How to teach your child your own language in a multilingual environment:
From our archive
Few days ago I was talking to my friend Nadia, who is a Resource Teacher by Profession and has a background in Early Childhood Education about how to teach my toddler Bangla in a multilingual environment. She gave me some excellent tips and I thought why don’t I ask Nadia to tell us in her own words, so here it goes:
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What language should I speak at home with my child?
It’s a common question I get asked as a teacher. There many things expert will say. I will like to share my experience.
I was born in Bangladesh. At age two we moved to Venezuela. In Venezuela, the primary language spoken is Spanish. English was taught but not until 5th and 6th grades.
When I was four years old we started preschool. I remember going to school and not understanding much but slowly picked up the language (Spanish).
Everyday when dad picked us up from school; in the car will start talking to him in Spanish but he will say in Bangla “I can not understand can you tell me your story in Bangla”, and we did. The same thing happened at home. Mom always spoke to us in Bangla and encouraged us to speak in Bangla. Both of my parents also spoke only in Bangla with each other.
You might think that if you do not teach your child English at home he / she will fall behind in school. The case is that they will not. If you do not speak Bangla at home they will forget or like it happens now, they will understand but not speak the language. My professors in early childhood education say - Bilingualism does not increase or decrease intelligence.
My advice to parents will be to keep speaking Bangla at home. Focus on one language. Children learn what they see and hear. You are your child’s role model. You have to do your part and even if it is hard you have to speak at all times bangla; not only with your child but with your spouse as well.
I am not a parent but i will love to help out parents with questions about children as well as give you my experience as a child growing up outside Bangladesh.
I hope i can be a help to some parents. Looking forward to hear from you.
About the Author:
Nadia Yasmin Huq, works as a Resource teacher in New Jersey, USA. 2007
September 23rd, 2006 at 11:45 am
I too, like Nadia, grew up in a country other than Bangladesh, from a very early age. My family moved to Vienna when I was only eight years old. Upon enrolling me in 2nd grade at an Intl. School, my parents asked my teachers if they should speak to me only in english at home, so that I would not have any trouble picking up and understanding the medium of instruction at school. They were actually surprised when my teachers encouraged them to continue speaking to me only in bangla at home. They said that young children have a much easier time picking up a second language, especially when they are exposed to it everyday at school. However, they said that children often prefer to speak their second language over their mother tongue, especially when it’s not spoken at home on a regular basis.
Now that I am much older, I am glad that my parents spoke to me only in bangla, while I was growing up in Vienna. My fluency in bangla has allowed me to mix and make friends in the Bangladeshi community whereever I have had to live since my days in Vienna. It has also allowed me to learn to love and appreciate my country of origin better. I am proud to be from Bangladesh and to speak bangla, a language that so many had to die for to make the official language of Bangladesh. Now that I am a parent myself, my husband and I have also decided to speak to our son only in bangla, so that he will hopefully also have a deeper understanding and appreciation of his own ethnic background, while growing up here in the U.S.
September 24th, 2006 at 8:55 am
Dear Nadia & Sharmin,
It’s really a wonderful experience to get your views and experience regarding bilingual problem of the preschool children. We live in Canada and I have two children. Sometimes this questions also arises in my mind whether I continue to speak in english at home with or I’ll continuer our own mother tongue Bangla.. It’s really impress me your experience and for GODs sake still we continue Bangla at home and my elder son love to read Bangladeshi story and science fiction book. So hope I am in the right track, thanks again,
Nahid
September 25th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Thanks Shahnaz and Nadia for bringing up the issue. I have seen in many families in USA that children are fluent in speaking Bangla (with slight accent), but they can’t read or write at all.
In Bangladesh, we had to learn English alphabets side by side of Bangla alphabets.
I was wondering, should parents teach the Bangla reading and writing at home?
September 25th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
My child’s doctor says children can pickup multiple languages if they are exposed to them. No need to worry that your child is not talking while kids back home of same age are spaeking fluently. It might take some time when they are learning more than one language.
Teaching Bangla reading and writing should also be done. Its not easy, I don’t yet know how to explain to my 3 yr old the differnce between two E’s in Bangla:). May be it s good idea to provide some resources in this site. Bigger comminuties may arrange sunday bangla school for the kids. Parents has more challanges while rearing child in a foreign land. Its hard but it pays back.
In many cases it requires some respect (from the parents) for our own culture to let our children learn our own language.
