Not many people here in the UK know that I studied to become a language teacher. I used to teach English at a grammar school in the Czech Republic. Then when I lived in Sydney, I also taught many foreigners. I am a qualified ESL teacher, and even daddy when I met him had no idea what that meant. ESL stands for “English as a second language”. When we returned to London, I was teaching ESL at a college in the city, but then I was pregnant with Isabelle, and that’s when I gave up my teaching. I don’t know if I was a good teacher, but I really enjoyed teaching English to my students, and had loads of fun doing so. I loved watching them learning and being able to communicate in a language that wasn’t their mother tongue.
When Isabelle was born, I decided I would be making sure she speaks Czech fluently, and can proudly tell you that she can. She speaks without any accent. Lately I have realised she makes a few mistakes as she thinks in English and translates into Czech, at least that’s what I think is happening. When we spend her summer holidays in the Czech Republic every year, I can see a massive improvement, and by the time we fly back to London she speaks it so well that you wouldn’t be able to tell her first language was English and not Czech.
Being a language teacher means when I do some homework with her, I use methods I was using when teaching other children. I think it is especially handy now, when she is trying to improve her reading and writing. When she started reading phonetically, I knew exactly what to do, and had to explain daddy what it was all about. That was ages ago, but I am sure that is has helped.
I love watching her being able to read more and more words, and write too. Sometimes she gets frustrated when she thinks she wrote something correctly, and I tell her that is isn’t correct. That is as new words she doesn’t know she writes phonetically. She tries hard, and is improving a lot every day!
Yesterday Isabelle was teaching my mum some English phrases when we were on Skype. I went upstairs to put Olivia to bed, and as I was walking down the stairs I heard her explaining to her nan what she wanted her to say. Then she had to repeat it again and again. I had to laugh as I saw a bit of me in her technique…. you never know; maybe one day she will become a language teacher too!
January 26, 2013 at 5:10 pm
Aww that’s so cute. She might really follow in your footsteps x
January 28, 2013 at 1:31 pm
We will see, the only problem is that it isn’t a well-paid job… but if she would like to do so, I would be supporting her of course!
January 26, 2013 at 6:05 pm
I love the intelligence of children, and the adaptability of children that grow up in multilingual families, the fact they learn them both without batting an eye lid as it is just second nature. Some children round here struggle to speak one when they start school.
January 28, 2013 at 1:33 pm
I think it is the problem with English being so widely spoken around the whole world…you just don’t have to learn it, no pressure on you as most people can speak English.
January 27, 2013 at 11:26 pm
Hi Mirka, I am curious if Isabelle does not get ‘lazy’ with speaking Czech when she is away from Czech Rep for a longer period of time… This is what happens to my daughter and I get really frustrated when she speaks to me half of the sentence in English and half in Polish… She goes to Polish Saturday school, really happy to see her learning to read and write and it goes really well. But when it comes to speaking to me or her friend who is also bilingual, her brain (and her friend’s too) gets really lazy and forgets sometimes basic words… How do you make sure Isabelle uses Czech with the whole range of words, as in English? Funny thing is, when we go to Poland or if my parents/family comes here, she makes a lot of effort to speak only Polish and reminds herself the words, however lately even my mum noticed that speaking Polish takes her a lot of effort.
January 28, 2013 at 1:43 pm
Hi Kate, I know what you mean. I have to be honest and admit we have a few words we all say only in Czech, even daddy who isn’t Czech, and unfortunatelly me as well as Isabelle sometimes use English words when speaking Czech too. On the other hand, i have recently realised that it is happening in Czech language, on Czech TV, like ” to book” something, “to check in”, and adding the Czech endings…I think that is bad, but also agree that is the influenze of English on my first language, and how the language is developing. Young people would understand all these expressions, but my parents wouldn’t. back back to your question. I try most of the time whne I am with my girls to speak only Czech to them, and only when we are in a company with people who don’t speak Czech, then I speak English to them. I hope that helps and thanks for your comment.