Unlike learning a second language, experience has taught me that to teach kids a second language, you need a plan. There\u2019s nothing organic or natural about it.<\/p>\n
My twins spoke French Creole for the first three years of their lives.<\/p>\n
When they arrived here, learning French was more like a transition than a leap. Eighty percent of the vocabulary of Creole is French.<\/p>\n
So French doesn\u2019t really count. English was a true second language for them. When I started speaking English to them a few weeks after they arrived, they laughed at me. They thought it was a made-up language. They thought I was playing.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when I realized I needed a plan.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s all about rules. My husband and I decided they would speak only French to him, only English to me. The first thing the girls figured out was how to get around the rules. When I asked them a question in English, they turned around and answered Jean-Beno\u00eet in French! So we started pretending not to understand French.<\/p>\n
Eventually they accepted that Mama was the law on the English language.<\/p>\n
But since we live in an almost uniformly francophone universe, we still needed rules and a plan. We decided to alternate the language of the bedtime story every night between French and English. I made them watch some of the DVDs in version anglaise<\/em>. I invited their English-speaking cousins to play. And basically I stick English into their lives at every opportunity without them noticing, like other parents do with vegetables. (And they still have a natural taste for French).<\/p>\n Finally I put them in English primary school. In French immersion. I know, that sounds weird. They study in French and play in English. Next year they will do half their courses in English, the other half in French.<\/p>\n Will my plan work? If not, I\u2019ll have to come up with a new one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Unlike learning a second language, experience has taught me that to teach kids a second language, you need a plan. There\u2019s nothing organic or natural …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[33,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}