Hi, mildly worried father in Korea
Aug 19, 2018 22:45:20 GMT 9
Post by Dominic on Aug 19, 2018 22:45:20 GMT 9
I stumbled across this site today, and have read a few articles. I am a father to a precocious 16-month-old daughter. My wife is Korean, and we use English as the home language. My wife is not a native English speaker, but she has become near fluent through dedicated study. Our house language is English (due to my weak Korean skills).
Since birth we have more or less spoken to our child in English, but as the outside world is Korean, and she is the only grandchild her (Korean) grandparents have, they want to spend a lot of time with her. What is more, there isn't a lot of educational TV here that isn't in Korean.
She is 16 months old, but already we can hear words in her babble, unfortunately, they are mostly Korean. She can understand and follow English commands and instructions: pick it up, come here, give it to mummy etc, but doesn't reproduce.
From 9 months old, we started using Makaton (basic sign language) to aid communication, and this (after a few months) worked well. She was able to communicate in a basic fashion: "more" "thank you" "dirty" "finished" etc. These were taught using English, and were produced by her when prompted in English. I am worried that she is thinking that non-verbal communication will suffice when it comes to communicating with me.
She refers to me in Korean "Abba" rather than "Daddy", and no matter how many times I respond with "Daddy", she refuses to say it. She greets in Korean, although we have successfully taught her to say "Bye-bye" rather than "Anyeong" when parting.
From early on, I have read to her, and discussed the pictures in the books; she can point to various animals in some books when asked about the details. I have also recently started to watch British TV shows with her, mostly without talking so that she can hear the characters speak, and try and get some context, but even the most basic shows seem a bit advanced.
I try and talk to her whenever we are together, be it at home or out in public. I am slightly worried that I may either overwhelm her, bore her, or piss her off with my incessant chatting and questions: "What's this?" "What is it?" "Who is it?" "Where is it?". I simply want to offer an environment so full of English that she has no choice but to find a need for it.
I would love to know if anyone has any ideas for strategies to make this as fun as possible. We live in a small apartment on the 9th floor of a block, so space is a bit of an issue.