Strategies to help our children become bilingual.

We believe that videos, DVDs and CDs can help our children start in a language. Well developed media mediums might help our children learn basic verbs and nouns. They can provide somewhat of a beginning foundation. Videos might also serve as a good source of review if your child already knows a second language. For younger viewers, the videos might also provide a chance for them to hear the foreign language from a native speaker. When my husband and I buy foreign language videos for our kids, it is always important to us that the speakers in the video have native-like pronunciation. With some languages, it might be hard to find native speakers in the United States. Videos can offer this window of opportunity.

We have been actively trying to expose our children to foreign languages through interactions. Unfortunately, we live in a part of the country where there is hardly any racial diversity. We literally increased the minority population percentage in our town by 30% when we moved here (and there is only the five of us in our family). When our first son was born, we actually lived in a much more diverse part of the country. We hired a Mandarin speaking nanny for our son. My husband and I both had to work so we had needed a nanny anyway. Our nanny at the time was awesome. She spoke to our oldest son in Mandarin, and he actually seemed to understand her. When he was 24 months though, we had to move. My husband found another job. We could not find another mandarin speaking person where we currently live. Our sons budding mandarin capabilities have unfortunately dissipated. He still knows some words, but he has definitely forgotten a lot. This was very discouraging for us. After this, we vowed to keep our children on a language once they started it.

When our son turned 4, we enrolled him in Chinese School. Chinese School is usually on the weekends. Different Chinese Schools differ in their goals for teaching the children. Some aim to teach children who already know Mandarin while others are trying to help children with no practice with Mandarin at all learn the language. There are some schools that also have Cantonese, but I would say that Mandarin is the predominate language. There are different language schools. The schools are usually run by organizations or a group of people with a particular interest. We enrolled our son in a school that taught mandarin to children that had no experience. We did this because we thought our son had basically forgotten all the mandarin that he did know. We were happy to find that there was some benefit left from our son learning mandarin as a baby/toddler. During classes, the children would copy the teacher to pronounce words. Out of the other 10 kids in the class, the teacher would always comment what great pronunciation our son had. She said that he sounded native like, and that she originally thought that he already knew Mandarin. We were very proud of him.

Chinese School seemed to be very helpful for our son. Although he did not become fluent, it did help him learn more words. The school also provided a sense of community which I think helped our son because he could see other people trying to learn the same things. There are different language schools so I would encourage you to look into finding a language school for your child if you are interested in a particular language for them.

When we moved, we could not find a Mandarin speaking nanny. We were, however, able to find a Japanese speaking nanny. Our kids were older by now, and they had no experience in Japanese. We had the Japanese nanny teach them words here and there, but their communication was 99% in English. We realized after a while that the children needed to hear the language more in order to reach any type of real understanding. We asked her to speak in only Japanese, but she was very uncomfortable with that. She would speak mostly in English with a Japanese word thrown here and there. It was not until about 8 months ago that she started to speak in Japanese. She still uses English, but more Japanese. I believe the challenge now is that the children are older. They communicate more with each other than the nanny at this point. When they do communicate with each other, of course it is mostly in English. We have noticed a good amount of progression in their language learning since the nanny has started to speak in mostly Japanese. Even though the children do not interact with the nanny that much, they do seem to understand a lot of what she says. We only wish that she had spoken to them in Japanese earlier! I would say that they can understand about 60% of what she says, and they respond in about 20% Japanese. How much the children respond in Japanese really depends on how many Japanese interactions they get from the nanny. It is almost like a light switch. When they are with the nanny, they know that she speaks Japanese so they will try to speak Japanese. When she speaks to them a lot, I can hear the children respond in Japanese almost 30% of the time. Other times though when the nanny really isn’t speaking that much, I hardly hear one single Japanese word from the kids. With neither I nor my husband knowing that much Japanese though, we are proud of the progression they have made so far. We hope to keep their Japanese going for a few more years, and we hope by then that they will have at least proficiency.

When they have proficiency in Japanese, we hope to expand their mandarin capabilities by finding a Mandarin speaking nanny. We hope by then that we will be able to find a mandarin speaking nanny unlike our first try when we moved here.