Tag Archives: proficient speaker

22/04/2013 · 12:25 pm

OPOL: Does it always work?

Over the last decade or so, the OPOL method of raising bilingual children has gotten a lot of positive press. It sounds pretty simple – One parent, one language. So I speak French to my kids and my husband speaks English to them, and they will grow up bilingual. Sounds easy, yes? But the reality, as with anything to do with families or children, is not as simple or clear cut.
Just employing the OPOL method can produce bilingual children, but over my years of working with bilingual families, I have seen that it doesn’t guarantee success. Here are what I find to be the most common complications or limitations of OPOL:

1) Lack of minority language development.
Realistically, if a couple in the Netherlands, for example, have one English-speaking and one Dutch-speaking parent, their children are going to grow up hearing *far* more Dutch than English. By the time the kids are in school (or earlier if they are in child care in Dutch) they will be spending the majority of their time in Dutch, even more so if the English speaking parent works full time. Realistically then, one parent speaking English with the kids for an hour or so every day is possibly not going to be enough to produce “bilingual” children.
What can you do? In this situation, the family needs to find more time for English, whether that means English-speaking child care, or both parents using English at home, some or all of the time.

2) The slide towards the majority language….
In many bilingual families, the minority language speaking partner also speaks the majority language. This happens a lot in the English-speaking world (or other immigrant paradigms) where, for example, a Spanish/English speaking American marries an English-speaking American. Often, the Spanish-speaking parent sets out with the bet of intentions, determined to pass on Spanish to the children. But then they use a lot of English too, to be inclusive with friends and family, and to talk to child minders/teachers… and the kids very quickly pick up on the fact that Spanish is not *necessary* to communicate with that parent, or with anyone. They can use English all the time, and be just fine. So the children start speaking to the parent in English, and while the parent makes a valiant effort to keep speaking Spanish, eventually the use of Spanish dwindles… and the children are not bilingual at all, or anymore.
What can you do? From the beginning, if you are the minority speaking parent, know that your job will not be easy, and you will have to work at it. I meet parents all the time who tell me that they thought raising bilingual children with OPOL would be easy. It’s not, for many of us. If you are serious about passing your language on to your children, set your goals (what kind of language do I want them to have, what do I want them to be able to do?) and then make a plan. Activate all the resources in your network or find a new network that provides you, and your children with the language input and support they need to achieve bilingualism.

3) Lack of cohesion and consistency
Sometimes a parent who speaks both languages (and possibly other languages) in an OPOL family can have problems choosing what language to speak. So, they use a little of this, and a little of that. A lot of the OPOL literature stresses consistency, and I believe it to be true that consistency is desirable, primarily in the early years when the language system is being formed. Also, the early years are the time that the parents have the most influence over their children, so if you are passing on a minority language, it’s important to use these years to transmit as much language you can – there will be lots of time for #1 and 2 above to happen… but if you did a great job of building a language foundation before your kids start to only use the majority language, they have a better chance of coming back to the language later. Does it really mess kids up if a parent uses two languages, intermixed? I don’t think we really know the answer to this yet, as there are too many variations in family language use. But I do think that it’s best to be consistent, as much as possible, in the early years, if only to make your children’s task easier. Once the children are older, and have well-developed language systems, you can be more fluid in your language use. I use English, French and Dutch with my kids all in the same day, and sometimes even in the same conversation, and it’s a way of developing their linguistic abilities, and using translanguaging to deepen knowledge.
What can you do? This comes down to what motivates each parent, personally. You can do some reading on how to best use OPOL, or just make a resolution to only use “your” language with your children. It’s helpful for both parents to be on the same page about this, and to see the benefits of consistent language input for young children.

This post was inspired by a question on a Facebook group I belong to – I’ll be back, hopefully next week, with a post about translanguaging, and also one about a seminar I attended with Jim Cummins last week.

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26/09/2012 · 10:48 am

How much (insert language here) is enough?

