Teaching Reading in More Than One Language
I recently received an interesting question from a parent in Malaysia. She said, "My daughter is expected to learn three languages in school: English, Chinese and Malay. This is not a choice but mandatory. Please advise me on how should I approach this problem. Is it more advisable to stress one language first and then help her acquire the other languages at a later stage..."
In the United States, of course, schools with trilingual demands are rarely, if ever, to be found. Nevertheless, in our nation with its huge numbers of immigrants, bilingual situations are common. This leads many parents to confront choices that are similar, albeit less intense, than the mother in Malaysia. So a key question is "How to approach literacy when more than one language is involved?"
Fortunately, the outlook for this sort of learning is bright. Young children have an amazing propensity for learning language. The expression "they soak it up like sponges" really fits. So if there are no learning issues involved, it is generally not difficult for a child to simultaneously learn two or more languages. Indeed, such children often end up with a more sophisticated understanding of language in general.
It can be helpful if the languages are not intermixed in the same setting (e.g., not saying a sentence in one language and the next one in another). Taking this idea a bit further, some parents find that it is useful if one of them consistently uses one language with their child, while the other uses the second language.
in this type of situation, literacy is often a great help. As the child literally begins to "see" rather than just hear language, various components stand out more sharply. For example, sometimes second language learners find it difficult to discriminate particular sounds in the less dominant language (e.g., "ball, bowl"). Seeing these words in print allows the ambiguity to be resolved.
In trying to determining the sequencing of the two language, a number of factors of course have to be considered. If the second language is one of the European languages that share the same alphabet as English, then the teaching is somewhat easier and the two can be started simultaneously. If, as with Asian languages, the writing systems are markedly different from English, then it might be best to get one script securely established before starting the next.
But overall multilingual literacy is a wonderful, achievable goal. And in this day of globalization, we would be doing great things for our children if we adopted the model used by Malaysia and prepared them to deal effortlessly and fluently in more than one language.
