Blogshare: Teaching Children to Read and Write in More Than One Orthography: Tips for Parent

Multilingual Living blog recently posted an article called: Teaching Children to Read and Write in More than One Orthography: Tips for Parents.  It's an excellent, academic yet practical article.  I'll probably continue to refer to the post and the author for more information about multi-lingual development, but I'm taking away 3 points for now:

1.     Our child can learn the Korean alphabet at the same time as the English alphabet..."There are no rules with regard to how many writing systems a child can learn at once.  Human learning capacity is highly adaptable. In general, children certainly have the capacity to learn more than one writing system..."

2.     There's lots more to think about..."practically you may want to mull over several factors that will affect your children’s multiliteracy progress: For example, your own literacy competence, your availability, your support, and your children’s developmental characteristics."

3.     Come up with a plan and revise as necessary..."All in all, some sort of planning and decision need to be made before you begin your home literacy teaching. The experiences of many parents suggest that the crucial step in teaching heritage literacy successfully at home is that you have to have a plan in place before you start, although you can change or modify your plan any time if it does not work.”

Reading articles like this get me excited, because it leads me to believe, “by golly, maybe we CAN be somewhat successful in developing some fluency in our children in multiple languages besides English!” 

The plan for now is that I continue to develop my own literacy and fluency in Korean (reading children’s books, increasing my vocabulary, practicing conversational Korean, studying grammar, and gaining confidence).  So, when baby comes, I can try to speak 100% Korean and begin teaching the Korean writing system.  Since Husband and I speak English to each other and English is all around us, it will come naturally.  Immersing our children in Korean will require intentional and planned efforts, which starts now…before baby comes.