It is hard to speak two languages at home. Ask a native speaker who lives in a country where a different language is spoken. Unless they have many relatives or a community where they speak their second language, they've probably given up teaching their children their native language.
Choosing to speak two languages at home isn't a one-time choice. It is a daily, hourly, even minutely choice, and for the last few weeks, I've been making the choice to give into exhaustion, excuses, and ease instead of switching into German.
Then, once I've not spoken German for a few weeks, it feels silly to speak it. Why speak it now if I won't be speaking it in ten minutes? How can I tell my children not to fight in German if I am worried they won't understand? Won't it look silly if I say a few things in German and then give up?
Ah, the ease with which I make up excuses!
I got out a book of fairy tales last night to read to myself. No input quickly leads to no output, so I worked on the input last night. It is high time to read a wikipedia article on winter and storms so that I can talk about things that are on our mind to my children (what did people do before wikipedia???).
It is time to just do it again. Steering is easiest while moving.
I think the key is to start and expose them to some german each day.
ReplyDeleteI think there are a few good ways to do it.
1. Read a story they are familiar with, a fairy tale, so that they don't have
to be learning a new concept at the same time. Then ask about objects in the pictures.
Once these words are mastered asked about actions of the characters. With enough exposure, kids brains
pick up the conjugation, tenses and cases easily. There is a very nice library with digital but free books in many languages:http://en.childrenslibrary.org/
You can read them from the computer.
2. Songs. Many english songs have their german version.It's easy words, easy structures, its entertaining.
Another good thing is that they can practice by singing to the baby. He can never say they didn't say it correctly.
3. Youtube has been a great help for me. I have found tons of programs with mostly songs and some Disney films like the Three Little Pigs that they love and understand.
We don't watch much TV, so if they would watch TV, that's what they will see. Some videos on youtube are actually narrating a story.
I am in your boat with portuguese. I read two books every night, small ones(8 pages each) and we have a small conversation. It's enough that she ventures into saying sentences.
The songs give confidence. I don't read to my little guy because the goal with him is to get bulgarian right, but he hears Sophia and I speak, he knows certain small things like body parts, some animals, water, food.
Little bit each day. Little tiny bit will go along way. 15 minutes.
Also, no need to get frustrated if you miss a day. Just start again.
The goal again is to get them interested. Once there, they can grow fueled by the interest.
You always have the best things to say, Teo! Thanks so much. I started doing some internal dialoging in German yesterday ("now I'm unloading the dishwasher, now I'm putting away the knives") which helped me to move into German with the kids. Also, remembering that something is better than nothing really helps. I need to choose some easier books off my shelf, books that we can read in less than ten minutes. We have some silly songs we used to sing in CA, when we went to German school, so I need to start using those throughout the day with them. Thanks for reminding me!
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