It was back to school for both my children today and while we they had an amazing summer immersed in Spanish, neither is enrolled in a dual language immersion school. This means we have to work hard at home to maintain the Spanish flowing.

I’m not really concerned about their speaking skills, as Spanish is the dominant language in our home, but I am concerned about their abilities to read and write in my native tongue. This is particularly true in Vanessa’s case since she just entered second grade.

Many people think the definition of bilingualism is being able to speak in two languages, but mine also includes reading and writing correctly in both. Vanessa reads and writes in Spanish and I can’t take the credit for that because she apparently just transferred those skills from English to Spanish as she learned them in school. Even so, I believe she’s at the point where she needs more of a formal instruction. I wish I could say I’ll take it upon myself to give that to her, but I don’t have the skills or the patience to do so, and so for a few months now, I’ve been exploring some options.

Finally, I’ve come to the conclusion that a private Spanish tutor might be just right for her. While more expensive than other options, the obvious advantage of private tutoring is that it can be custom designed to meet your child’s specif needs taking into consideration his pace and level.

How To Find A Private Spanish Tutor

Through my preliminary research, I’ve already found a few options in my area by doing a simple Google search. Check it out:

TutorFind — You can search by language, state, city and even sex.

Spanish Blackbelt — They offer one-on-one Spanish classes for children 6 years and older in several states.

StudyPoint — Another company that offers one-on-one Spanish tutoring in several cities across the nation.

Craigslist — Just go under lessons and tutoring and search for Spanish tutors.

I’ve actually found a couple of tutors on Craigslist and I’m getting ready to make some phones calls to start interviewing them. It never occurred to me to look there, but I was pleasantly surprise with what I found.

Also, remember that, for the most part, all language schools offer private tutoring and many of them start them young.

Another option, is to seek a bilingual elementary school teacher or a Spanish teacher who may no longer be doing it full-time, but might be interested in doing some private tutoring. I know a couple and you probably do to, if you really think about it. If not, ask around.

Finally, while private tutoring can get expensive, you can always get together with another mom and share the expense.

I’ve been doing some serious thinking about what will happen next year when Vanessa goes to kindergarten because there are basically no options when it comes to dual language education in Denver. Well, that’s not totally true, but the options that do exist are really not feasible for our family.

Let’s see, there’s the private school she went to for the French immersion camp this summer. While I’d love for her to go there, unfortunately, it’s out of our league – keeping in mind we have two children. Then there’s the new charter school, Denver Language School, that just opened up this year and which I wrote about here. Again, this would be an amazing option. But at close to 20 miles away, and with both my husband and I working full time jobs which are only so flexible, I’m not sure we can commit to taking her there on a daily basis. Not to mention that we need to go through a lottery in order to get in which means this option is not even a given. Oh, yeah, then there’s also the fact that they have plans to eventually move even further away from our home.

When Ana and I started SpanglishBaby in February 2009, I didn’t really give too much though to what would happen once Vanessa was old enough to start school. While I would’ve love for her to attend a dual language preschool, I’ve been able to live with the fact that this was not an option in our neighborhood and I’ve actually grown very fond of our choice. In fact, I’ll always remember it as the place where my daughter became bilingual since the English she now knows she mainly learned there. (We use the mL@H method so English is rarely spoken in our home). But now, less than a year away from kinder, I find myself losing sleep over what will happen to my daughter’s Spanish if she doesn’t attend a bilingual school.

Looking back, I can’t believe I actually once thought that I could take care of her education in Spanish by myself. In fact, I even debated whether it would really be beneficial for her to attend a bilingual school in the English/Spanish combination, as opposed to taking advantage of the possibility of adding a third language. Luckily, all of you helped me see how if I wanted her to be not only bilingual, but also biliterate, we needed to go the dual language immersion route.

While I don’t have the tools (experience, patience, materials) necessary to make this happen at home, at the suggestion of another mom, I’ve decided that our best option—at least for now—is to hire a Spanish private tutor to move forward in the goal of making my daughter biliterate. The obvious benefit of private tutoring is that it can be custom designed to meet your child’s specif needs taking into consideration his pace and level.

How to find a Spanish private tutor

Through my preliminary research, I’ve already found a few options in my area by doing a simple Google search. Here’s what I’ve found:

TutorFind — You can search by language, state, city and even sex.

Spanish Blackbelt — They offer one-on-one Spanish classes for children 6 years and older in several states

Spanish is Fun — Their goal is to teach your children to converse, write and read in Spanish

BridgeDenver — They can come to you or you can go to them

While the last two are local options, I included them because the reality is that, for the most part, all language schools offer private tutoring and many of them start them young.

Another option, is to seek a bilingual elementary school teacher or a Spanish teacher who may no longer be doing it full-time, but might be interested in doing some private tutoring. I know a couple and you probably do to, if you really think about it. If not, ask around.

Finally, while private tutoring can get expensive, you can always get together with another mom and share the expense. I have several friends from our bilingual playgroup whose children are around my daughter’s age and live in the same neighborhood, so I know this would be a perfect option for them too—another one of the perks of belonging to a playgroup!

What alternative to bilingual education can you suggest to make sure your children grow up bilingual and biliterate?

Photo by cesarastudillo

Our weekly Ask an Expert series continues to grow into a treasure cove of information and advice concerning bilingual families. The experts in the panel all shine in their own right; amongst them is bilingual English/Spanish speech language professional, Ellen Stubbe Kester, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, who recently debunked three common myths about speech development in bilingual children. Now, we are excited to announce that Dr. Kester has joined the impressive panel of bilingual experts that collaborate in our weekly series-Ask an Expert.

