Search form

menu menu

Multi lingual child - how to keep up French

Question

My son is 3.5 now and spend his first 3 years at a FR speaking crèche in BXL. In September he started at a Flemish local school as this is one of his home languages (other is Spanish). While his Dutch and Spanish are improving, I would really like to keep the FR also ´alive´. He therefore goes to FR sports classes once a week. However, the teacher there says she feels he doesn´t understand all the instructions. How can I help him? I can of course read books to him in FR but worry that as a non-native speaker, I will do more harm than good (My FR is reasonable/ok, but not at native spaker level). At school FR classes will only start when he is 7. Any advice is welcome!

I

Add some more activities in French, once a week is not very many hours. If you're in Brussels, for sure most of the class will be French speaking, so invite the class around! Do insist that any French classes are actually in French too, ask the teacher not to change language into say Dutch, if your child is there specifically for French.

Dec 17, 2012 10:44