September 25th, 2006 at 10:03 pm
Nadia & Sharmin (and anyone else who might be able to answer my question):
What kind of books/resources do you use to teach bangla to your children and where can you get them? Although I can speak bangla, I am weak when it comes to reading and writing it. Would appreciate your input on any websites or other materials that can actually help both my son and I to learn to read and write at the same time. Thanks,
Sharmin
September 26th, 2006 at 11:51 am
Thanks to Nadia and Shahnaz for bringing in such a great topic! It is indeed very important for the parents like us to know how to teach Bangla to our kids. My daughter is 7 and can speak Bangla well. Of course she has accent but it is very understandable. Since her word stock is not that large, she has to think sometimes before saying anything, but she tries. She can read easy words in bangla and can write some of them as well. My child does not have to be able to write stories in bangla but it would be nice if she can write sentences.
We have a weekend school where we (parents volunteer) teach Bangla to kids of all ages in the community. To teach alphabet, we actually created our own handouts. Bangladeshi “Adarsha Lipi” is used as well. Since the text books from Bangladesh (Amar Bangla Boi, etc.) are made for the students who live in the country, they are not the right ones to use here while teaching Bangla as a second language. Therefore, it is very hard to find the right book. That is why we created our own using Banglaword, a user-friendly software that is available on the internet for free download (http://www.banglasoftware.com/banglaword.asp).
Last school year I taught Bangla to the intermediate class (age 10 - 16) who already knew the alphabet but did not know how to read, write and speak (building own sentences correctly). I had to create my own materials for teaching and tried some of the basic grammar. Because these kids were familiar with English grammatical terms, it was a bit easier for them to pick those up in Bangla. Giving them concepts of person, number and parts of speech in bangla helped them understand the structure of bangla sentences. Or course it is hard for kids who’re born here to learn sentence building in Bangla because it goes backwards (order of words) compared to English. I had a student who knew Spanish and she picked it up pretty quick! I have to say that the kids who speak Bangla at home with their parents did better. You need to know how to say it, otherwise how would you know what to read? My students had to give speeches in bangla (on various topics) in front of the class, both prepared speech and impromptu. They were shy at first but over the time they really liked doing that. It improved their speaking and writing as they had to write them down as well.
Authors in Bangladesh are often inconsiderate of the ages of the readers. We brought in many bangla books (mostly story books) from Bangladesh for their leisure reading. However, most of those books use many hard and uncommon words that are very hard to read and understand for these kids. Even some of the topics of bangla books are not so appropriate for young kids. I found some good books, easy for these kids, by BRAC. Aarong has some books that are comparatively easier to read for these kids.
- Ishret
September 28th, 2006 at 8:14 pm
Thanks everyone for your response. I personally do not know how to read or write in bangla. I can only speak fluently.
Growing up, the teacher at my school told my parents to focus on one literacy skill. When we were seven years old we started to go to sunday school for Quran studies and later at home we learned to read and write in english. One thing let to other and we never got to read or write in bangla.
I feel the idea of bangla school is great. Many places like california, texas have bangla school. It would be helpful for children to learn in a school setting with same peers. For those who do not have access to bangla school, you can still teach bangla at home. Introduce letters through songs, rhymes.
I am not sure how it will affect once the child goes to school, but i will do some research on it and let you all know. I will ask experts in the field and see what they say.
I do agree with Sharmin it is a challenge to raise kids in america but we can find a balance and give them the best. As soon as i get some information from the experts i will share them.
I found this website that has children books, please check out there site http://www.onlinebanglabook.com “Online Bangla Book Store is a part of SS International, which is a completely self-reliant group based in Jessore, Bangladesh, Dallas, Texas and Austin, Texas in USA. Our main purpose is to serve our deshis abroad with their demand in bengali book at any time they desire. Along with satisfying your need, we would also like to build a strong bridge between deshis abroad and bangla language.”
Thanks Again
September 29th, 2006 at 7:30 am
How do you expose your child to more than two languages? I am a Bangladeshi, married to an Italian. We live in the USA, and I want my children to learn both Bangla and Italian (next to English).
September 29th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
Saria,
If you speak to them in all those languages (say Bangla and italian in home) that will be a good start. English they will learn from TV and School eventually.
For my 3yr old I always tell her this word is in Bangla, this is in English. Now a days she asks me questions like “what is the Bangla word for this?” She is also learning spanish vocubulary in her pre-school. Sometimes I ask her about the spanish words she learnt that day.
One doctor told me that one of her little patient learnt five languages by the age of five.
Note that when exposed to multiple laguages it will take little longer for them to start talking.
-Sharmin
October 6th, 2006 at 10:00 am
Living in a country where they speak a different language than your mother tongue, speaking to your children in Bangla in absolutely must. Soma parents are afraid that they will not learn the language of the land where they live but trust me soon as they step outside the home, all they will hear is the other language. What I found very helpful and easy but that a lot of people don’t do it is reading to your child in your native language. You can start with children’s books but you can also read other short stories, poems etc. This way they hear more words and hear more expressions (depending on your reading style) than they would otherwise hear.