We invite you to visit Dr. Kester’s website, Bilinguistics, to learn more about her and her team.

They are “dedicated to enhancing speech and language services for Spanish-English bilingual children, enabling those children to achieve their highest communicative and academic potential.”

Click here to send her your questions regarding speech development in bilingual children.

Should I start teaching my son how to read in Spanish?

A couple of weeks ago author and celebrated researcher Barbara Zurer Pearson answered the question: “When should my child learn to read in a second language?”
Today’s question, sent by Claudia Hadad, digs in deeper into the issue of teaching young bilinguals to read in the minority language.

“We use both English and Spanish at home but our native language is Spanish. My son is 5 and already reads in English. Should I start teaching him how to read in Spanish? Would he be confused with the fact that we use the same alphabet but the sounds are different.”

Hi Claudia,

Ellen Stubbe Kester, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

Children are just as capable of becoming bi-literate as they are of becoming bilingual. Dual language learning does not confuse children. Will your child make mistakes in the process of learning to read in two languages? Yes. Just as monolingual, mono-literate children make mistakes when learning to read, bilinguals will as well. Many of the mistakes bilinguals make in development may be the result of influence from the other language but this is part of the learning process. Some people call that “confused” but with feedback, bilingual children learn to correct those errors, just as monolingual children learn to correct their errors with feedback. Children quickly learn to to use both systems. Recent research also suggests that the earlier a child learns two languages, the better off he will be for dual language reading development .

If your son is already reading in English, he should have a relatively easy time learning to read in Spanish. Spanish is considered a “transparent” language because of its mostly one-to-one letter-to-sound correspondence, while English is considered an “opaque” language because there is often more than one sound associated with a letter. Transparent languages are generally easier to learn because their rules are more consistent than opaque languages. Additionally, the orthographies of English and Spanish are very similar, making it easier for children to transfer knowledge from one language to the other.

For a lot of detail on the differences in the orthographies and sound systems of English and Spanish, please see Gorman & Kester (2004) at the following link:
http://bilinguistics.com/education/abad_0701/abad_0701.pdf

Happy reading!

Ellen Kester, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

Photo by popofatticus

From all the reading I’ve done since the creation of SpanglishBaby, it seems to be that one of the biggest issues parents who are raising bilingual children eventually face is that their kids won’t answer back in the minority language – particularly after they start school.

Although I really can’t envision this being a problem for us, I know I’m delusional – especially now that we live in Colorado! As I’ve mentioned in the past, I helped raise my now 18-year-old stepson using the mL@H method, but we actually lived in Miami where you are truly surrounded by all things Hispanic, including our language, everywhere you turn… He is bilingual – although not completely bi-literate – but I was racking my brain the other day trying to remember if he ever flat out refused to speak to us in Spanish and honest to God, I came up short.

Maybe he’s just different than others or maybe my husband and I found a way – without really thinking too much about it – to avoid one of the major pitfalls of raising a child bilingual: making it so that he has no perceived need for the minority language. In other words, making it as if the minority language is really not necessary for him to be able to communicate.

If you find yourself in this situation, do not worry! It’s not impossible to reverse… So, what if your child refuses to answer back in Spanish or whatever minority language you use?

Here are some simple tips to try to change that:

• Focus on the easy stuff – what they already know – and always praise them and then praise them a little more. For remembering a word or for the flawless pronunciation.
  
• When moving on to the more difficult stuff – what they don’t already know, but you want them to learn – turn the whole thing into a juego. So, for example, if your daughter knows the word for a certain thing, but can’t remember it, try giving her a hint, the first sound or syllable. You’ll be cheating, but your help will truly boost her self-confidence and she won’t be afraid to try saying the word, once you get her started.
  
• If it’s a completely new word or your child has completely forgotten it, say the word loud and clear and ask him to repeat it. It’s a good idea to keep on using that specific word in conversation for a while so as to help him with usage and remembrance.

More tips, but ones you should use with care:

• Kindly remind your child to speak in Spanish, but remember that many times she will be so eager to say what’s on her mind that she might get frustrated if she can’t fully express herself in the minority language – which is probably her weaker one. Just be gentle in your encouragement to get her back to using Spanish, you don’t want it feel like a chore.
• If she says something in English, repeat it back  using the minority language. Think of this as the same thing you would with a younger child who is just learning to speak – we normally correct and help them expand their vocabulary by repeating the correct way of saying things, right? So, for example, if your child says in English “Can I go play with Lily?” you might say: “¿Quieres ir a jugar con Lily?” Again, just be careful how you do this…
• Finally – and this is kind of drastic – pretend you don’t understand or refuse to answer until they use the minority language. This may or may not work with your children. But be aware: you shouldn’t force the issue or it’ll become a battleground and you probably will not win. You will know better than anyone else how far to take this tactic or whether to use it at all.

A truly simple, but often overlooked thing to remember, is that you should stick to speaking the minority language no matter what. However, please keep in mind, that this journey of raising kids bilingual goes through all kinds of stages – depending on your kids’ ages, so don’t despair and keep at it!

¡Buena suerte!

Have something to say about this topic? Or you’d like to share your own tips on how to ‘fix’ this problem? Please leave a comment below or feel free to go to our SpanglishBaby Forums so you can start a discussion about it or to find out how others are coping by clicking here.