Actualización Agosto 2018. UPDATE August 2018 11 years and 3 months

Hago un resumen de los progresos de Marc y algunas ideas basadas en mi experiencia sobre input y calendarios y el tema del internet.
Here's a summary of Marc's progress and some ideas based on my experience about input and use of calendars and internet.

Regarding language, I've focussed here more on some of the more idiomatic uses of English that seem to be more and more frequent and mark the difference between a child learning a foreign language, and one acquiring it as a bilingual native from a native parent. I find that if I don't write the words down immediately I forget them, so plenty of omissions.
Here are some of the (very few) examples I've written down since April:

"These brands come up with the wackiest ideas."
"Bet you "Dude Perfect" has made a video with those games." (a youtuber) "I can't wait to sink my teeth into this chicken."  
"This chicken isn't as good, not by a long shot .""It gave her a run for her money. "
"Daddy, stop rubbing it in my face."
"Growley (our cat) is smelling that bag like there's no tomorrow. "
"That old guy was going up and down the street like there was no tomorrow. "
"How did you get on with your cousins? "
"They're messed up crazy baby things."  
"A sight for sore eyes." 
"Phone me, I don't keep track of time."
It was sick! (meaning amazing) 
"This trick is so old school."  
"I unloaded everything single-handedly." (in supermarket) 
" I'm lolling at everything. " (using LOL as a verb) 
"What in the World was that?! ( In surprise at a result in a video game )
  "It's gonna be epic!"  
"I haven't got a bull's notion! " (an Irish phrase he remembered when playing with the words, 'notion', 'motion' and 'devotion' .
There is still 'cross contamination" between the different languages. It's normal amongst consecutive native bilinguals/trilinguals and nothing to get worried about!!!!!
I haven't written down many or remembered them, but they do come up. Sometimes he mixes language phrases because it sounds funny!

In Catalan: 
"Vas a arruinar la historia." (using 'arruinar' translated from English, "ruin the story", instead of 'estropear'). 
In English:
"I need to put it (the mobile) to charge. " I explicitly corrected this as lazy language.  Correct options are: "I need to charge my phone." I need to plug in my phone (to charge it). 

Between Spanish and Catalan there is the usual language mixing which most people don't seem to worry about overtly and is not my priority. 

LANGUAGE INPUT. (EXPOSURE)
This is the first summer since he was born that we haven't gone to the UK for the summer (for logistical reasons). That means I've had to organize my schedule to be with him when I've been working and he's been in our holiday village. 
Organizing your time
I've mentioned this before. Try and plan in specific times in your diary / calendar when you'll spend time with your child, and oblige yourself to do so. 

If I wasn't able to get back to the village, we spoke by phone or video call once or twice a day, and now we're started texting each other on whatsapp. 
Mobile phone
I've got him an old iphone 4 with a limited data package so we can keep in touch and when he's on his own or with other kids in the village.
INTERNET
This is a double edged sword. On the one hand it is a practically limitless resource for language. On the other, a lot of the content is age-inappropriate. 
This is what Marc has been doing. 
Youtubers
He's become addicted to watching mostly game youtubers explaining strategies to improve scores on the games. Some of them I've listened to use adult language ....  They are from a variety of countries: the UK, Ireland, the USA and Australia. 
Youtube videos. 
These are a mix of multi-interest videos: 
Animals, sports, some TV series, some science facts, some music videos. At least 90% in English. 
A lot of different ones in fact. My rule is that it's better to watch videos in their original language version, even if that's Spanish. Last week we changed from watching an American series about a "Cat trainer" in dubbed over Spanish to finding the original American English version. 
Films
I've always had a rule about seeing original language version films, but decided to relax the rule for the sake of family harmony and avoiding stupidity! We went to see The Incredibles 2 in Catalan in a cinema in Vic. There's no original language cinema there. Earlier in the month we saw a film in English at the Icaria Yelmo cinema in Barcelona, which does have all the films in the original language version. 
READING 
Marc read his first adult book earlier this year on his own. A spin-off Star Wars story. 
Over the summer he reread another Stars Wars book, "The Jedi Academy", and right now we're reading two comic style books together: "The 6th June 1944" about the D Day landings,

and one about the Siths (more Star Wars!).

The secret is to be consistent and maintain a language rich high exposure environment.  
 Let me know how you're getting on in the comments. 
All the best.

UPDATE : Januaray - Easter 2018 / Enero - Semana Santa 2018

Summary First quarter 2018 / Resumen  primer trimestre 2018

This is a review of Marc's language and learning for the first quarter of 2018.


School
A boy from England joined the class in January just for this term. His mother is Catalan and speaks to him in that language. The family have moved back and forth between Catalonia and England over the last 15 years, and are now settled in Bath. The idea of coming here for the term was to give the children extra experience in a Catalan school and get an immersion in Catalan and Spanish.
Agora also does 30% of the classes in English.
Marc became his buddy for this term and they spoke to each other in English.
The term in the country of origin is an excellent option. However, it can be very costly, especially if you do it through an organization. To cut costs, the cheapest way is to find low cost accommodation and go to a state school.  Obviously, if you have family in the country, that will save on accommodation and food  bills.
It works out more economical to do a full academic year. With an organization such as New Link, the 9 months can cost between 13-15,000 euros, and includes everything except flights and extra spending money. It's a big investment. Children generally do this year away when they are 14. 

This Easter, in the village where we stay most weekends, Marc met a boy who also lives in England and has a Catalan mother. He speaks fluent Catalan, but said that he can't really speak Spanish well.
Marc also complains that he finds Spanish "strange" despite doing classes at school, some programmes on TV, and hearing his mother speak to me.

At school, this boy learns French and Italian. The languages depend on the availability of teachers.   Again, with Marc he spoke in English as they'd met previously during the summer.
Marc is comfortable speaking in English with children who come from England even though they might speak Catalan due to speaking in a natural English and in an English accent.

I've found that spending time in the heritage language country is a key factor in the child mastering the language. Once again, if you have family in the country, it's worth taking advantage of this and  having the child spend extended periods of time there.


Language update
Errors and how to deal with them
Marc exhibits total mastery of  English for his age, taking into account that he's trilingual and in all the languages there is some 'contamination' or 'code switching' (the preferred term in linguistics).
He uses idioms all the time, and makes spontaneous plays on words. He uses all the tenses perfectly now, even "wish". "I wish you wouldn't tell me off all the time."  "I wish it were Sunday", etc.

Whenever a mistake comes up, I point it out. For example, 
Marc: "We ended out playing football. "
Me: "We say "ended up, but you know that don't you?
Marc: "Yeah, we ended up playing football."

Normally, these repetitive errors are erradicated. If the child doesn't get enough exposure the errors won't go away, so it's worth pointing them out in a 'matter of fact way'. There's no need to make a bg thing of it.

We've been focussing on Spelling, which is his weak point. We're working through Carol Vorderman's 10 minutes a Day Spelling Ages 7-11. The goal is to finish it before is birthday in May. And his birthday present will depend on it!! We're also be working on Vorderman's English Made Easy for 10-11 year olds, which isn't "easy" and includes malapropisms and Spoonerisms!

Regarding reading, I wanted him to start a Harry Potter novel, but he doesn't fancy it. Instead, he's started a Star War's novel called "Death Troopers", which is a gruesome tale about zombies aboard a spaceship that's adrift. It's the most advanced book he's read so far, and new words are coming up, for example "whack" or others that he didn't recognise in written form"throughout", which I'm sure we've used before.

Don't limit your child's English to just speaking the language. Being literate is also important to make the child's language richer.

UPDATE for 2017. Connected again. Progress and Plans

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.