Lately the topic of older adopted children learning English has come up in several discussions. Since I've taught English as a Second Language for the past ten years, I thought I'd put in my two cents. Here are my top recommendations for people adopting older children:
- Talking before literacy. Initially your goal should be to build oral vocabulary. Your kid should know what a cat is before learning that c-a-t spells cat. Starting literacy too soon, especially for kids who are not literate in their first language, sends the dangerous message that reading is making noises in response to symbols on a page. Reading is about communicating thoughts - let your kids learn to communicate their thoughts in oral English first, and then apply the skill to reading.
- Watch what you say. Literally. Videotape yourself talking and watch how many false starts, sentence fragments and idiomatic expressions you use. We all do it. You can train yourself to speak in simple, complete sentences. Initially you will be your child's primary source of English input - your goal is to make that input as understandable as possible.
- You probably do this naturally, but use gestures and visual aids to show what you are talking about, and repeat yourself a lot. Narrate what you and your child are doing: "I am getting the juice from the refrigerator, we are going to have juice, here is your juice, here is my juice, enjoy your juice!"
- "Build schema" i.e. go do stuff before you read about it. Go to the park before you read a book about parks. Go to a museum before reading about dinosaurs. Give your kid an experience to which s/he can connect the book.
- Use what your child already knows to make connections to new learning. Books about Ethiopia/rural Africa/farms/cars etc will make it easier for your child to learn English. Not to mention it shows respect for her/his previous experiences before coming to you.
- When you begin teaching your child to read, start with phonetically regular words that name concrete objects and verbs. Start with dog and run, not the and of.
- Know your BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) and CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency). BICS are what your child need to talk to family and friends and to get needs met. CALP is what your child needs to succeed in school. CALP requires more specialized vocabulary, more complex sentence structure and higher-order thinking skills. English language learners exposed to English only at school need 6 months to two years to acquire BICS and 5-7 years to acquire CALP. I haven't seen studies of adopted children, but I assume the process is faster.
- Teach function words as well as content words. Content words are nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Any language has an ever-growing number of them. The easiest to learn will be nouns and verbs because they refer to more obvious objects and actions. Watch out for the huge number of homonyms in English. Function words are a closed class, meaning no new ones ever get added to the language. Interesting, huh? There are and will continue to be only a couple of hundred function words in English. They include prepositions and conjunctions and can be very difficult to learn. The best way to teach them is to point them out as they come up and discuss how they affect the meaning of the sentence. Don't bother drilling them - almost no one can learn them this way.
- Don't assume younger children always learn the language faster. The rate at which your child will acquire English depends on many factors, including their feelings about being in the U.S. The single most reliable predictor of success in learning a second language is success in the first language. If your child did well in school in their native language, they will probably do well in English. The only area where younger (pre-adolescent) children are much more successful is in their accent, and that can be a double-edged sword because people often mistake an American accent for English fluency.
- Advocate for your child at school. Many teachers do not know much about second language learning. Your child should not be getting work designed for younger native English speakers.
- Read to your child. You knew that.
