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8:28 pm
QuoteHello all,
I'm a Japanese mom living in Seoul, South Korea married to the Korean husband. Our 4-year-old boy is growing up to be a quasi-trilingaul; communicate in both Korean and Japanese, and with a very basic understanding of English.
Currently we follow OPOL with a bit of adjustment. My son speaks Japanese with me(my mother tongue) and Korean with my husband(his mother tongue) and attends to a local korean kindergarten. For English I allocate 1~2 hours everyday so that my son and I can talk, play, read, or watch DVDs in English. And recently, I'm considering to switch our family language of all of three from Korean to English. Just let's see how this will work for us.
Since Korea and Japan are such monolingual countries, you might know, adding English to his language repertoire is going very slowly but very much rewarding and enjoyable experience.
I wonder anybody who is residing in Korea ?
Thanks.
10:15 am
I'm a mum of two children … who loves to cook and teach my little monsters Serbian. I treat them by coaxing them with muffins. Lol. I know, I know, it's bad.
I live in England. Would be wonderful to meet up with fellow mums who are teaching Serbian. In my part time I bake professionally for children parties (thankfully I have http://www.smartyhadaparty.co.uk/ to help me with the decorations at least). Would be nice to meet some mums who have similiar interests.
1:39 pm
Hello everybody,
My name is Lisa, me and my 5-year old daughter live in Russia at the moment. I have been teaching her English since her birth but now the cirumstances have changed and we are moving to the French speaking part of Canada. Poor girl, she doesn`t know where she is going! I am a little bit worried how she will survive in a new language area. Has anybody had a similar experience? Would be great if you could share!
1:43 pm
Josephine said:
I'm a mum of two children … who loves to cook and teach my little monsters Serbian. I treat them by coaxing them with muffins. Lol. I know, I know, it's bad.
I live in England. Would be wonderful to meet up with fellow mums who are teaching Serbian. In my part time I bake professionally for children parties (thankfully I have http://www.smartyhadaparty.co.uk/ to help me with the decorations at least). Would be nice to meet some mums who have similiar interests.
Hi Josephine,
life has given me a chance to travel in some part of former Jugoslavia. I just wanted to say that the place (unfortunately it is not a single country no more) and the people are great! and i have the warmest memories of the time i spent there!:)
9:43 am
Hi everyone!
I am an American settled in Sweden, raising two bilingual children with my Swedish husband. I have always spoken English with my children and my dh has spoken Swedish. So far, so good. My older child has now started French as a foreign language in school and we do our best to all learn words here and there in other languages.
I have been here for about 21 years so I think I will stay! I am also working on my doctorate, studying upper secondary students who choose immersion schools in Sweden. Hope to hear more from some of you with older children.
/bee
7:21 am
Hello everyone,
I'm Charissa (or 'Savara'), 22, a Dutch/English bilingual (raised in Dutch but when I noticed my family from South Africa used English as their main language when I was 8 I think something clicked and made me realise it's important to know more than 1 language – it became my most important language from age 14 up and I've lived in both England and South Africa for short periods of time). I'm also studying English (teaching course). Other than my main languages I know quite a bit of Japanese (and basics of German and French… sadly enough I don't believe in the way languages are taught at schools and it shows… in 3 years of having fun learning in a more natural way my Japanese is much, much better than my German…).
Main language of communication with my sister is English (although we do use a lot of code-switching, something I used to hate but have started to appreciate as a tool that is available to us in communication :D) and depending on the topic we do use Dutch as a base language at times. My sister has a German boyfriend (again, they communicate in English but want to teach the future kids all three languages…).
Other than language-related interests I like music and play the ocarina, harp and tin whistle. I love to read (… that is language-related though, partially) and write (I can't write stories in Dutch, it just doesn't sound right)… oh and Postcrossing is fun, too.
I love the website and have subscribed to the feed, so hope to see everyone around!
