Being A Bilingual Parent

I have been working harder lately at teaching my children Polish.  I'm also hoping that in two years, we can work on Spanish together.

I had been using Polish words here and there before with my kids but I knew it wasn't enough.  Polish school was also not an option.

Trips to the local library never ended with colorful board books in Polish for children, because my library doesn't have it.  And it seems I may actually need to know titles to find such books and request them to be sent to my library.  I think.  That's what it seems, so far.

So, I rolled my mental sleeves up and thought hard. 

What tricks were used to teach me English when I was ESL?   

What tricks was I suggested to do for French when I studied it for six years (which I recall very little of, partly due to a lack of opportunity to use French)?

A Polish friend of mine, Maria (thank you, Maria) reminded me of a game that I remember playing to learn different animal names.  She, herself, had seen a child saying Elephant in Japanese at the zoo one day and still recalls the word. 

The kids walk around a room with the teacher pretending to be the animal, all chanting in a sing-song voice the name of the animal.

So, this week, we are chanting a few animal names while playing in the living room together.

We are getting silly, we are making loud monkey and bird and elephant noises.  We are laughing.

And I'm hoping they remember.

The trick I remember the most about learning English was the ESL teacher resting her hand on my shoulder, looking in my eyes, and saying two words.

"Don't stop." 

I knew those words already in English.  They were some of the first words I had learned from her.

So, whether you are learning a new language yourself as an adult, or teaching your kids. 

Don't stop.  Keep trying. 

Na razie...

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Word(y) Wednesday: We Learned English

I'm sentimental.  I keep objects around me that remind me, give me strength. 

 

My husband says I'm a pack rat.  But I use these items.  They aren't clutter that sit collecting dust, having no value to anyone at all.

 

One of the things I love to collect are books.  I have 4 full sized bookcases filled with books. 

 

Some of the books I have a special place for are the books that remind me of our coming to Amerika.

 

These are the books I remember my parents pouring over at the dining room table, pencil and small notepads in hand.  Copying down words, sounding them out, writing them in sentences, erasing, rewriting. 


Asking me if I knew a word once I was in school. 


Writing and rewriting on small pieces of paper, checkered with blue lines.  The typical paper on which letters were written and mailed back and forth between family in Poland.  Letters that took one month to arrive to the USA, another month for the reply to be delivered in Poland.


My Tato (father) took a few English language classes for free after we came here.  My mother didn't.  Both poured themselves into Amerikan television, repeating sentences.  Reading books borrowed from the library, found at yard sales, anywhere we could get them. 


Stumbling over computer programming books written in English when computers first came out, because my Tato said that it "is the future"-even when others laughed at such a silly idea as computers.


Playing Rolling Stone songs and singing along.  Trying and trying and trying again.


To learn English because we came to Amerika.  We wanted to success, to be able to eat better food than boiled white rice, one extremely cheap piece of chicken or hot dog per person, a can of vegetables split between a family of four.


We wanted a hard earned piece of the Amerikan Dream.  And the Amerikan Dream didn't involve anyone learning Polish for our benefit.  It involved us learning English.  Or else living in poverty forever with no future at all.


I look at those books and remember struggle.  Persistence.  Tears of frustration.  Stumbled words.  Trying and trying again. 


Accents that I didn't hear because to me, they weren't accents.  It's how we spoke. 


I look at those books and I know all we lost and all we gained.


I would look up at Church and read the PNCC motto "With Truth, Work, and Struggle, We Will Succeed" and feel it deep in my heart because I knew it was true. 


I know we are strong.


Na razie...

 

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