Learning Their "Native" Language. My American Kids in ESL.

I've been interested in finding out just how our "German experiment" has effected my children's English language abilities. Since both my husband and I are native English speakers, I still think it's quite interesting that our children are enrolled in the ESL class at school. I am intrigued by the fact that English is their second language. It's not like they haven't been exposed to English. They have been exposed to English since birth. We live in the United States. Everywhere we go, outside the home, everyone is speaking English. All of the adults and teenagers in our home speak exclusively English to each other. So, needless to say, there is LOTS of English spoken around our three youngest children. It's spoken around the dinner table, as we do our chores, as we sit around and talk. But, like I've mentioned before, we (all the adults and teens) speak only German to our 3 little ones. And they speak only German to us and to each other. You would think that with all that English exposure, that they would have a complete grasp of the English language. But interestingly enough, they don't. In fact, up until they started socializing outside the home (age 5), their English was extremely limited. When I spoke to them in English, I often got blank stares. But once they reached the age and maturity where social interactions with friends became important enough, they were finally motivated to actually start learning English. Up until that point, they had no need for English and, thus, they mostly tuned it out. However, now that they see the need for English, they are picking it up very quickly. In school, all three of them are enrolled in ESL class and they are making steady progress.
In the video below, I'm working with Simon on some homework that he brought home from school. I like that some of these exercises actually allow me to gauge the kids' English ability. Sometimes, I start assuming that they know way more than they actually comprehend. It's not until I ask them specific questions, like "What does 'crowded' mean?", that I realize that their English still needs work. I'm glad that they are enrolled in ESL at school. I'm glad that we have them attending public school. And I'm glad that we are now reading way more English books at home. It's all making a difference. But mostly, I'm glad that we have maintained our language boundaries and that German continues to be our home language, I'm thrilled that they are continuing to improve in German.

So, rather than being overly concerned about their lagging English ability, I'm confident that they will pick it up very quickly. They are very motivated to learn and there is no stopping motivated kids!! They can learn anything (and any language) they set their minds to.  

My Kids in ESL

My American Kids in ESL: Improving English without giving up on German

It's always such a funny discussion when I try to explain to people that my kids struggle a little with English. Last year, when Jonathan started school, I had to explain the situation quite a few times. The conversation usually goes a little bit like this:

"So, if my kids don't understand everything you say, it's because they don't speak English very well. They've spoken mostly German since birth." 

"Oh, are you from Germany?"

"No, the kids have never been to Germany. We live here."

"Oh, are you German?" 

"No, I'm American." 

"Oh, is your husband German?" 

"No, he's also American. We're both Americans."

(Here I usually get a pause and a puzzled look, so I quickly just continue)

"We just decided to raise them German speaking...just because. It was sort of an experiment that actually worked."

At this point, I usually get congratulated or applauded for raising bilingual children and there's always several remarks about what a wonderful gift it will be for the kids. And I'm reminded of what a unique situation we've created for our children. 

My older batch of children spoke much better English by the time they entered school than my younger batch. That's because we've been much more consistent in our German with our younger children than we were with the older ones. I consider it a success that we've been able to stick with our German as much as we have. However, the increased German has come at a cost. The cost is that the three younger children's English is lagging behind a bit. I'm sure that it will catch up with their peers in time. My older kids have absolutely no problems with English. In fact, they are quite verbal and are great students. 

Jonathan starts 1st Grade

This year, Jonathan entered first grade and Clarissa and Simon entered Kindergarten. I asked that they all be tested for ESL. And all three of them qualified for ESL instruction. I was actually a little surprised since I thought that their English had been improving quite a bit this past year. And it has been improving. Jonathan's English is better than his younger twin siblings, as should be expected. His year in Kindergarten obviously helped his English. However, the twins' test results showed that they both had quite limited English skills. My little Clarissa, who is naturally much more verbal than her twin brother, tested slightly higher. In fact, her "reading-writing" and "listening" skills were "fluent" and in the 46th percentile. However, her "oral expression" was "limited" and was in the 1st percentile of a national percentile rank. Simon also ranked "fluent" in "listening." However, his "language comprehension" was "very limited." 

