Young Children - How Long To Learn Spanish?

[Icabod]

Prettejohn,

Do you speak any Spanish? If so, I would hammer them with it at home as well. Right now I think they are waiting out the Span part of the day until the easier (for them) English part starts. The best thing might be a Span only school. However, if that is drastic, they will certainly pick up some of the Span in your current situation. We have a 14 month old and my wife speaks to her in her native language and I do mostly (not fluent) Span, and the nanny only speaks Span. I am hoping she is fluent in Span when we leave.

 

[arlean]

GS_Dirtboy, I LOVE your post about English, Spanish and Portuguese. What fortunate kids. I admire my friends here who speak several languages! My Argentina friend speaks three languages well. Her parents are German/Argentine and in the home they insisted on German. She tells me she hated it because she would come in excited and start telling them in Spanish and her mother would interrupt and say "German, please!" And she would start over i German.

But today those kids speak German as native speakers--as well as Spanish--as well as English. Awesome!

 

[DerAchtundzwanzig]

I don't think my own experience will help as the first time I moved here I was 14 y/o, my native language was French and I already spoke some Spanish. But, as many in these thread have pointed out, going to a bilingual school doesn't help. My parents put me in a bilingual school too and there was a Taiwanese student who was one year younger and came around at the same time. His English was perfect as his family had just lived a few years in the US. Everyone at the school spoke to him in English, and since all the classes were in English he didn't have to worry too much. The result: at the end of the year, he spoke zero Spanish. I don't think I ever heard him say hola.

Moreover, my sisters had a friend who was a Japanese exchange student who had been placed in ORT, a Jewish school in Belgrano that was not bilingual, all the courses were in Spanish and they just had English 2 or 3 hours per week. She spoke zero Spanish when she first came, and just a few words in English (she told my sisters her parents had sent her abroad for sleeping with her high school teacher in Japan, so that probably explains why she didn't even have time to learn the basics). By the end of the year, she was completely fluent in Spanish.

 

[fifs2]

Like most things in life attitude is a key ingredient: if you as parents are making an effort to speak Spanish, put only Spanish TV and radio stations on at home and start inviting Argentinean friends over for Spanish speaking dinners etc a child will see it as a natural evolution to start speaking primarily in Spanish. I followed GS Dirtboy's path and placed the kids in Spanish only kindergartens for the first 4 years as they have English and Swedish at home. I've a friend here whose 14 started an international school with 50 words of Spanish and changed to a Spanish only state school after a year and is excelling in a purely Spanish exam environment. Conversely I know a new arrival in my 9 year old's class who is a child from the local naval base. His parents don't see the value in him learning Spanish as the're here for 2 years and he is having a terrible time integrating. As parents our own attitude and excitement about Spanish as a language makes all the difference to not only their language skills but to maximising the experience in a new country. ..I also agree (with GSDboy - I know - a groupie I am ) that of course kids can learn the same word in multiple languages at the same time. Our 4 yr old knows many words in En, ES, FR and SW and takes great delight in harranging me with the multiple translations any time he can. The downside of having such polyglots for kids is that they correct me and talk down to me at every turn like mini adolescents! Hope this goes well and your children are great speakers. It will come with time..

 

[DRSG]

We also arrived in early February, and my 3 year old daughter was enrolled in a French school after 3 weeks where for the first 6 weeks they were exclusively taught in Spanish. She can now count up to 20 in English, French and Spanish, and knows her colours in all languages, and can identify what mate is. So far she is transitioning better than I am!