Recently Karen of Glottogon contacted me and asked if I would write a post for her new website. Glottogon is a children's speciality online store selling books in several languages, if you are in Australia and are looking for foreign language books then go and check it out. Pop over to the Glottogon blog to read my post about raising a bilingual child.
HI Jo
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your experience raising a bilingual child. Of course it's the same here.We're both FRench but we live in an english environment. We're both using the french and english language at home. Manon is enrolled in English school. We wanted her to have a strong foundation in english. She's able to converse a little bit in French but her english is much stronger. Of course when she started elementary this year after 2 years of montessori, the teacher thought she was using more french at home and lacked some vocabulary. Manon started to talk very late (around 2 years and half) and compare to kids of the same age, her english is not at the same level. It's a challenge as you said to raise a bilingual kid. I don't want Manon to forget that she has a french heritage but i don't make it a great deal either compare to French canadians who live in Vancouver. I don't want her to feel different either. Along the way we discovered that she has a learning disability so that was a bit hard to accept. She has a great memory so that helps. I am an avid reader too so she is interested in books and love to read out loud and listen to audiobooks. I hope that down the road she will be able to read in French but for now we concentrate our efforts in English. The good thing here in Vancouver is that the city is multicultural and everybody has an accent so really that helps!