“I am writing to get advice. We are a English speaking family. I do not speak Spanish. My child, Ronnie started at a bilingual school last year in the 1st grade. The school teaches a dual language model immersion program for Spanish. My son has expressed to me he does not like Spanish but likes the school otherwise. I have hired tutors to help Ronnie but it still has not built his confidence in Spanish. I want him to toRead More ...
My 5 y/o daughter has been doing great in both languages. Both parents are native Spanish speakers so it hasn’t been ‘so’ hard to keep her Spanish active: we only speak Spanish at home. Last year, in PreK, she had Spanish class once a week and complained of getting bored during that class. Now in Kindergarten, she is dreading going to Spanish class even more. I spoke with the Spanish teacher and expressed my concern, but her response was thatRead More ...
Today´s question was sent to our experts by Joe Rosati. You, too, can have your question regarding raising a bilingual and/or bicultural child answered by one of the experts on our panel. My son is entering the 3rd grade of his Dual Language program. The school has three teachers for the program at 3rd grade, but only one for 4th grade and has suggested they might have a class size of 31 students for 4th grade. This sounds like tooRead More ...
The following question was sent by Sandra Villalobos. You can also send your question to the Experts by clicking here. My son has language delays. I guess it is because we speak Spanish and English at home. My native language is Spanish and my husband’s is English. Before my son was born we researched the best way to help Ian learn both languages: the general recommendation from a multitude of sources is “one-person, one-language.” My husband mostly follows that recommendation,Read More ...
“My husband is a native Spanish speaker. I’m a native English speaker. We both speak each other’s language, although I’m not totally fluent in Spanish. We live in California and I would like to send my girls to a Spanish immersion public school (k-8) so they learn academic Spanish and English. My husband disagrees; he believes they should go to a Chinese immersion school to learn Chinese and English. He says Chinese would be a great language to know inRead More ...
Originally published on January 27, 2010 To find out more about Naomi Steiner and to send her, or any of our experts, your questions please click here. Today´s question was sent from England by Monica. I’m an Italian mum of a three-year-old girl. My husband is Portuguese and we live in England. At the moment Italian is the dominant language as she spends most of the time with me, but she knows fews words in English as well. I reallyRead More ...
“We recently moved to California from the east coast and took the opportunity to try a Spanish immersion program for our 7 and 4 year old daughters. I went to a bilingual school as a child, learning Spanish, and so wanted them to have that wonderful experience. The problem is our 7 year old, now in 2nd grade, has had only limited Spanish and is playing catch up. She is a fast learner and strong English reader with a goodRead More ...
This week’s question was sent in by Lily Herbik. You too can get an answer by sending your question to our experts right here. “My situation is very specific:)) Me and my husband are both Polish living in Thailand now. We would like our son (a 7 month baby:)) to become trilingual (English, Thai & Polish). Polish and Thai (with the right accent) seem to be plausible. We will speak Polish at home and obviously he will have ample exposureRead More ...
