How to encourage my child to speak his second language | Raising Children in More Than One Language | Forum

I am wondering if you had any tips to help me motivate my 7 year old son to speak his second language (my mother language). He knows how to speak but he just doesn't want to. 

I have been speaking and reading to him in my mother language most of the time since he was born. He understands almost everything I say unless I go into deeper subjects but speaks to me only in English. He speaks his second language with my parents when they come over to stay with us for a couple of months so I know he can speak. But he translates from English. I am trying to encourage him to speak to me as well, so it gets easier for him. I explained him that it is a “cool” and “clever” thing to be able to speak 2 languages, and that I want him to be able to speak his second language because it is where I am from.

I noticed that he was struggling with the fact that his second language was not "perfect". I told him that he should not expect his second language to be as good as his English and that it is perfectly allright to make mistakes and we could make a game to see if I could understand him correctly. That worked once when we were in the car and he spoke to me for a couple of minutes. But since then he is again refusing to speak his second language. I tried to understand what is holding him back, he says that he doesn’t feel like it and he only wants to speak it when he is in that country and with his grandparents. I told him if he practices now with me 5 minutes everyday, it will be much easier for him to speak it when he is with his grandparents and he might event forget what he knows now if he continues not talking to me. But no success ! He is just not comfortable with it. He speaks the language only when he has to and seems quite self conscious about it. 

Any suggestions to help me encourage him to speak his second language? He is usually a reserved and self conscious boy so I am planning to just let it go .. But I am concerned he will forget a lot of what he knows instead of building on it.

Many thanks in advance !

I have the same issue. I have an 8 year old whose father is German. We started speaking German to him the day he was born. In the meantime, I have been divorced from his father, who now lives in Germany. I have since been remarried to a non-German speaking husband, who has a non-German speaking son and we have a non-German speaking daughter together. My son refuses to speak German and will only speak English. He has almost no contact with his grandmother, aunt and uncle, and cousin who live in Germany. When he talks to his father on the phone, they speak English together. I wish they would speak German and I wish he had more contact with the rest of his German family, and I think it discourages them when he only speaks English to them and they can't understand him.

I can take comfort in one thing: I have done some research on second language acquisition and there is considerable research indicating that a second language is not acquired through speaking, but through listening and reading the language. So if I speak to him, read to him and let him watch movies and TV in the second language, he will learn it even if he doesn't speak it. I have some personal evidence for this. My son has not spoken German much at all since he was about 4. But I decided to do an experiment. I started speaking German to our daughter, who is just under 2. My son immediately started speaking German to her, and it was almost completely free of grammar errors, and his accent was not bad either! So don't lose heart, and just keep speaking the second language to him, reading him books in the language, and letting him watch movies in that language. It really does make a difference.

I have the same issue with my kids. We are from India and my husband and I wanted our two sons to speak our language, Kannada. They used to speak Kannada all the time, but once they went to school, they started to respond in English to us only, though they understand perfectly. That shouldn't be a surprise since English is the majority language. Thing is what I learned is you need to take into a manner where they don't feel forced or feel uncomfortable (Comfort is a MUST!), otherwise they will never speak no matter how many times they are drilled to it. My relatives did this with their children, along with shoving down the culture in their throats and not only did the children refuse to speak the language, they hate the culture as well. Don't do that! People learn things differently nowadays and we have to accomodate that so they get the full advantage. For our sons, they are independent learners and will learn things on their own. They do not like us interfering way too much which is a good idea since independence is key for everyone now and it's always best to learn things yourself rather than depending on others. When we first took them to India, they were actually speaking to our relatives in Kannada, however when my husband and I weren't there, however when they were there, they would just stand quiet and refuse to speak anything. I could tell that they like to speak, but were uncomfortable when either my husband or I were around. They did enjoy the trip though. So a few years later I suggested and offered my sons another opportunity trip to India, this time by themselves. After some weeks they both were very proficient and fluent in speaking Kannada..knew that was the answer and was happy. However still though they speak to my husband and I and our relatives and friends here in US in English, and speak English still most of the time, but they choose to speak to our relatives in India in Kannada since they can't speak English. That should be fine since they grew up in the US and thus have a preference to speak in English, but at least I'm glad they can speak some descent Kannada..surprisingly enough one of them has a desire to read and write in Kannada now as well. So yea, everyone has a different way of learning in which they are comfortable in, and it should be accomodated.

