I try to do half the school runs. Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings and
Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. That means I spend an hour each morning with
him and several hours after school. I can plan in activities to do together
such as reading and games or looking at interesting things on the internet in a
café after school or visiting shops or going 10-pin bowling for instance.
You can
also plan in phone or SKYPE calls if you’re not going to arrive in time to see
them.
Because
there’s a huge difference between growing up in the 80s or 90s and now in the two
thousand and teens. Access to technology and internet has revolutionised
everything. The struggle for parents now it seems is managing time spent on
devices (mobiles, tablets and computers) as well as video games. This has
substituted to a large degree keeping kids away from hours of television (my
case in the 70s and 80s). Further to this point, this year, Marc has started
using a tablet in the classroom.
At the same
time, and as I’ve repeated over the years on this blog, technology can play a
crucial part in helping parents bring up their children speaking another
language. The distant culture and language can be imported into the home via
internet in a way that was impossible up to the end of the 90s.
Regarding
technology, here are a few things I’ve noticed:
1) The Filmon TV app no longer connects through Chromecast. Even
the dedicated Chromecast app doesn’t work. This is a known problem and they are
“working on it.” This is a nuisance as casting programmes onto the TV means we
watch programmes in English together, even if it’s Match of the Day or X
Factor. There are also children’s
programmes here, so I hope they get it fixed.
2) Netflix. People have been talking
about this but I only got it this summer 2017. There is a huge offer of films,
documentaries and TV series. They can be seen in their original language with a
choice of subtitles in different languages. There is a whole section of films
for children and all programmes have an age appropriate warning.
Marc likes the American sitcom Jessie (very American), and we select
films and documentaries to watch. Normally we watch an episode of a series per
night or part of a film (not all of it). This means there’s input every
evening. I would definitely recommend this.
Life at school and American
influences
Last year (2016) there was a group of 6 American boys that went around with. Of
these 6 only 2 are at the school this year. The result of being around them was
that his English became influenced by the Americans.
This was noticed by his cousin and husband who visited this April.
The influence was apparent in
intonation patterns, such as questions without auxiliaries: “So, you are going
out tonight?” And vocabulary “This sucks/stinks”. “We all met up at recess.”
It has to be said that there’s a
lot of exposure to American language and culture in Britain and Ireland in
general and this does influence the English spoken there.
Although Agora International School is trilingual (Catalan, Spanish and
English) rather than just an English-speaking monolingual school, many foreign
parents send their children to the school even if their level of Spanish is
low.
One of the American children had come from an American school near
Barcelona, where Spanish is taught as a foreign language. At Agora, many
subjects are taught in Catalan, but despite this, the kids seem to cope, and
parents are happy for their children to get immersed in a foreign language
before returning to their countries of origin. I haven’t noticed any
traumatised children!
American Input
Marc gets a lot American English input from many sources. When children
are younger the CBEEBIES on the BBC gives a lot of choices in British English.
And later on, there are programmes for teens. But for Tweens, we haven’t seen
anything we like so much. TV series:
having graduated from Sponge bob and similar he’s watching series such as
Jessie. We’ve started watching the new Star Trek series Discovery on Netflix.
So, we have a new episode plus the ‘After Trek’ programme that discusses the
episode every week. Yep, a bit nerdy, isn’t it?!!
Documentaries. It’s possible to find age appropriate documentaries on
Netflix. We watched on about the projects to get humans to Mars.
British English input comes from watching Match of the Day that has
highlights of the English football league and some talent shows such as
Britain’s got Talent and the X Factor.
Internet. Youtube. A huge variety of videos in English ranging from
tutorial ones for certain games, e.g. Minecraft, to funny ones, e.g. about
animals to clips from series “American Dad,” and others that are age
inappropriate. Access to the internet by children through so many sources is a
massive challenge for any parent these days, and one we’re looking at right
now.
Video Games. Minecraft (just weird music and noises!), Star Wars
Battlefront, Moto GP. I’ve set all the games to English.
Films. Practically all the films or movies we watch are of American
origin. And there’s a multitude of choices on Netflix.
Books: Captain Underpants, The Wimpy Kid, Horrid Henry…
For 2018 the plan is to graduate to the very British Harry Potter and
other more grown-up novels to bring his reading skills up a level.
Now I'm back and connected I'll be updating this blog on a more regular basis.
The best of luck. If you have any questions or need any suggestions let
me know.