Whether you are an expat family considering a new local language for your children, or a family dealing with multiple languages, the concern about amount of language is the same.
How much of a language, over what time frame, is enough for bilingualism to be successful? Or at the least, how much is enough to make it worthwhile for the parents and the children? There are three factors you need to consider when making the decision about what is “enough”.

The first is the age of the child. Generally speaking, the younger the child, the less you need to worry about “enough”. If you are considering putting your English-speaking 1-year old in a Dutch creche three times a week, for one year, that’s fine. They probably won’t gain enough Dutch to go on to be a Dutch speaker, but it won’t harm them, or their development in English, in any way (linguistically). They may be lucky and have some knock-on effects later in life in terms of other language learning, but they may not.
If you have a 7-year old and are considering school in a new language, “enough” is a much more serious issue. A school-aged child has not only language learning to do, but also content learning to do. During the language learning period (which for older children can be 3-7 years to full cognitive fluency), the child is necessarily either losing out on content learning, or having to work really, really hard to catch up at home. The social aspects of being an older child learning a language in school are also more tricky – some kids are fine with it and some kids really struggle. So, if you have older children, the point at which an immersion experience becomes “worth it” is when there is enough time to master the language, and a long-term prospect to keep it up, and willingness on the part of the child (whenever possible).
If you are a multilingual family and want your children to master more than two languages, you need to plan as much as possible for balanced input. A common number from research is that children need a minimum of 20% total input in each language. This means about 2.5 hours a day of quality input in each language you want them to be able to use. In my experience, this number is on the low side – I find that many children who get only 20% in a language are reluctant to use the language, although they may understand it well.

The second factor to consider is your language goals. If you want your child to be a fluent speaker of a language and be able to read and write, then “enough” is going to be a serious commitment. Most families find that they can manage enough input in two languages to achieve this level in two languages, but the more languages you include the harder it becomes to find the time (and energy!) to provide adequate, good quality input. When looking at your family situation then, you plan for the amount of input that will help your children reach your language goals. If you have a minority language spoken at home and want your children to be able to speak and understand it, you may be able to get away with a couple of hours every day. If you speak a minority language at home but would like your children to be able to go home to your country to university some day, the time and effort needed to develop the language to that level will be much greater (for the parents and the children).

The third factor you need to consider is the individual child. There is a common myth that all children are little sponges and can soak up many languages. To a certain extent, it is true that young children seem to learn language more easily than adults. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t really hard work, and it doesn’t mean that it comes as easily to all children. If your child is very young and used to being communication-challenged, it may not be as hard for them to be put in an environment where they need to learn to communicate in another language. If your child is preschool aged and very shy and has difficulty adapting to new situations, the pay-off for a couple of years in a different language preschool may not be worth the price for the child. This means that each child’s situation must be considered as a part of the decision, and the outcomes may not be the same for all children in a family.

So the short answer is that there is no clear answer to what is “enough”. You must look at the language opportunities, age of children, length of exposure, amount of exposure, language goals and last but not least, the child, to find the answer to your question.

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10/09/2012 · 4:51 pm

Lessons from Scotland: Use it or lose it!

This is just a brief post on a reflection I had while on holidays. We went to Scotland for two weeks, with English-speaking family. About 10 days into our trip, I got a call from someone in the Netherlands. Now, my Dutch is reasonable, and I can usually understand and make myself understood without too much difficulty. However, after only just over a week absence from the need to use Dutch, I really struggled! I couldn’t find my words, and I had trouble following a conversation that normally wouldn’t have given me any trouble.
The moral of this is that if we don’t use language regularly, we can actually “lose” language. Not only is input important for language development, but opportunities for *output* are also critical. If you want your child to master a language, you need to make sure that you create situations in which there is a need to use the language, on a regular basis.

