Long time before my first child spoke his first word, I asked myself: What language should I speak to him in public, when I am surrounded by other people who do not speak my language? Should I switch the languages and speak to my child the community language so everyone understands? There should not be any harm if I do it (right?), since I am bringing up my child trilingual anyway.
However, after giving this matter a thought, I decided to always speak the minority language to my child and this is why:
Are bilinguals or multilinguals any different from monolinguals when it comes to speaking? Well, yes and no. Bilinguals might start speaking somewhat later; however, the latest research totally rejects a clinical language delays in
bilingual or multilingual children as a result of exposure to two or
more languages simultaneously.
Research has shown [...], that
monolingual toddlers learn to distinguish similar-sounding words at
around 17 months old. Professor Fennell has found thatbilingual
infants start to do this at 20 months.
Prof. Fennell doesn't at all believe
the "delay" in sound distinction is a hindrance. Bilingual
babies are simply learning an adaptive strategy because they're
facing a more challenging language environment. That strategy sees
them unconsciously ignore some of the sound cues they receive so that
they can concentrate on matching the word with the object it
represents.
What does it mean for you as a parent?
It means that you should not worry that two or more languages are too much for a child, and that you should focus on how to help your child and ease that task of connecting words with objects. Do not think about it as something not natural and extra work for you. Look at this the same way you look at helping your child keep his balance while he is making his first steps. Come down to your child's level of understanding when you read or talk to him; proving extra explanations. According to the researchers, a 4 month old baby is already learning to connect words with objects. So start early!
Point on the objects while talking about them,and do the same on the pictures in the books, following a story as you read it to
your child. You need to catch new words
and follow on them explaining their meanings. I often use Google to find pictures of words that are not pictured in books we read, or when I'd like to provide some extra explanation and show something in details. Pointing is a powerful tool for creating word-object connection. So make a point to point :) Read also How to read to a baby?
Researchers also found that children have difficulties to
distinguish one languages from another, if the languages you expose
your child to belong to the same rhythm category (such as English and
German (stress-timed), French and Spanish (syllable timed), Japanese and
Tamil (mora-timed)) . Deborah D.K. Ruuskanen, Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Vaasa, Finland, and mother of three bilingual children says:
if there is more than one language in the baby's home environment, then
the baby will be learning first to process and separate the different
languages, before talking begins.
As you probably already experienced yourself, there are natural obstacles in the language learning process. So be ready to face this challenge and simplify the language learning
task for your child by being consistent. Speak only the language you
choose to speak with your child.
If you decided to speak only one language to your child - then do it all the time, without mixing with other languages in direct interactions.
If
you, as one person, decided to speak to your child two or more languages, think of the
best strategy to separate the languages one from another. You could alternate
days or even weeks when languages are spoken to your child, for instance, one day / week Italian only and another day / week - Hungarian. You could also assign a language to a certain activity: bathing, family meals, playgroups ... Think of some possible, appropriate to the child's age sign that you can give to your baby,
to help him to understand what languages you speak and when. It could be a
different color bow in your hair, a scarf, different picture on the wall. Just use your imagination!
You also need to be
consistent with the language you speak to others at front of your child. If you
decided to speak to your spouse other language then to your child,
please make an effort and speak only that language. This brings structure to the language recognition and, hopefully, helps the child to sort out the languages fast.
Nothing dramatic will happen if you mix the languages. There is a number of parents that does it and they have a bilingual or multilingual child afterwards. However, my position on it: if you dedicate your time to your child, why not just take care of the language consistency part as well to speed up and simplify language learning. I found that naming the languages with their proper name helps in the language separation process.
As you see, there are many variables that can affect when your child starts speaking. My children started speaking within the same time frame as monolinguals do. Since my concentration was on speaking Russian language, their first words and sentences were mostly in Russian. Interestingly, both children started speaking full sentences in Italian without usual long practice of words. They simply transferred the knowledge about building the sentences from one language into another by modeling the Italian speakers.
If you are pregnant, you might like to know that it is also beneficial to speak the languages you are going to use with your child during the last trimester. Research shows that infants are able to show preferences to and thus, recognition of the languages they were spoken to during the pregnancy after they were born.
When did your bilingual, trilingual or multilingual child start speaking? What do you think helped or delayed the child's speaking in your particular case? Share your thoughts to help other parents who read this page.
BE AWARE! Your child can have fluid in the middle ear (otitis media) without you noticing it! As it can cause absolutely NO PAIN and your child will not complain. READ MORE HERE: Speech delay due to fluid collection in the middle ear.
