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Raising Multilingual Children – A Blog Hop
This was always our plan. From the moment that my husband and I realised that we were destined to stay together, to marry, to raise a family; we had always known that our children would be bilingual. It simply wasn’t an option to do otherwise as our parents do not speak each others’ languages. For our children to be able to communicate with both sides of their extended family, bilingualism was essential. In this week’s bloghop, Tales From Windmill Fields asks How important is language learning for you? Are your children bilingual? Will they be? How do you keep the languages going? My husband is German, I am Scottish and…
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Foreign Language Teaching In Scottish Schools
It was with interest that I read the article in The Scotsman about foreign language teaching in Scottish schools. Throughout the country, Mandarin is becoming more popular than traditionally taught German. Some schools and even school districts will not be offering German lessons at all. This is said to be in response to the growth in political and, more importantly, economic strength of China. The setting up of Confucius Classrooms has boosted interest, as has the feeling that children will need to speak the official Chinese language to get ahead in business life when they are older. I have misgivings about this. When I was in school, we were…
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Parlez vous Français?
Un peu… …is generally my answer to that question. I should speak more than just a little, and if I am honest I do. But it frustrates me that over two years after arriving in Geneva, I am far from fluent. My children are trilingual – English, French, German and are handy as translators occasionally but I don’t always have them with me. It frustrates me that my French is so bad. I have noticed in recent weeks that people seem to think that I understand more than I do – possibly because I smile and nod a lot, and because I get the gist of the conversation so can…
