ofelixculpa
New member
I teach English in Budapest, Hungary. In the mornings, I'm in a public kindergarten with 3-4 year olds. We recently had parent-teacher meetings and reported to the parents on students' English progress since the start of the year. Some of these kids have a native English-speaking parent at home; some have parents who speak a bit for work or whatever, and others don't get any English exposure outside of school. Obviously, the kids with the native English parent are the highest level; kids who have one parent who speaks English at home are really all across the board, depending on if the language actually gets used or not at home; and the kids who get no English outside of the program are the absolute beginners.
One of my best speakers is a little 4-year-old who we'll call Mark. Mark speaks English with virtually no accent—actually, that's not entirely true: he has a teensy bit of a U.S. southern twang. I didn't really know much about his family before meeting his mom, and when she came in I realized she herself is Hungarian and speaks English quite well, albeit with a Hungarian accent. So I asked her the story: who's the native speaker in the family? (I am genuinely curious to hear these success stories since I am raising a bilingual child myself, and we're constanty warned that the challenge will be getting her to keep up her English)
She told me, no one! She picked up English when she lived and worked in the UK for 9 years. So I asked her how Mark was learning English? Obviously, he spoke it at a native level before entering kindergarten at age 3. She told me that after living and working abroad, she could see how important English would be for her kids to know, so she decided she would teach it to them. She has two kids, and in the mornings they only speak English; after 3pm they are allowed to speak in Hungarian. Since maternity leave in this country is quite long (2 years usually, some extend to 3), that means that every day for the majority of their waking hours, the kids were learning English from a non-native parent, and both Mark and his older sister became fluent prior to entering kindergarten.
So I had to know where this southern accent came from. I didn't mention it to the mom, just pressed her to see if he had any other influences. She admitted that she does let them watch a lot of Nick Jr., haha. I guess there are enough American influences there that he created some sort of twang!
Just thought it was a really fascinating situation, and that it had worked so well for this family that the kids became completely fluent from a non-native primary caregiver. We hear so often that parents should only speak their native tongue to their kids and in this case for these kids hearing accented British English in no way affected their ability to pick up native-level American speech.
They didn't practice One Parent, One Language; but rather One Time of Day, One Language!
One of my best speakers is a little 4-year-old who we'll call Mark. Mark speaks English with virtually no accent—actually, that's not entirely true: he has a teensy bit of a U.S. southern twang. I didn't really know much about his family before meeting his mom, and when she came in I realized she herself is Hungarian and speaks English quite well, albeit with a Hungarian accent. So I asked her the story: who's the native speaker in the family? (I am genuinely curious to hear these success stories since I am raising a bilingual child myself, and we're constanty warned that the challenge will be getting her to keep up her English)
She told me, no one! She picked up English when she lived and worked in the UK for 9 years. So I asked her how Mark was learning English? Obviously, he spoke it at a native level before entering kindergarten at age 3. She told me that after living and working abroad, she could see how important English would be for her kids to know, so she decided she would teach it to them. She has two kids, and in the mornings they only speak English; after 3pm they are allowed to speak in Hungarian. Since maternity leave in this country is quite long (2 years usually, some extend to 3), that means that every day for the majority of their waking hours, the kids were learning English from a non-native parent, and both Mark and his older sister became fluent prior to entering kindergarten.
So I had to know where this southern accent came from. I didn't mention it to the mom, just pressed her to see if he had any other influences. She admitted that she does let them watch a lot of Nick Jr., haha. I guess there are enough American influences there that he created some sort of twang!
Just thought it was a really fascinating situation, and that it had worked so well for this family that the kids became completely fluent from a non-native primary caregiver. We hear so often that parents should only speak their native tongue to their kids and in this case for these kids hearing accented British English in no way affected their ability to pick up native-level American speech.
They didn't practice One Parent, One Language; but rather One Time of Day, One Language!