I just turned deaf if my daughters addressed me in English instead of German, so if they wanted something they had to speak German… It still works today and two are at university! Watching TV programmes and listening to story CDs is a great way of keeping the vocabulary current! Let them choose which programmes to watch though and don't show disappointment if it is a familiar programme in translation. My daughters still listen to the wonderful recording of Rufus Beck reading Harry Potter!

Grandparents can "send" these audiobooks if you order them online and as they don't come from you he is more likely to listen to them. As he speaks their language to them he'd accept it as natural that they would send him stories in their language. Just make sure you tell your parents when they have "sent" something, they can then ask him how he liked the story and he'll have something to talk about other than "How's school?"

If he is self conscious he'll hate to be made to feel different, so I'd keep it for at home or you risk him switching off altogether.

Another ruse I used to get my daughters to read German was to instruct my brother to find some comics and send them or bring them when he visited. I'd openly disapprove of comics, stating that they are inferior to "proper" books, he'd complain that I was a snob and a subscription to the comic would be agreed "behind my back" between them. Believe it or not, but as soon as it was something clandestine they couldn't wait to get their hands on it!

Even if they lose their active language as long as they use the passive skills of listening and watching (the easiest of all) children can recover active skills later (and no doubt regret they didn't keep them up when Mum told them to!)

we have 2 sons, 7 and 4.  My husband is German, I'm American, we live in the US.  Both of us have spoken German to our children since young ages, and up until now, they have been bilingual.  Only recently the 7 year old stopped speaking German to us, (except for a few brief exchanges), and the children now play together in English. The 4 year old used to prefer German, but now his English is good enough from preschool that he can play with his brother in English.  The 7 year old does not refuse to speak German if you ask him to, so he is not rejecting the language, but is lazy and switches back to English.

The thing is, in six months we are moving to Germany for 1 year and the children will both attend schools in German. So my husband refuses to think that there is anything we should do about this change (like not answering if they use English), and that if will all sort itself out. that may be true, but I can't help but think that this is the wrong time for them to quit!  Do you think I should do anything about it, or let it go until summer….? 

Thanks for any thoughts.

Glad to see that everyone has the same problem that I do with my kids. We live in the US. I'm from Germany. We do the OPOL thing. I speak 99% German with my kids. My daughter is 6 and it wasn't until our last trip to Germany this past summer that she really started speaking exclusively German with me. I didn't think that it would last, but it did for about 6 months. I was ecstatic. I had a little German speaker. Now the last two or three weeks she's been slipping into English more and more. A couple of times she realized it and switched to German, but most times she doesn't. I'm kind of disappointed and discouraged. Things were going so well. I don't know how to address this. Should I point it out to her when she slips into English? Do I ignore her when she speaks English, like some have done? Up until now I've always tried to make it no stress, no pressure with the German. She goes to Saturday German school and speaks German with her Oma that lives in town, but I'd really like her to keep speaking it with me. Any encouragement and tips are appreciated.

Being French and living in New Jersey, my goal is to have my 7-year old daughter and 4-year old son speak only in French. No choice, because my parents do not speak English. What helps me is a combination of fun and discipline.

Fun: we play together in French, they can watch 10 minutes of cartoons in French per day, we read, I put French stories while we drive, etc.

Discipline: When they tell me a word in English in a sentence, I give them the word in French and ask them to repeat the whole sentence in French. I do not accept that they address me in English, if it is the case, I correct them right away. A little harsh, but I have not found a more effective way but to enforce strict discipline about it. 

Not sure if this helps…

Franck

http://www.earlylanguages.com