There appear to be at least two schools of thought about which language English learners (ELs) should be speaking at home. While some encourage parents of ELs to speak English with their children, Judie Haynes makes a convincing argument for parents speaking their first language at home, even while their children are learning English at school.
Haynes tells the story of Isabel, whose family is from Costa Rica. Isabel’s teacher asked Isabel’s parents to speak English with their daughter at home. Her parents, who are literate in Spanish but speak little English, tried to comply with the teacher’s request by speaking only English at the dinner table. They gave up after a week of stilted and mostly meaningless conversations. This left Isabel feeling ashamed of her first language and wishing her parents spoke English.
Disagreeing with this approach, Haynes suggests that parents of ELs speak their first language with their children to help the children gain literacy in that language. She argues that the more literate children become in their first language, the more tools they’ll have to learn English. “Once students grasp the underlying literacy skills of one language, they can use these same skills to learn another language” she says.
For example, younger children learn that letters represent sounds, that printed words have meaning, and that words can be combined into sentences and paragraphs as they become literate in their native language. Older ELLs who are literate in their first language have already learned the underlying process of reading, scanning, selecting important information, predicting what comes next, and visualizing to increase comprehension. They can transfer those skills directly to learning English.
Haynes’s ideas make a lot of sense to me. When I learned a second language during my secondary school years, I constantly used my knowledge of English language and grammar to make sense of the new language. And even if literacy in their first language didn’t provide children with English-learning tools, I believe that developing literacy in two languages is still a great advantage.
Very interesting; this idea really makes sense to me as well. I see no need for a child to completely abandon their first language and become fluent in one language only (English) when they could very easily become fluent in two languages, giving them all the more advantage as they grow older. They’re going to learn English regardless. I would hope they also will learn their parents’ language as well.
Even more important is the negative effect on family bonds and relationships when children begin to lose the language spoken by their parents and grandparents. Yes, there are benefits to growing up bilingual. And yes, moving too quickly to English can actually hurt a child’s chances for success in school and in life. But, it’s not all about school. Growing up bilingual also helps families stay close and connected and supportive. Who can argue with that?
I’ve been always shocked to find out that certain people whom I know don’t speak with their children in their native tongue at home! To me it’s common sense – if it’s your child, how can you possibly communicate with them in a language that doesn’t come from your heart, so to speak?
It’s funny, but whenever I speak to a small baby, or a dog my natural response is to use my native language. My co-worker had a baby recently and when I spoke to it I wanted to use my language for some reason… The same goes with my boss’s dog – even though I even think English at work I still speak to the dog in my language.
So I think when you speak with your children it has to come from your heart – and here’s where your native language isn’t replaceable!
Insightful comments, Karen and Robby. I can only imagine how difficult it would be for a child to be happy and succeed if the heart-to-heart connection with parents were missing. I speak a second language fairly fluently, but I also have never felt that I could communicate the most important things from the heart except in my native language.