Based on a comparison to others of their age, the children tested well below average in their "Broad English Ability-Total. " This is a comprehensive measure of language ability, including language comprehension abilities.

Jonathan tested in the 16th percentile

Clarissa tested in the 21st percentile

Simon tested in the 10th percentile

Part of me got a little concerned when I saw the test results. I worried for a second (but only a second) that maybe we have pushed the German too much. But, when I really thought about it, my gut told me that their English will be just fine. The community language is extremely powerful. It will usually take care of itself just fine. I am not so worried about it that I'm willing to stop speaking German at home. But I'm concerned enough that I have made a few changes. We have substantially increased the amount of time we spend at home reading English books. I blogged about reading in English HERE. Their need to improve their English has also given me second thoughts when it comes to my homeschooling plans. I haven't given up completely on my homeschooling dreams. However, I think I am going to modify my plans a little to make sure that the kids get sufficient English instruction. But, with those modifications in place, we will continue to speak German at home. The kids continue to converse with each in German. 

I'm convinced that we don't need to give up our German in order to have our English. The English will come with time. I'm sure of that. We will help it along by reading English books at home and by going to church and sending the children to public school and by having them in the ESL program. And we will continue all of our German efforts. We will continue to speak only German to the kids at home. We will continue to watch German movies and TV shows (along with English ones). We will continue to teach them to read and write in German. We will continue to have a German speaking home because, in the end, I know that this incredible experiment is worth it. My older children have expressed how grateful they are for the gift of having a second language. I have seen how much it has enriched and blessed our family life. I have seen how speaking German has shaped and defined our family in so many positive ways. And, really, as I consider the ramifications of the ESL test results, what it has really shown me is that our funny language experiment of raising German speaking children has actually worked. We have indeed raised German speaking children. And that is no small thing!

Starting School and ESL (Second Batch of kids)

Starting school has been a little bit different with my second batch of kids than it had been with the first batch, although there are a few similarities.

My little Jonathan is currently in Kindergarten. Just like his oldest brother, Ben, we also put Jonathan into the ESL (English as a Second Language) program. The difference between the older 5 and the younger 3 kids, is that the younger ones have spoken almost exclusively German and their English is not nearly as fluent as the older kids at the same age. The younger ones still communicate with each other in German to this day, where my older kids had switched to English by this age. About a year ago, I was starting to get concerned that Jonathan would just not be ready for Kindergarten. We had already held him back one year, since his birthday is the end of August (right before the cut-off), but we were still concerned that he would really struggle with English in school. I had been observing him in his church Sunday school class and saw that he really didn't participate much. When the Sunday school teacher asked him to do something, he would usually smile and nod whether or not he understood. I also noticed that the other children could tell that he didn't understand everything. They were all very nice to him, they just didn't interact with him as much. The thought crossed my mind about introducing more English at home, but I quickly dismissed that thought. I knew from experience (with my older batch of kids), that once you introduce the majority language (English) at home that there is no going back. I decided that his English exposure needed to come from a source that was outside the home.

So, I enrolled him in a preschool. It was a good experience for him. It was fun to watch his English and his social skills improve. Having two siblings only a year younger than him, he really didn't have much of a need to have lots of play dates. Most of his playing was with his siblings in German. So, in preschool, it was fun to not only see his English improve in leaps and bounds, but to also see his social skills expand. He is naturally a very social and well adjusted little guy, but without being able to communicate in English, he was limited with how much he could interact with friends.