November 1st, 2006 at 11:41 am
I came to the US at the age of 2 knowing only how to speak Bangla. It was not difficult to learn English; I picked it up quickly from shows on PBS and pre-school but at home my parents always spoke and responded to me in Bangla. In fact they would not respond to my siblings or myself if we spoke to them in English and that is how it still is today. At the age of 5 my parents enrolled me in Bangla gaaner class. Growing up in California we were lucky to be exposed to a large Bengali community where such classes were available. To my parents surprise however, my teacher refused to teach me unless I could read the Bangla script and notation! So I was “homeschooled” in Bangla; since my mother has a background in Bangla literature, my parents especially stressed pronunciation and widening our vocabulary and taught me how to read and write Bangla which in turn helped me to continue my singing classes:) My parent’s persistence and dedication has definitely contributed greatly to all 3 of us siblings learning and speaking our mother tongue. I think it is great that more and more communities have begun Bangla schools; I wish they had them when I was young. This will definitely help in second-generation deshis learning their mother tongue and about the Bengali culture. Young brains have the ability to absorb massive amount of information, including multiple languages and being multilingual is an added benefit to living in a more globalized society so parents and the larger Bengali community should definitely encourage learning the mother tongue.
November 24th, 2006 at 2:33 am
Hello,
Forgive me for asking, but I am desparately looking for a way to become a better user and speaker of Bangla. There seem to be a lot of resources but hard to choose from among them.
As a Bangladeshi, I feel this deep desire to learn the language formally and acquire a deeper understanding and also because I would like to read my mother’s books.
Any reccomendations any one of you can offer will be greatly appreciated!
Cheers!
Rahfat
November 28th, 2006 at 12:45 am
I have a four year old who’s being exposed to Bangla, English and some Spanish since she was 18 months old. Until she was three, I’ve only spoken Bangla to her and strongly encouraged that she speaks Bangla as well. Then, I realized she was more fluent in Bangla than English which was great. But when she started her swimming lessons, she was having difficulties understanding the Instructor. So, I took a different approach… Although most of the time I was speaking Bangla to her, I started speaking English to her as well. Whenever I would teach her some new Bangla word, I would let her know the English word for it and the same goes with sentences. At night time before she went to bed, I was telling her stories in Bangla as well as in English and was having her tell me short stories in Bangla and English as well. This approach has helped my daughter tremendously. She’s been learning Spanish because the Daycare she’s been going to was owned by Colombians and they made sure every kid there learns Spanish. Her pre-K teacher is now teaching her Spanish. Now she wants me to learn Spanish so that we could communicate in Spanish as well (we’ll see about that!). I’ve just started teaching her Bangla and Arabic letters. I look at it this way - when we grew up, we were learning English, Bangla and some Arabic at the same time. So, our kids should be able to do it as well. The bottom line is making this learning process fun for them instead of forcing them.
April 8th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
I came to the U.S. when i was 2 years old. I didn’t know the least bit of English then but soon I caught on. At first, my family lived in Laffyette, Indiana but they chose that the best area for us to grow up in would be a city so we moved to Indianapolis, Indiana. Coming here at a young age made it difficult for me to learn Bangla. I am currently learning it, being only 10 years ol and going to a talented school program called S.T.R.E.C.H. I try hard to progress in all my studies like school-work, Learning Bangla, and most important, learing to read Arabic. Right now I read the Holy Qur’an and with Allah’s (Subhana Wata Aila and Peace be upon him) guidance I will progress. I only wish to please my parents and Allah(peace be upon him).
March 30th, 2008 at 9:53 am
I agree with many of our members. Having grown up outside Bangladesh from an early age, in Thailand…it was helpful that my parents spoke to me in Bangla at home. While I regretfully do not read and write Bangla, I am happy to say I fluently speak it and that has definitely helped me socialize and assimilate better along the way in the wider Bangladeshi community as an adult. I remember how quickly I picked up English going to the International school and Thai just from socializing with the local people. I currently reside in a bilingual part of Canada where the job market gives preference to those who speak English/French and it annoys me to no end when these mainstream folks advise me to ‘just consider taking French training”. Learning a language in adulthood, while feasible, is considerably tougher and quite a bit of a challenge compared to when we absorb like sponges as kids - based on my first hand experience surrounding the language issue. In Canada, bilingualism has become synonymous with simply French/English and I find it ridiculous. While learning French may help in my career path here, I would much rather invest my time and energy learning beautiful Bangla even at this age and stage