Parents these days face many difficult decisions, no matter if their kids speak one language, two languages or three languages. One of them is whether or not teach children to read in an early childhood, before the school's formal education starts. Some parents decide to wait, thinking that kids will otherwise get bored at school, some step in and provide the reading instructions before elementary school thinking that being "prepared" will help children along the way.
Would your family go on a joined multilingual family adventure? Are you afraid that vacation fun will be lost in translation, if you try to share with other families whose children speak a different language? Read on, there is something to think about before you plan the summer vacation.
Who does not like summers? A summer beach vacation is one of the greatest experiences for every member of the family. Parents are more relaxed (if not, getting a drink at the beach bar would really help!) and do not nag the kids. The kids are playing with a sand, water, and do not bother the parents. No one gets bored on the beach! And this is where I am heading to.
Last summer we went on vacation with our English speaking friends.
It is an English and German speaking bilingual family that consists of father,
mother and two cute girls, who are about our Russian-Italian speaking children's age. It was
interesting to watch
how the kids' relationship developed. All children spoke their native languages
at first, but then, after realizing that "the message" does not get through, they started explaining themselves in the
language their friends would understand. Our kids tried to speak English and the friends' kids - Italian. The sign language combined with the native language worked well to fill the language knowledge gaps! They had so much fun playing in water , building sand castles and sharing toys.
The children loved the time they spent together, and now are looking forward to another joined vacation this year.
This kind of multilingual vacation is good because:
- it widens child's horizons. The child learns about other languages and cultures,
- it generates an interest and creates stimulus to learn a new language and to proficient the already acquired ones,
- it develops communication skills.
It is important to make children aware of the existence of other
languages not only by talking about them, but also by bring them in direct
contact with their speakers. It will help kids later at school to realize why they
need to learn all the verb conjugations. Kids always need to be challenged to promote development. In fact our friends' daughter is really eager to learn Italian now. She is only 5 years old and Italian language is already on her to-do list!
If you like beach as a destination for your vacations, another good way to expose you children to other cultures and languages is just by traveling with them to other countries' beaches. For Portuguese you could go to Brazil (easy to access from the Americas) or Portugal, if you are in Europe. For Spanish - beautiful Mexican, Argentinian and Spanish beaches. For English - Florida, California or Hawaii. For German - beach of the Northern and Baltic Sea would do a great job. For French - Cote d'Azur, Bay of Biscay, Tahiti. For Italian - hundreds of beautiful Italian beaches and amazing islands. For Russian - the Baltic and Black seas, for Hebrew - the Red Sea of Israel. For Croatian - Croatia. For Greek - Greece and hundreds of fantastic Islands. For Arabic - Egypt's Read sea, Tunisia or Morocco. There are so many countries with beautiful beaches!
Where have you been with your kids around the world?
Our family already visited beautiful beaches of Italy, France and Portugal. Where should we head next?
The moment you think you figured it all out and your multilingual family found the right balance between the languages for your one and only child, you realize the baby #2 is on the way. And everything you planned so perfectly may go the way you were not expecting! Every parent with 2+ kids would tell you that dealing with two kids is much more complex, it's not really 1+1... So, the main question you never really thought of before: What language would the siblings speak to each other?
Our family, like many other multilingual families, follows a language strategy in which parents speak to each other in a language different from the one they speak to their children. My husband and I communicate with each other in English, I speak Russian to our children, and my husband speaks Italian to them.
In our multilingual family set up children are exposed to English language mostly passively with very little active interaction. I always believed in the power of passive language learning; however, I was still wondering if it can bring any good results. My children are now 4,5 and 2,5 years old, and everyday I see more and more
This is a story of Daria Marmaluk-Hajioannou. She is trilingual and speaks English, Spanish and Quechua, an indigenous language of the Andean region in South America. Her multilingual parents did not speak all three languages to her, but only English. Nevertheless, the multilingual environment she was surrounded by shaped her life in a unique and a beautiful way.
Apparently there is nothing as easy and fun as teaching your child letters using an aromatic Italian mortadella! One evening I was preparing appetizer for kids, I took a big piece of mortadella, the Italian heat-cured meat sausage, and
The 2013 year is behind the shoulders. It was the first year in the life of this blog.
Thank you everyone for joining me! I appreciate your positive feed back!
Even though my children and my ambitions to teach them three languages (Russian, Italian and English) kept me busy, I tried hard and I managed to find time to share my thoughts, ideas and discoveries with you.
