Help, my children aren’t speaking English!
Why do children say something in their native language even when they know how to say it in English?
The key to answering this question lies in the word KNOW. Do they really know? What does it mean to know how to say something in English?
During circle time, you might ask, “What’s this?” while holding up a flashcard with a picture of a doll. Some children respond in unison: “It’s a doll.” Then you ask each child individually, “Tommy, what’s this? Sara, what’s this?” All the children answer “doll” or “it’s a doll.” You make a mental note: all the children know how to say “doll” and understand what this word means.
Or maybe you’re not fully convinced yet, so you decide to play some games: you say “doll,” and the children have to run and find the picture hanging on the wall along with other toy images; you ask the children to pull an object out of the mystery box and say what it is, and they say “doll”; you play a toy bingo game, and one of the pictures is a doll. Now you’re sure—they all know the word “doll,” and you’ve spent four lessons working on this word (and others like it, since the theme of the month is “toys”).
UNTIL…
But then, when the children are playing and have the chance to, for example, change the doll’s clothes, give it a bath, or feed it, you notice that one of two things happens: either the child speaks totally in their native language or they use the word “doll” within a sentence in their native language.
Let’s first talk about the child who is speaking entirely in their native language. It’s very likely that, if you ask them, they will tell you that the toy is called “doll.” They aren’t speaking their native language because they don’t know the word in English; they are using their native language because they don’t see English as a social language that can be used at that moment—and it’s also highly likely that they don’t have enough proficiency to express themselves in the way they need or want to at that moment. After all, they’ve been practicing “it’s a doll,” and there’s nothing more decontextualized and lacking in communicative function than that!
The child who produces the sentence in their native language and inserts just one word in English is using a strategy some authors interpret as code-mixing, while others might describe this phenomenon as translanguaging.
In any case, it’s clear that the child is “inserting” a word from one language into a linguistic structure in which they are already proficient. Like the previous one, what this child needs is more opportunities to use the language you are teaching in context.
There is a huge gap between producing a word when the teacher prompts it and being able to use that word in a real interaction. To bridge that gap, the teacher needs to understand the stages of language development and the best strategies to help children progress. Want to dive deeper into this content? Click here and explore the online course “Get Bilingual Children Talking”.
