Raising Bilingual Children

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Comment by Andrea Soto Véres on August 27, 2009 at 11:37am

Hi all!

I was wondering which are your experiences in raising your kids bilingual since babys. My husband and I are applying the OPOL rule and our daughter (almost 18 months) is starting to pick some words here and there, although we are not sure how much does she understand, being that our main problem. Are we doing it right? Do you have experiences with other methods? Is it just a question of waiting? Thanks all for your reactions.

Comment by Manuel F. Lara on June 5, 2009 at 2:11pm

Comment by Manuel F. Lara on June 5, 2009 at 2:04pm

Comment by Manuel F. Lara on June 5, 2009 at 2:02pm

Comment by Joel Josephson on April 18, 2009 at 6:39am

Happy to find this group. I am also bringing up my children bilingually, they are now 9 and 7. We used a strict OPOL* regime till quite recently, we now have relaxed a little as the children, so to speak, have got it. We have also insisted that Anglo friends and family speak to the children in English, showing them the real advantages of knowing the language at a personal level.

My children's school has a good percentage of Anglos and provide advanced English lessons to the bilingual children at a much higher level and standard (taught by Anglo teachers) than the rest of the school have.

We still insist in certain situations, for example, at meal times that English is used (so that everybody can understand).

When my eldest daughter was 2 years, I founded the Kindersite Project website http://www.kindersite.org as I wanted her to have access to engaging and appropriate computer based English multimedia for 2 reasons:
1. To add another media to her English books and videos that she could self-access
2. To introduce her to technology as a fundamental tool in her life.

Joel

Comment by Manuel F. Lara on March 17, 2009 at 11:42am

Hi all,

I'd like you to have a look at the synthetic phonics group. I think it's a good method to help our children acquire literacy. Either in their mother tongue or English.

Synthetic Phonics & CLIL

Best,

Manuel

Comment by Manuel F. Lara on January 9, 2009 at 10:33am

CRECER EN UNA FAMILIA BILINGÜE: LA EDUCACION PLURILINGÜE EN CASA Y EN LA ESCUELA
de MONTANARI, ELKE
GRUPO EDITORIAL CEAC

Comment by Manuel F. Lara on December 7, 2008 at 10:33pm

Articles on Raising Bilingual/Multilingual Children in Omniglot

* Raising Bilingual Children: The First Five Steps to Success
* Raising Bilingual Children: Fact or Fiction?
* Raising Bilingual Children: The Snags
* Raising Bilingual Children: The Different Methods to Success
* Raising Bilingual Children: 10 Tips for Boosting The Minority Language
* Raising Bilingual Children: Is It Too Late?

Links to websites with information and advice about raising multilingual children

Other articles

Comment by Manuel F. Lara on December 7, 2008 at 10:18pm

Hi all,

Here's an article on this topic:

Raising bilingual and biliterate children: My experience - Part 1 - Bilingual Japan, (JALT Special Interest Group Newsletter) - April, 2002

Comment by Antonio J. Delgado on October 1, 2008 at 5:13pm

Hi, Terri.
Are you form Japan?
Do you speak English to your children?
Do you have bilingual school?
How is English taught to your children?

CU

A. Juan

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