I believe reading is essential in teaching a child speaking and developing a rich vocabulary. Guess when did I start reading to my child? You can find the answer in Bilingual child: when to start reading? post and the tips are in How to read to a baby?
How do you call the languages you and your spouse speaks? I believe Naming languages with their proper name also helps children to separate the languages easily and gives a wider view without limiting to only family boundaries.
When my younger child started speaking I was wondering what language she would speak with her brother: What language do multilingual siblings speak to each other? I am so glad that as of today it is still Russian - the minority language and hope it will stay this way for at list one more year.
I welcomed Amalia, a guest on my blog pages with her amazing Life story: A Journey to Multilingualism. If you are bilingual or multilingual from birth and would like to share your story, feel free to contact me via email: trilingualchildren [at] gmail [dot] com.
My children enjoy reading books with me and I am glad that many blog readers found very useful the Russian children's books list . You can also review my kids favorite Russian cartoons and movies at the end of the book list. Some more resources in Russian: Russian winter season kids songs and books review.
As many multicultural families, our family was also challenged with making a decision about how to celebrate Christmas. Before the children were born I did not think about when I should receive and give Christmas presents. I lived so far from my country of origin, from my friends and from the traditions I grew up with, that I simply joined my husband and our friends for December 25th celebration. But then the kids were born and this has change me 180 degrees. I wanted so much to share with them the joy that I lived through year after year in my parents home. I wanted to see my children's smiles as they discover the presents under a Christmas tree, as I did back then. I wanted them be exited to decorate a Christmas tree. I wanted them to look forward to the winter holidays the same way I did. Not only because it was a present time, but because it was the time full of magic!
Before my son's first December has approached I talked to my husband. We discussed our values. I told him what was important for me and he shared what was important for him during the Christmas time and this is how we decided to celebrate our Christmas and New Year.
Since I grew up during the Soviet time, there was no Christmas celebration. Everyone celebrated a New Year. Everything Western world does for Christmas, Russians did and still do for a New Year. There are big family gatherings, dinners, parties, fireworks, carnivals you name it! Everything but there was no church of cause. The Italian traditions are different from what I am used to. One day I will write a post about a Christmas celebration in Italy to give you more insides. ( And here it is! CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS in ITALY ) So we had to compromise and this is what we settled on.
Our international Italian-Russian family starts decorating the house inside and outside in early December. For the moment we do not do the nativity scene, that is called "presepe" in Italian, but a Christmas tree. And we decorate it with ornaments that I picked at the local store and that my parents brought from Russia, my very very old child-safe paper and plastic ornaments that are so dear to me. (The glass ornaments have to wait until the kids are older). Even though the Christmas tree is ready for December 24th, the children can find presents under it only on New Year. They still receive plenty of present from Italian relatives on Christmas day and do not feel excluded. I would not want them to!
We celebrate Christmas Eve within our family by preparing a nice traditional dinner and join our Panettone and Pandoro. (see a full list of Italian traditional Christmas sweets here). The time we spend in Germany made its imprint on out taste buds. We do not see Christmas table without Lebkuchen and Stollen, the German traditional sweets! This year I plan to include my family tradition and bake some sugar filled "Plushki". Just writing this brings me back to the time I spent with my grandfather preparing the sweets. He actually was our family's great cook!
Italian relatives for lunch on Christmas Day. Christmas sweets list for us does not became exhausted with two Italian traditional sweets:
The New Year celebration is a little party for our family with "Spumante" ( Italian champagne) for the big once and sparkling water for the small. The kids stay up until they feel tired and ready to go to bed on their own will, just to wake up in the morning to tier apart the wrapping paper from the gifts. Big thank you to Russian "Ded Moroz" or Italian Santa for brings presents to us, parents, as well and hanging chocolate mini-Santas all over the tree to make the kids day!
The new year started, but winter holidays celebrations for our family are not over yet. January the 7th is the Russian Orthodox Christmas day, which we also celebrate with a nice meal, even though I never celebrated it as a child. I believe children need to know that other religions do exist, and they can start learning about their differences from this simple thing - different days of celebrating birth of Christ.
Now you have learned how our international family celebrates Christmas and New Year. If your multilingual family is faced similar challenge and have to make a decision, I hope answering the following questions will help you:
What celebrations and rituals are important to you?
What can you do to support your spouse traditions?
When do you give children presents and how would you do it?
