What are you doing to raise a bilingual child?

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eliad , Parent asks:

This is a question to all those parents of foreign nationalities. My son is 3 years old and I've been trying to talk with him exclusively in Hebrew (I do fall for English, from a time to time). It seem like he understand, but he'll always answer in English.

I'm curious to know what are you doing to teach your kids a second language? At what age did your kids talk back in the second language?

In Topics: Learning a second language

> 60 days ago

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kellysfinn

Jan 18, 2008

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Hi Eliad,

What an interesting question! Have you seen the article, "Fostering Second Language Development in Young Children"? http://www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_Fostering_Language/

This article explains "Children showing a lack of proficiency in both languages are most likely undergoing a developmental phase in which limited use causes proficiency in the home language to decline, while the second language has not yet reached an age-appropriate level....This should be considered healthy and normal. It is rare for bilinguals to have both languages in balance. Yet, most bilingual children will reach age-level proficiency in their dominant language given adequate exposure and opportunities for use."

So, it is normal that your son seems to be predominant in English rght now, but perhaps he is just in a developmental stage that he will balance in the future. Definitely keep speaking to him in Hebrew is my suggestion!

Kelly

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Danielle writes:

Lisa Medoff, who writes our Ask a Child Psychologist column, just wrote about this in her column this week. Check it out!:
http://www.education.com/magazine/column/Ask_the_Child_Psychologist/

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