How do you teach DC a foreign language?

[Sweetpea972]

I speak Spanish pretty well and would like to expose my 5 and 3 yo DC to it. Not sure what the best way to teach them a language. They laugh at me when I start to speak to them in Spanish and ask me to stop. I'd like to sign them up for classes but they are pretty expensive and only once a week. Not sure how effective that is.
Thanks for your input!!

[Cuckoomamma]

I'd recommend immersing them without their direct consent. We play lots of music that isn't in English, and there's just no way to resist singing along after awhile. :-)

I also do a lot of "accidental" mixing of languages. "Please go shut the X," pretending all along that I don't know that I used a non-English word. Short phrases when we're out are the easiest. "Hold my hand" in the parking lot. Close the door, wait for me, come next to me - things that I say ALL the time. I find it's a lot easier and there's less resistance when we're out running errands. I also mix words in when cooking or reading books, brushing teeth.

The resistance goes in phases. Don't give in! I did and our younger dd knows much less than our older because when she was a baby, the older was resisting speaking in another language.

I also find that allotting certain times (the car, errands) as my time to speak in another language is particularly helpful. I don't share my time management with them, I just do it for myself.

Good luck and hang in there. All my cousins were bilingual but my dad never taught us. I had to go live abroad in order to learn another language well enough to be fluent, despite my AP Spanish :-) It's a wonderful gift that you can share with them, despite their attitude sometimes now.

[Roni]

That's a tough one. I find a class environment to be an easier way to teach them than just speaking it at home. (They love the songs and games and atmosphere of being in a class.) I have periodically taught homeschool or after school classes, and they were able to join in. At one point I taught a little class to kids in my neighborhood, so dd1 got the exposure that way. Yours might be close enough in age to do a little class with them on your own. Exposing them at this age is awesome. They can really pick up the accent. Once a week will give them a basis, especially with the accent, but they will forget everything if they don't keep it up. (Except for songs--they always remember the songs.)

The preferred immersion method is for one parent to speak one language and one to speak the other. But, since Spanish isn't your native language (mine either), it would be forced. My sister has a baby sitter who speaks Spanish to her kids. I think that's so cool. They think it's weird if I speak Spanish to them, though.

There are videos (such as "Muzzy") and computer programs (such as Rosetta Stone) that you can try.

[MontrealMum]

We're going the total immersion route. DH and I are both English speaking and mainly speak that at home, but are both fluent in French. We've sent DS to a French-speaking only daycare since he was a year old. He's doing fairly well after a slow start to speaking due to the immersion.

He does know that he can get away with speaking French to us, MIL, and some of our friends as we all speak both, but that he can't do that with my parents who really only speak English. So he's learning to adapt *how* he says something to different people, though he may not quite know *why* yet.

I've heard that there are more and more Spanish immersion schools in the US. If I lived near one and had the opportunity to send my child there, that would be my first and best choice for promoting Spanish fluency and bilingualism, after considering the one-parent one-language route. Your child's resistance may be because of the later start. If you're persistent with your methods that should go away. But the exposure needs to be consistent, and more than just here and there IME.

[codex57]

Talk to them exclusively in it. If they laugh, continue to do so. Basically, you "force" them to learn. It's why immersion programs work.

If you speak both fluently, it's hard to be consistent and speak to them only in that other language. The only home successes I've really seen are when a family has a grandparent or sitter or something that can only speak that language and can't revert back to English.

The reason my foreign language is much better than my lil sister's is cuz my parents were isolated when I was young and I was around my grandparents a lot more. So, I was forced to only speak that other language for the first few years of my life. By the time my sis came around, I spoke English a lot and my parents had English speaking friends and my grandparents weren't around quite as much.

[bubbaray]

Another vote for immersion. We have done German immersion (preschool) and French immersion (Kindergarten and continuing on to grade 12 graduation, if all goes well). In our experience, it works better if a third party (teacher or nanny or similar) is the immersion speaker and not the parent. I speak (rusty) French and DH is fluent in German. DD#1 didn't respond as well to us speaking and reading to her in our respective languages, but did great in a school setting.

[Roni]

It's so annoying to me that my kids can't start Spanish in school until high school. They have limited exposure to French starting in 5th grade (a six-week long class, I think). So ridiculous. I'm considering homeschooling them for Spanish I while they are in middle school, but they are already so busy w/ extracurriculars, it doesn't seem fair to put that on them.