Exposure to German for my 18-month-old daughter
Sept 4, 2017 1:44:21 GMT 9
Post by Marisa on Sept 4, 2017 1:44:21 GMT 9
Hello all!
Well, I said I'd do it, and now I'm trying! My daughter and I live in the US, and I only speak Spanish to her. It's only she and I at home, so I guess we can say Spanish is the only language spoken at my household.
She goes to an English-speaking daycare, so she gets all her English input from teachers, other parents, and her peers. Now, I truly want her to speak German fluently, so here I am, posting this thread while she listens to children's songs in German!
My concern here is how I can manage to get enough exposure to German so that it becomes her third language. I don't speak it, although I have a basic knowledge, but I don't think I'd be a good "German input" source for her, mainly because I'm focusing on Spanish. I managed to contact a German-speaking person, but she can only meet with us once a week for one-to-one interaction. I think I can also find another German speaker we can meet with, but it'll probably be once or twice a week for an hour. That means that if I wanted to achieve the average "25 hours of exposure to the minority language," we're far behind. So far, I can only do two or three hours of one-to-one interaction with German speakers, and then using YouTube for an hour a day or so. Not ideal, but at least it's something. There aren't community resources around (only the Goethe Institute an hour and half from our house, but they don't have courses for children; the earliest they have is courses for teenagers).
Any thoughts/ideas? I also found out a YouTube channel where they use cartoons to recite children's stories, so that's the closest I can currently get to reading stories in German (I bought the PDFs that go with the stories, so at least I can point at the pages and pretend I'm reading German books to her. Other than that, I'm afraid my linguistic creativity isn't working too well...
Thanks for your help!
Marisa
Well, I said I'd do it, and now I'm trying! My daughter and I live in the US, and I only speak Spanish to her. It's only she and I at home, so I guess we can say Spanish is the only language spoken at my household.
She goes to an English-speaking daycare, so she gets all her English input from teachers, other parents, and her peers. Now, I truly want her to speak German fluently, so here I am, posting this thread while she listens to children's songs in German!My concern here is how I can manage to get enough exposure to German so that it becomes her third language. I don't speak it, although I have a basic knowledge, but I don't think I'd be a good "German input" source for her, mainly because I'm focusing on Spanish. I managed to contact a German-speaking person, but she can only meet with us once a week for one-to-one interaction. I think I can also find another German speaker we can meet with, but it'll probably be once or twice a week for an hour. That means that if I wanted to achieve the average "25 hours of exposure to the minority language," we're far behind. So far, I can only do two or three hours of one-to-one interaction with German speakers, and then using YouTube for an hour a day or so. Not ideal, but at least it's something. There aren't community resources around (only the Goethe Institute an hour and half from our house, but they don't have courses for children; the earliest they have is courses for teenagers).
Any thoughts/ideas? I also found out a YouTube channel where they use cartoons to recite children's stories, so that's the closest I can currently get to reading stories in German (I bought the PDFs that go with the stories, so at least I can point at the pages and pretend I'm reading German books to her.
Other than that, I'm afraid my linguistic creativity isn't working too well...Thanks for your help!
Marisa
But soon when we go back home to Indonesia in half a year or so, German will switch to become the minority language (I'd like to continue exposing her to German although both my husband and I are non-native speakers) and unfortunately my German isn't that great. So thanks for showing me that it still can be done!
