How 9 years of involuntary comprehensible input can have great effect. What started as an experiment ("would it be possible for a Dutch mother like me to just speak Spanish to my kids?) became a habit. My kids don't speak Spanish to me, but I have seen that such an amount of input cannot go without results.
One day, about 9 years ago, I decided to start talking Spanish to my kids. I am a Dutch mother of 3 kids, and a Spanish teacher. My youngest, who was 2 years old at the time, was sitting on my lap waiting for me to sing him some songs. I had just thought of a Spanish variation to a Dutch childrens song, and as I sang it, the little boy enjoyed it just as much as the Dutch version. I doubt he actually knew it was a different language. So I thought: what if I just start to speak Spanish to him? He may hardly notice the difference, and it would be very cool if he grew up bilingual.
The thing is, I had (and have) two more kids. They were 5 and 7 years old at the time, and of course, they had to endure the Spanish language too, every Wednesday from then on. The differences were huge: the 2-year old was as happy as ever. The 7-year old listened carefully, taking into account the context and gestures, and most of the time was able to figure out what I meant. But the poor 5-year old really suffered. She was too young to analize, and too old to just go with the flow. She just didn't understand what I was saying, and kept yelling: "say it in Dutch!" It was heart breaking.
However, the big disadvantage of a mother who is a language geek and thinks she has had a great idea, is that you'll have to endure it. The poor child suffered, and, to be honest, her mother did too.It is 9 years later now. For over 8,5 years I speak Spanish with my kids for 3 days a week. Which is, in the end, not much more than an hour or two per day. But still. The kids don't even notice anymore whether I speak Spanish or Dutch. But they plainly refuse to speak Spanish to me.
Their mother, convinced that it is the CI that does the job, has kept speaking Spanish. And look... one day, I was visiting a university with the oldest, who is 17 now. Suddenly he started to see the fun of being able to speak a language that other people don't understand, and that entire day we've been chatting happily in Spanish. I acted as if it was nothing special, of course (never make a fuss about anything a teenager does), but internally I was jubilant.
The second, who is 15 now, has Spanish classes at school. She always mutters about how she 'doesn't know any Spanish, because I always have to look up every word and I cannot think how to say things in Spanish'. But hear this: last week, she had to write an essay about the discovery of Latin America. She asked me if I please could read it and correct her Spanish. So I did. It was a fine text, four pages long. I had to correct a few verbs, and every once in a while would reformulate part of a sentence to make it sound better (to which my daughter would say: "yes, that sounds better").
I didn't realize at first that I was looking at something awesome. I didn't realize how special this was. Until I came to the part that was written by her fellow student, which was unintelligable because she had written Dutch sentences with Spanish words, and many times even chosen the wrong word for the translation. It wasn't until I saw this huge difference that I realized I was looking at the ultimate proof of the power of comprehensible input.
Yes, of course she had had to look up many words in a dictionary (online, of course - dictionaries are sooooo old fashioned). But a dictionary always has multiple translations. You have to know which translation to choose for your purpose and context. She always chose the right ones, because they SOUNDED right in that context. And then, with these words, she made perfectly Spanish sounding sentences. No sign of Dutch in them! I literally cried with happiness (but of course, I didn't show my tears, because you should never cry over something a teenager does, at least not when she is present).
For me, this is one of the most beautiful examples that support what I always say to my students: TPRS is not a method to learn a language faster. It takes time to acquire a language. It takes time to build vocabulary. But TPRS, or in this case, daily CI, makes students agile in their use of the language. They are able to form good sentences with the few words they know, because they know what 'sounds right'.
I would love to hear more examples, big or small. Have you experienced something like this? Please share with a comment below!
Comments posted on the website where this blogpost was published earlier:
Anny Ewing16 June 2016 at 16:52
I wish I had known you 25 years ago when I wanted to do this with my first child, but felt too inhibited to do so. I could have used a support group! I was fine speaking to Sam in Spanish every night at bed time, until he started speaking English and asked me to please stop 'talking that way'. Foolishly, I did. We both regret it.
Jim Tripp22 March 2017 at 21:46
I'm glad I read this Kirsten. I started with my son when he was an infant and toddler, but when he turned 4 or so, he started asking me to stop and would sometimes get frustrated. I stopped for the most part, or at least using language new to him. (He barely notices when I say something to him that he acquired before he was old enough to know better.) Now that he's almost six, he has been asking me about words and trying to say some things in Spanish. My poor two year old daughter has not gotten nearly as much Spanish input because I backed off for Eben, but reading this will give me new motivation to start speaking to them in Spanish again. Maybe I'll try what you did and shoot for a few days a week only. Congrats on this celebration with your three kids. Very exciting!
Kirstin24 March 2017 at 14:22
Hi Jim, thanks for your comment. I have been at the point of giving up very, very often, and don't know how I managed to continue. Pure stubbornness, I guess, or because of the idea that if I didn't go on, everything I'd done until then would be lost. I hope you'll find a way to make it doable for you and fun for your kids. Maybe just 1 day a week, and make it a 'special day'? Well, you are creative enough to come up with something :-)Let me know how it goes!
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