A small victory!
Mar 11, 2017 11:43:39 GMT 9
Post by Nellie on Mar 11, 2017 11:43:39 GMT 9
My husband and I have been struggling over what to do when our daughter speaks to us in the ML (which is most of the time). We have vaguely tried ignoring her and pretending that we don't understand, which is hard to do because she is not quite 2 1/2 and is only really starting to talk a lot now, and we don't want to discourage her from communicating. We try asking her "what is that in English/French?", and while she responds sometimes, a lot of the time she gets frustrated and just yells "no! I don't want to say it in English/French!" (in the ML). It is obviously tiring for her and I didn't want to put her off her mls at such an early age!
I suddenly realised this morning that I had been focusing on trying to have her use the full range of vocabulary in English, yet had been totally ignoring the fact that she would always say "si" rather than "yes" (or "oui"). It felt as though that was such a small thing that there was no point in pushing it.
But today I realised that maybe if I could get her to say that one little word in English - which doesn't require too much thought from her - maybe she would start to build a relationship with me in English. So starting at breakfast, every time she said "si" I asked her "and what is that in English?" (which as I mentioned above, I do all the time with everything else, but she generally ignores it). Well to my surprise, this time she started to say "yes". By the end of the evening, she was still starting with "si" as a kind of reflex, but would immediately say "yes" when I asked her afterwards to speak in English. And...at bedtime, when she spoke to her papa, quite spontaneously (he had not been insisting in the same way all day), she paused in response to a question of his...and replied "oui"!
This feels like quite a victory, even if it may seem minor! I hope that if we continue in this way, focusing on small uses of the mls as well as the "big ones", she may start to feel more confident and hopefully start using English with me...fingers crossed! I know she understands everything in English so it is really a matter of her remembering the word, wanting to use it and wrapping her mouth around the sounds...
I suddenly realised this morning that I had been focusing on trying to have her use the full range of vocabulary in English, yet had been totally ignoring the fact that she would always say "si" rather than "yes" (or "oui"). It felt as though that was such a small thing that there was no point in pushing it.
But today I realised that maybe if I could get her to say that one little word in English - which doesn't require too much thought from her - maybe she would start to build a relationship with me in English. So starting at breakfast, every time she said "si" I asked her "and what is that in English?" (which as I mentioned above, I do all the time with everything else, but she generally ignores it). Well to my surprise, this time she started to say "yes". By the end of the evening, she was still starting with "si" as a kind of reflex, but would immediately say "yes" when I asked her afterwards to speak in English. And...at bedtime, when she spoke to her papa, quite spontaneously (he had not been insisting in the same way all day), she paused in response to a question of his...and replied "oui"!
This feels like quite a victory, even if it may seem minor! I hope that if we continue in this way, focusing on small uses of the mls as well as the "big ones", she may start to feel more confident and hopefully start using English with me...fingers crossed! I know she understands everything in English so it is really a matter of her remembering the word, wanting to use it and wrapping her mouth around the sounds...