What do you need to explain your children about your traditions and possible differences?
I am not a supporter of putting children at front of a TV screen; however, I see a significant benefit in watching movies, cartoons and documentaries in the case of promoting non community language abilities in children. I do limit TV time as much as I can and prefer to snuggle with my kiddos on the couch with a book instead. That said, I see a need that bilingual children / multilingual children have in that special world that cinema gives them. It works as one more minority language point of reference for them, a strong one that should be provided especially when only one parent speaks it.
We set a rule for our children that limits the Italian TV exposure to weekends only. During the week they are allowed to watch programs in the languages they are less exposed to in everyday life, such as English and Russian.
I tried to show the cartoons that follow the interests of my children by acting proactively, as I write in Being proactive in exposing your child to the new vocabulary. I first read a book with my son about first planes and boats and he just loved the vision of the Russian ice breaker "Arktika" crushing the thick ice and polar bears running around that he became really interested in boats. I try to provide as much information as I can to feed his hunger for knowledge. This days we watch cartoons and videos about sea life and pirates.
Turning on the TV gives me a break to run the household errands, but I try not to just leave the children in front of the screen. I find it
important to participate in this activity at least by watching some parts together. My children often call me and ask me to stay to share their excitement
with me. Also watching a program together it gives even
more topics to discuss and, thus, promotes the conversation and the minority
language development.
When my son was 4 month old, his Russian grandmother gave him a lots of books. One of them was "Russian Alphabet for boys", a colorful book with letters and pictures with a rhythm next to each letter. That was the time when I started thinking: Should I teach my son letter sounds or letter names? Thinking that letter names can't really help one to learn reading and can wait a few years, I decided to go for letter-sound correspondence.
Starting with one book, I later added more alphabet books into my son's library. I followed my son's natural interest in learning letters and reading books. By 18 month he could recognize and read all of the letters without a mistake. He looked for Russian letters everywhere: on the labels of water bottles, boxes of cereals... I still remember when at the doctor's office he was scanning an info post for the letters he knew. He was so excited to read them out loud !
I was concerned that my son would get confused with the Italian and Russian alphabet . Some letters look similar, but they sound differently. The labels were written in Italian and I could not say it is Russian. Then I found a way to avoid the confusion. I was saying, "You are right! This Italian letter "p" looks like the Russian letter "r".
These days I try to read some simple words with my son, who is now 4 years old. He reads book's covers, chapter titles, short words. He still likes his wood letter cubes. I periodically use them to make a morning surprise for him. I lay out several words different in length on the breakfast table as my good morning to him. He smiles seeing them and starts reading. I just love this moment!
This summer my son discovered how he could talk and keep things secret from his sister -- through word spelling! We started with some simple and short words such as "sok" which mean "juice" in English. I see the result, my son is eager to spell the words now more then ever before.
If your child has smaller siblings or relatives, you could show him the advantage of spelling words that the others children do not understand. This can motivate him to think more about the way words are build. Look at that special light in the child's eyes, when he discovers the power of spelling. I will never forget that light in my son's eyes!
All the above is of course comes from the Russian language perspective, since I
teach it to my children; however, it could be applied to other languages
as well. My experience shows that looking at the words from the letter sounds perspective and developing phonological awareness skill in your child early in life has its benefits. Only recently I became aware of a methodology, where children with autism and other disabilities are taught letter-sound correspondence before the letter names were introduced to them; thus, a possible confusion is avoided.
If you teach your child Russian: please check the Russian book's list for Letters and Activity books.
How can a person become bilingual, trilingual or multilingual?
This is an amazing story how a little American girl became first bilingual in English and French, then trilingual by adding German. Now she is mastering her fourth and fifth languages: Japanese and Hebrew. This "language spree" started thanks to her parents.
My name is Amalia and I am an Economics doctoral student from the US.
The area where I live is quite international, so I have had the
opportunity to hear many languages here. I spent three years in Germany
and two years in France when I was young, and I have
remained attached to those cultures. Since I haven't been able to
travel a lot recently, I've been trying to learn Japanese by reading
books. I'm reading a very helpful book of short stories where the
translations of most words are written underneath the
text. I'm curious to find out about other people's experiences
teaching their children multiple languages, and I'm looking forward to
reading more about this on this blog.