On a side note, let me just add that we did get together with friends during those preschool years (when they were between 3-5 years old). I don't feel like my kids suffered that much by not being able to speak English. They couldn't communicate complex ideas in English, but at that age, they really didn't need to. I was always amazed at their ability to communicate with friends despite their language differences. If you've ever seen kids from different cultures and language backgrounds play together on a playground, you can get a good feel for how my kids interacted with others. They used sign language, laughter, simple words that they had learned and lots of active play. I guess, having been thrown into a foreign language environment myself at age 6, I knew that the social setbacks of not speaking their peers' language would be temporary.

So, back to Jonathan's school situation: Preschool definitely helped Jonathan prepare for Kindergarten. It also put me at ease, because I observed him interacting and playing with multiple children. I saw that, even though he couldn't speak English at the same level as his peers,  he would be able to manage just fine.

Before school started, I talked to Jonathan's teacher and to the ESL teacher. I explained Jonathan's situation. They agreed to have him participate in the ESL program. Everyone at school was very supportive of Jonathan's bilingual situation. The principal just "loved" what we were doing with our children. The first few weeks of school, Jonathan struggled a little to understand everything. His teacher noticed that he sometimes didn't understand what she was asking, but she noticed him taking cues from the other children's actions.

Jonathan was tested just a few weeks into the school year. Here are his results:

I found it interesting, looking at the National Percentile Rank on the right of the chart, that Jonathan scored above average in everything except "Oral Language-Total" (29th % ile) and "Oral Expression" (11th % ile). His reading-writing, broad English ability, applied language proficiency and his language comprehension were all above average. I think this an amazingly accurate reflection of his early language exposure. He was exposed to lots of English growing up. He constantly heard English spoken by the adults and teenagers in his household. He also heard lots of English in the community. He was understanding much more than we gave him credit for. However, he had not been speaking (using) much English, so his ability to produce language was below average, because, of course, he hadn't been producing much English at home...he was only hearing it.

At the time of this post, Jonathan has just started the second half of his Kindergarten year. He tested out of the ESL program in November...meaning that he had already improved so much that he no longer qualified for ESL help. His oral ability is close to that of his peers. He interacts, plays, talks and jokes with his classmates. He still has his cute German accent and still struggles expressing more complex thoughts in English, but his progress has been amazing. I have no doubt that by 2nd grade, his English ability will be indistinguishable from that of his peers.

Starting School and ESL (First Batch of Kids)

I think it's kind of funny, that when I'm filling out all the school registration forms, that I get to put down that my children's first language is German and that their second language is English...and it's true. They each spoke German before they learned English. And I'm pretty proud of that.

Well, when Ben, my oldest, started started Kindergarten, I decided to put him in the ESL (English as a Second Language) program. I didn't really feel that he needed it. He could speak English, although his German was better. By the time he was 5, he was already speaking a lot of English to his siblings. So, he could communicate in English just fine. The biggest reason I wanted him in ESL, was to have his English evaluated. I was just curious about our whole German language experiment and thought it would be nice to get some feedback from an "expert". They evaluated him and kept him in the program for a couple months. He had a couple syntactic, vocab, and pronunciation issues. But they were quickly resolved. A few months into his Kindergarten year, I was informed that they were moving him out of the program because he no longer needed the extra help. I didn't put any of the other older kids into the ESL program. By the time they reached Kindergarten age, their English was better than Ben's had been at the same age, so there was really no justification for putting them into the ESL program.

My 5 older kids did just fine in school, despite English being their second language. If any of them had any issues with school, it was because of problems that were unrelated to their bilingualism--like inattention or difficulty with math concepts, etc. All of them were able to quickly overcome any issues that were related to English being their second language. Their peers and teachers were fascinated by their ability to understand and speak German. Their friends often asked them to talk in German, to which they'd usually reply with something like "Hallo, wie geht's" (Hello, how are you?). I thought that they might sometimes use German with their siblings at school. I especially thought that my twin girls would use German as a private language. It's cool enough to have a twin in your class, but a twin who speaks the same foreign language is even cooler. I was sure that they'd enjoy having their own twin language. But, to my surprise, they almost never communicated in German at school or among friends. They only used English among friends.