I'm not sure what the 'best' strategy is, but here are our rules:
- I speak only English to my son.
- My girlfriend speaks only Czech to my son.
- No exceptions. It's actually got to the point where he gets angry if Jana speaks English or I speak Czech.
- If I am around my girlfriend and I speak English together.
- My son therefore feels it's natural to communicate in English with me; and natural to communicate in Czech with my girlfriends.
- WE also speak English with native-speaking teachers at school.
- We watch TV and Youtube mostly in English. We live in the Czech Republic so he's surrounded by Czech at school and with his extended family and friends and so on. I know it sounds bad, but TV actually teaches young kids grammatical structures and idiomatic speech very effectively.
- Therefore we watch TV and youtube exclusively or almost exclusively in English(unless the whole family is watching something.)
- My son doesn't read yet. When he learns, I plan to have him read favorite books in English. It's going to be a chore: Czech is phonetic so it's actually easier to read than English, but I really want him to be able to read.
Beyond that, I don't know. So far he switches very easily between sentences depending on who he's talking to, which is a sight to see!
No comments:
Post a Comment