-
My parents were always interested in foreign languages, and my mother started teaching me French when I was about one year old. She used a lot of music, for example songs by the singer Georges Brassens, and traditional French folk songs. When I was 5 my father took a sabbatical year in Paris and I went to kindergarten there. It was a wonderful and interesting experience. The French kindergarten was very academic -- the teachers treated us like adults in some ways -- but also creative. Children had already learned to read in nursery school, at the age of three or four (maybe that is why so many little French kids wear glasses). We had to write dictees, where the teacher reads a story out loud and you have to write it down, getting points for using the right spelling. But we also did a lot of art and played games.
After a year in the US my family moved to Bonn, at the time the capital of West Germany, for two years. Since my parents only knew a little German they couldn't teach it to me before going there. I had a few lessons with a German exchange student but still understood almost nothing when we came to Germany. The first week we were there, my mom took me to a pony-riding camp, where I spent a few days just listening to the other children, and gradually I could pick out some words. Since we were playing games, it was easy to figure out what they were saying from the context. I remember how exciting it was when the meaning of a new word became clear. When school started, my German was still broken but I could communicate a little bit. The school I went to had many immigrant students and everyone was used to welcoming those who didn't know German. My classmates were not surprised to meet someone who didn't know their language and in fact were very curious and accepting of newcomers. After school I attended an intensive German class, offered by the school for free, with some other foreign children. By the first month or so I was pretty fluent. Because we had a very inspiring teacher I became interested in learning as much vocabulary as possible and started to read a lot of German books.
When we returned to the US, I had a German accent in English and made mistakes in English grammar, though these quickly went away. Even though I always spoke English with my parents in Germany, I was so integrated into German life that I kept a diary and thought in German. In the US I kept up my German by writing letters to my friends and reading literature. Of course, my German accent became worse over time and the grammar didn't come as naturally to me -- now I have to stop and think if I should use the dative or the accusative, or if a word is masculine, feminine or neutral. I haven't kept up with colloquial expressions and would probably sound old-fashioned if I went back now.
Because I had enjoyed learning French and German so much, I wanted to continue to learn other languages as I got older. I studied Japanese with a private tutor and spent a year in a Hebrew day school. Learning languages without being immersed in them has required much more work and concentration. As an adult studying a language in a class, I have to use mnemonics to remember new words and have to consciously figure out grammatical structure. It is a more intellectual process. I would like to spend more time in these countries in order to get a better feeling for the subtle nuances of the languages.
In many situations I have found it helpful to be multilingual. Having an understanding of how expressions can vary across languages has helped me communicate better in English with foreigners here in the US. I can usually get their meaning, even when they use a colorful metaphor that exists only in their mother tongue. When traveling, I think it is important to make an effort to speak at least a few words in the local language, and learning languages at an early age has probably made it easier for me to do this. And it is fun when you have several languages in common with someone and can switch back and forth depending on which language you think best expresses what you want to say.
---- Please contact me, if you are interested to
participate in the Life Story series and write about your experience as a
bilingual or multilingual child and/or a parent.
A friend of mine, who is an avid traveler, asked me after visiting another country were people speak a language he could not understand: "How do children feel about hearing a foreign language? Can they understand that it is a different language they hear?"
According to the University of British Columbia psychologist Janet Werker, bilingual infants (infants, who were raised in households where two languages were spoken), were able to distinguish foreign languages one from another though facial cues, even before anybody spoke those languages to them. Monolinguals also have the ability to distinguish two languages; however, it does not last long, only until they are 6 month old.
Patricia Kuhl, Professor of Speech & Hearing Sciences at Washington University, says in her talk "The linguistic genius of babies" on TED,
that "babies all over the world can discriminate all sounds of all
languagesno matter of what country they were testing and what language
were using."
However, "by the end of the first year, the infant brain is no longer universally prepared for all languages, but instead primed to acquire the language(s) to which the infant has been exposed", Patricia Kuhl and Maritza Rivera-Gaxiola write in the paper Neural Substrates of Language Acquisition published in The Annual Review of Neuroscience 2008.
According to Werker, Canada Research Chair in Psychology and director of UBC's Infant Studies Centre, "The task of language separation is something they (children) are prepared to do from birth – with bilinguals increasingly adept over time."
As parents we should not worry about our newborn children learning multiple languages. They are prepared for this task, which is often not easy for adults. The children's brain works different than ours, and they do not feel overwhelmed as we do. We should not be afraid to start teaching them languages.
I was working on the computer when my daughter came with her wood animals in hands and sat on my laps.
We started playing with her toys saying what they are doing and where they are going to, and suddenly I picked a piece of paper and a marker that my son left before and started drawing with my daughter.
