New answers tagged language-development
4
Welcome to the site, Sean!
I generally encourage learning foreign languages but it requires that the parents can participate. Don't underestimate the challenge of new languages. My personal experience is that children can learn languages nearly automatically but adults find it very difficult.
If you have a history of little or poor language learning ...
2
I think it is an extremely bad idea to put a child into a school which teaches in a language you don't understand, and they have no background in. Children need help with their homework in order to do well, if it's in Mandarin how in the world would you even know if your child has even done it? And you are right to be worried about your child being ...
0
We're in India but from a very remote and very small state of the North-East. Hence our language Manipuri is not spoken in our current city (Bangalore). It is very rare to hear our language in any other part of India.
My daughter is now 4½ years. During her early days, we did discussed how do we go about talking/teaching English but not let her totally skip ...
-2
I would suggest let the child grow up a little. when I read some of the achievements of kids who are 17 months (that is how old my kid is); I say to my self but my baby can't even figure our he should not bend down near the bed or he will hit him self. then i just stop reading, kids learn at their own pace!
Do play with him. Put up a colorful poster or ...
3
Whatever the language, repetition is the key. If you want to have him understand Russian and English equally well, then you need to speak them with approximately equal frequency. Rather than just focusing on one word ("cat", "dog", "hello") at a time, use full sentences ("Come over here", "Sit down", "Let's eat a snack"). You can try telling him something ...
6
It's only me in the house. I have to teach him 2 languages.
Actually, you don't "have to".
In India, people in northern states speak Hindi at home. Not all Indians are fluent in English yet their toddlers know the meanings of English words like cat/watch etc.
The reason is the "playschool". Here the people usually send their children to formal ...
0
I think the most important thing is to use languages you are proficient in.
That way the child can learn language nuances.
If you don't think you're proficient enough in English to read those books, try getting someone who is proficient enough to read them in English.
1
What's the spoken language policy at home? One parent-one language is a popular policy in Europe. India & Philippines are remarkable for the nonstop language switching and that system seems to work fine.
I'm working on teaching my son Russian (I'm also not a native speaker of Russian). We follow a one parent-one language policy, so I sometimes read the ...
6
If you start reading immediately after your child is born (or even before!), which I highly recommend, and if the goal specifically to exposure your child to English language, then I'd read the English story books in English only.
However, I'd suggest taking it a step further than just reading a selection of stories in English.
The more exposure to each ...
3
Experience from my bilingual family set up (5 year-old child):
First of all, I don't think you should worry.
Second, I don't think you need to look for any pediatrician advice at this point.
Third: the problem may me more related to the parents than to the child. If both parents work full time, and pre-school is in English, the child will have to work ...
7
This is the "forbidden experiment"-- linguist wish they new more about this because it has implications for other questions. But doing this to children is barbaric child abuse. So we wait for natural experiments to arise. The best documented ones are the ones Beofett covered, so I won't repeat that part.
The cases of feral children and children locked up ...
10
No, a child will not teach themselves to develop a new "language" to express themselves, at least not by any generally accepted definition of the term "language".
Language is a complex tool used by multiple people or a community. A single child who is never exposed to verbal language does not make up their own... what would be the point if no one ...
1
thank you for the suggestions! following some of the advice, i changed the words i was using to search for these songs, and found this lovely piece at : http://akshara.niketana.com/
It uses a simple tune to go through a aa e ee all the way through the vyanjanas (consonants) also !
Which was exactly what I was looking for. it has no images, but the song ...
6
If your son is otherwise progressing well in his development (that "his play becomes more complicated" and "he wants to explain the rules" is an indication of that), I would not worry (and would certainly not start hectic manouevres to speed up his linguistic development).
If you don't feel qualified to judge his general development, don't hesitate to talk ...
5
When an adult doesn't know a word in a foreign language, they will resort to complicated sentences that have lots of subordinate clauses (i.e. that thing I used to eat cereal with). That would be way out of the range of a kid in the 2 word sentence phase. So he's looking for the right pair of words to express himself.
I've read that vocab acquisition is ...
2
From 0 to now, your baby has been listening to the sounds of the language. Quantity is more important than quality-- that seems to be the consensus for the writers of the English, Tagalog and Russian nursery rhyme authors that we read to our baby. Sometimes I go through the alphabet or a list of words and just put them in any sentence that comes to mind ...
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