Bangkok Podcast 16: Thai Language 4: Raising Bilingual Children
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Show Notes:
In our continuing Thai language series, we talk to ‘Thai Language Jedi’ Rikker Dockum about the complexities of raising a bilingual child.
In this episode Rikker elightens us on what it’s like to raise a child in a bilingual country and household. Seeing that Tony and Greg have exactly 0 children each, Rikker – as a father of two – is much more qualified to tell us about what teaching methods work best, how a child percieves language, and the fears that any parent has when trying to teach their child the skills that will help them in life.
Greg also vents about an injustice toward a Thai garbage collector, and Tony talks about his video project with Prae ‘Fluke’ Sunantaraks (who you may remember as our first guest), which may see them chosen to attend the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.
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We’re in Tony and Greg’s shoes in that we also are yet to have children. But, when moving to Thailand a bit more than a year ago, we were joined by a Swedish family who’s children spoke exactly zero English and zero Thai. Over the course of our 6 months together we were all amazed at how much the kids were able to learn of both languages while also learning to speak more and more of their Swedish, native tongue. The key? They played with kids.
Kids playing together need to communicate to play. They are forced to learn in order to play and get to know each other. Now a year later, they came over for a meal at our new home here in Bangkok and these kids were running around yelling English, Swedish and Thai depending on how they felt. I was amazed. So, my thoughts without having children myself? Get them playing with other kids who natively speak the language you want them to pick up…
Another great Podcast guys!
Brook´s recent blog post … Foto Friday- meet the Lazy Photographer
I totally agree about children playing together. I do Japanese/English language exchange and I’m always amazed at how fast my student’s children learn just by playing with other kids. In many ways I think they learn more than what is taught in school