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30/06/2012 · 8:29 pm

Talking to Native Speakers – Part II

In my work with families, I also come up against the Native Speaker Myth. For families trying to plan for successful bilingualism for their children, this myth has different implications, but can be equally damaging.
One of the first things I do with each family I work with is discuss the necessity of setting language goals. For each language involved, the parents must decide what “level” of bilingualism they are aiming for with their children. For most parents, their first instinct is to say that they want their children to be “native speakers” of this language, or that language. However, research demonstrates that bilinguals are not necessarily “like” monolingual native speakers in either or any of their languages. Is this a bad thing? Are your bilingual children going to be somehow “lesser than” if they do not mirror the Native Speaker Model?
The answer, of course, is that “native speaker” is not the be-all and end-all of language use. Monolingual native speakers of a language only have one code to choose from, across all domains of their lives. No matter where they are or what they are doing, they are using their one language. Bilinguals use their two (or three or more) languages in some situations, but generally not across all situations. For example, my children go to school in French and live mostly in English, and shop in Dutch. This means that they can talk better about math in French (the oldest, anyway), better about table manners in English, and can best order patat in Dutch. If they were to switch around their language use patterns, and start going to school in English, they would appear, initially, less competent than the “native speakers” in their classes. However, they would be able to catch up with their peers, and do as well at school in English as in French, given a bit of time and attention. The pay-off, of course, would be that their level of fluency in French could well suffer, unless we were to change our family language plan accordingly, and switch to living mostly in French (hard work for Dad!).
And this then, is the bottom line. Bilinguals have domains of use in which they excel in the language they are used to using for each domain. They may well not appear as “native speakers” in domains that are not habitual for them. This absolutely does not mean that they have achieved a lower level in the language than the native speaker model, it is basic outcome of the fact that a bilingual is not two monolinguals in one brain, but rather one brain made up of different language parts. Given the myriads of benefits to being bilingual, I’m happy to ditch the native speaker model for my kids, in favour of a “fluent as they need to be” model.

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12/03/2012 · 2:17 pm

Talking to Child-minders about Bilingualism

Although I certainly have no objection to working parents (I am one myself, after all!), being a two-working parent family adds another layer to your family language dynamic, and another element to your Family Language Plan.
There are a few issues that come into play when choosing/using child care for your children, in a multilingual family.

Firstly, what language childcare are you going to choose, presuming you have a choice? The easy answer is that you should choose someone who is a proficient speaker of the language your child hears least. In our case, that meant that when our twins were little, we choose a nanny who would speak Dutch with them. Our reasoning was that Dutch is a language they need (we do live in the Netherlands, after all) and we do not speak it at home.
However, it is not always that easy to choose or find childcare in the language you need. For families dealing with a minority language only spoken by one (working) parent, it’s often best to choose childcare with that language in mind. Sometimes difficult decisions need to be made about which languages take priority over others – a process that should be addressed in the family language planning process.

Once you have chosen your childcare, there are two other issues that may arise. The question of “proficient speaker” is one of these. I encounter many families who have chosen in-home care for their children, often in the form of live-in au pairs or nannies. Frequently, these caregivers are not native English speakers (or Dutch) but come from other parts of the world. Many parents worry that their children hearing “substandard” language input will be affected by it. For the most part, I encourage parents not to worry – as long as the children are getting ample correct input (from parents, schools etc) there shouldn’t be an issue, beyond some minor and easily rectified items.

However, a secondary concern is “What language is your childminder actually speaking with your children?” I know from experience that all too frequently, childminders use the language that is easiest, rather than the language the parents want them to use. This is especially common in cases where parents put their children into daycare/creche in the majority language, aiming to have their children become fluent. The strength of the Dutch in learning English often becomes a drawback here – in an attempt to be “nice” or to help the children understand better, many childcare workers here will talk to non-Dutch speaking children in English. While their aims may be noble, in fact they are undermining the language acquisition process, by not maximizing language input in the target language. I’m sure this happens elsewhere in the world as well, and it leads me to my title of today – talking to childminders about bilingualism.

If you childminder is a part of your language plan for your children (and they should be!) then you need to have an on-going discussion about your language goals for your children, and the part the nanny/creche etc plays in those goals. Generally speaking, if you include childminders in your plans, and explain to them their important roles, they will be more likely to be consistent in their language use, and therefore your children will get better input in the target language.

So this week’s task is to talk to your childminder about bilingualism – considering how many childminders I know who are bilingual themselves, it’s bound to be an interesting discussion!

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