Charissa
9:59 pm
I wonder anybody who is residing in Korea ?
Hi, I am a Canadian, and my wife is Japanese. We are currently living in Seoul, and recently welcomed our first child in November. We are also planning on raising our daughter to be able to speak English, Japanese, and Korean. I guess your son is a little older, but it is nice to know there is another family in Seoul who is working on the same languages as we are.
6:28 am
Hi, I'm Susanne, originally from Luxemburg where everyone learns three languages (Luxembourgish, German and French) side-by-side as you never know which one will be required and all three are used in official documents, but now living in the monoglot environment of the UK.
My husband is English and our 4 daughters speak excellent English and (to my ears) atrocious as very ungrammatical German unless I point it out to them. If they think before they open their mouths I'm always delighted to find that all my efforts of teaching them the grammar were not wasted…
There's definitely a difference in their brain processing: three of them have "language brains" as someone called it, the other one struggles with foreign language learning at school and cannot retain vocabulary beyond tests and exams. She excels at Sciences and Maths and this has been apparent since she was 4. She's been treated the same as the rest, plenty of exposure to German and some French and Luxbg as well, esp. during travels, yet does not have the same ability to switch between languages, she is least likely to try and get away with in speaking English to me.
It's been an interesting experiment and at times quite a difficult balancing act, especially when they got to senior school. But worth it!
1:46 pm
Hi my name is Jessica and I live in Texas but I am in a relationship with a Zimabawean man. I am trying to research the statististics of Halfrican families. We are thinking of marriage and I am learning Shona, his language. But it is coming slow because I cannot find programs for this language at all really. I have also been for-warned all to many times that I will be hurt by misunderstandings or him just wanting a link to the U.S. However I firmly believe in the beauty of multilingual-culteral marriage and I am looking for guidance from Halfrican couples. Anyone is welcome to email me, colorblindlove18 @ aim .com
1:55 pm
Also I realize Halfrican may be an unfamiliar term that has been only recently used. But I am meaning to refer to those who have come together from Africa and America in marriage and those who are raised by a African native and an American native. Different from the commonly used term: African American and Caucasian American, this implying multiracial marriage but not necessarily multi-cultural and multilingual.
8:55 pm
hi everyone!
my name is Lia, I'm austrian (born and raised) and married to the love of my life, who just happened to be egyptian. we live in orange county and we will have our first baby in summer. we plan on raising our children trilingual by using OPOL. i will be speaking only german (i actually already speak german to my belly- just to make sure the baby will be familiar with the sounds :) and my husband arabic. the community and our family language is english, so our child will learn this as well.
we have a lot of arabic speaking families around here, so there will be enough exposure to arabic, but i don't know anyone speaking german! does anyone of you know of a german play group, german or austrian or swiss families in oc? i would greatly appreciate every tip! thank you!
8:56 pm
Oliver said:
@Gemma, in reference to your question "what is an international immersion school":
The educational principle of our school is to teach German speaking natives (with little to no English abilities) English by teaching the regular school subjects (sciences, sports, math etc.) in the English language. We are immersing them into English, therefore the term "immersion school". At the beginning, we have to teach them bilingually (German and English) otherwise they won't be able to follow. When the students are older we switch to English-only. Essenetially they pick up English as we go along. The "conventional" way of teaching them English would be to have a separate subject "English". We also have this subject, but additionally we teach everything using English as a language of instruction. Needless to say, their English abilities are substantially better. Just think about the subject-specific vocab, which simply can not be taught in English class alone (and the overall English input is quantiatively much more).
We are also "international". This means that we also accept students with an international background. This means, students who speak English but not German. They learn German by talking to their classmates. This is also a form of immersion. The students graduate with the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma in addition to the Austrian national diploma. The IB diploma (quite demanding and in English) is our qualilty check that the system works. Oliver.
where is this school? i hardly see anything mentioning my homecountry, so i get very curious :)
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