Lawyer&Mom wrote:Look, I know what I’m doing. This isn’t my first language. I studied German in a university classroom, took all the tests, got good grades and showed up in Germany with huge gaps in my knowledge and fossilized mistakes. I’m not aiming for perfection, but rather can I do at home as good a job as a kid majoring in French? Yes, I think I can. I have the huge advantage of massive input and easy access to excellent resources like CLE, neither of which I had when I was learning German. (Did excellent DAF workbooks exist in 1997? Probably! But they weren’t readily available in California. Amazon changed everything.)
I would absolutely love to be living in a dorm in France right now, taking far more advantage of my immersion opportunities than I did when I was 19 in Germany and saddled with the inhibitions of a teenager. But marriage, mortgage, kids, and global pandemics have a way of getting in the way…
I was hugely conflicted about teaching my kids languages when I wasn’t an expert, and in retrospect I wasted a lot of time because of it. I got hung up on the fact that I couldn’t raise little native speakers. I can’t. But I absolutely can do as good a job as kids learning a second language in a classroom. The huge advantage I have is massive input and consistency. My kids hear solid blocks of native French every single day. We read books every day. We do Paul Noble everyday. That’s what they learn from. Their little conversations with me are just practice, the same shoddy practice they would get speaking with their classmates at school. I would love to get them some real immersion opportunities in the future, but they are doing great right now.
BeaP, thank you for the suggestions of the Oral Production and Writing workbooks. They look more helpful than I had expected. I’ve been barreling through grammar, but I think it would be helpful to circle back and work through those before I move to the next grammar book.
I'm surprised I hadn't noticed this before, but I guess the general theme of the thread didn't grab me, and then I read your posts Lawyer&Mom.
I read in Spanish to my kids regularly. My level of Spanish is A1. My pronunciation is solid however. I read and speak in Dutch to the kids regularly. My level would be B1. My children speak Dutch. I overheard them the other day speaking Dutch on their own outside while I was inside the house. I was thinking how great it is. I know there are gaps as there are gaps in my Dutch, lots of gaps. I speak to the kids in French. My French level is approximately C1. Their French is excellent as far as I know. I know they are missing colloquialisms, idioms, but they do very well and I've had positive feedback from Alliance Française teachers. When my daughter attended she spoke more French than all the other students. One teacher stated she spoke better French than some children with native French parents.
The key is not always about having native speaker parents - a lot can be achieved with solid methodology/-ies. Many a native parent is unsuccessful in transmitting their language to their children despite trying. Being native is not everything in raising your children bi/multilingual.
We criticise poor teaching at schools, wish we had better language teaching methods when we were at school. What's if we had a teacher come home with us? What's if that teacher was really passionate? What's if that teacher wasn't perfect? Oh no! No, don't teach imperfect language!
Okay, to be fair there are valid concerns here, but what's better more of the language or less? Provided it's not absolutely full of errors, more exposure and use is better, whether it's perfect or not. I do read loads to my kids, using phrases, words and idioms that I don't use in my everyday speech. This broadens the exposure, as do podcasts, music, movies, audiobooks and the occasional other French speaker. They are miles ahead of where a student would have been in high school when I was a kid in terms of speaking. My kids would speak better French than most final year students from my day. Should I stop speaking to them and stop reading to them because I'm not a native speaker and there are gaps? Should I draw it right back to a once or twice a week dry grammar lesson so it's more normal like back in my day because I'm not a native speaker?
I also know what I'm doing. Keep up the good work Lawyer&Mom and guys, let's not be so afraid here, it's a joy to share other cultures and languages with our kids even if they grow up to never use them. When you speak French/Russian/German/Korean (your L2/L3 etc) do you speak exactly like a native? Should you stop then because you're imperfect and there are gaps?