I made a blue river with green fields for her cow, a barn for her pink pig, dirt for them to have a bath. We went wild! I was drawing and we were making up the stories about what her toys do and where they are going.
Just by chance I discover a simple game that is so beneficial to the language development. You mix material objects (the toys), art and your imagination! This makes the game so special and fun.
Just a couple of days ago I read a very interesting opinion published on the opinion pages of NY Times with a title: No English! A mother, who is an English teacher at an university in Madrid, tells her story of trying to raise her son bilingual. The things did not go smooth for her and now she stopped speaking English to her son and switched to Spanish.
The are
two ways of seeing this article. One: it is a story about a failure to teach a
child the second language, and the other: it is a story about stress
free joyful communication with your child. Yes! Stress free as to
raise your child to be bilingual or multilingual is a lot of work for
the parents. The parents need to be ready for this task right from
the day the child is born and keep working with the child by speaking,
reading, developing his language skills even when they would like to
have time just for themselves.
It is good if one can hire someone to
help with either household or raising the children or even both, but
if one can not... All the strain falls on the parent. He or she
needs to be a good language model to the child, good housekeeper,
good spouse. Plus there is a constant pressure from the community,
possible lack of friends.
We should not judge the mother for not
continuing with the task of raising her son bilingual. She wants to
be happy and live the life together with her son and not seeing him
as one of her students. The true is, at list in my case, I am almost
like a teacher with my children. I would love to take a break, but for me it is like a new project at work. I enjoy it and would like to succeed, so I do as much as I can.
Everyone needs to have a goal and a reason why to teach the child your mother tongue and that should keep you motivated.
I speak four languages myself. Only one was given to me as a "present" from the parents and the other three I have been learning myself for the last 14 years. Sadly, I do not speak the language I was taught at school; otherwise, it would be the fifth. Learning a language later in life is not an easy task and requires time, which often we do not have.
I know
what it means watching movies and readying books in the original language.
All the languages are so particular and transfer different feelings in
some special way. There are so many Russian poets and writes whose
books I would like my children to be able to enjoy. The richness of epithets, metaphors, comparison in the Russian language works even in children's books is amazing. I would like my children to open this wonderful world and have different visions. I teach them Russian keeping that in mind.
You are abroad and talking to your friends in your mother tongue. The first thing you realize is that the way you just constructed the sentence can not possibly fit the word you just intended to use in your language. Ideally you should rephrase everything again, but you just replace the mother tongue word with the English one or another one from some other language that you both know. Everyone understands, no sweat.
This situation and code switching in general cause no problem until you need to either work using your mother tongue, or teach your child to speak your language and that language is a minority one.
When my son started saying his first words, I remember I asked myself: Should I correct my child speaking? It is probably a typical question of all the parents who either they raise a monolingual, bilingual or multilingual child.
My answer now is Yes! Definitely and especially if you are the ONLY language model for your child.
If you correct your child speaking from the time he pronounces his first words he will accept it as a norm. If you wait too long and start correcting him too late, the child might feel self - conscious about talking.
When my son started speaking I was repeating the first the words after him, articulating the way they should be pronounced. Later I was modeling the correct sentences.
Most of the time I just use the correct words in my question or in reply by saying "Oh! it is true. ... " , using the correct sentence instead of dots. When no hidden ways of corrections are possible -- however, it is important to correct --
I just say "You should say: ....". I use the direct correction sparely and prefer to use the indirect ways instead.
It is clear that children can not pronounce all the words and build the
sentences correctly right away. It is important to remember not to over correct them. By the age of 5, independently on the language they speak, the
pronunciation should in most cases be fully established. I still
have one year ahead of me to help my child to master his.
There are two very important rules when you correct somebody (a baby or an adult):
whatever you do, never repeat the incorrect word, phrase or sentence. Just say the correct way right away. Modeling the correct sentences works best.
And do not interrupt a speaking person in the middle of the sentence. The interruption can have adverse affect on child's talking. It is important to maintain his words flow.
I find it good to be proactive in introducing vocabulary to my already bilingual children.
If you see your child is playing, let's say, with boats, try to provide the needed vocabulary in the language you are exposing your child to. Play, talk, read books about boats, show cartoons and documentaries on the topic. He will absorb the words faster as he uses them in his games over and over again.
It is always better that your child learns new words in the minority language before they will be introduced in the country language. Thus, your child will use them at the back of his mind even when he is immersed in the majority language environment (kindergarten).
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