Language is the best example of societal nature of human beings: one is unlikely to learn a language unless he/she perceives it at least once. It is really amazing to study how a child starts speaking when not only articulation is changing but also a learner acquires cultural aspects of a language. Since parents are usually the first speaking environment for a child, it is reasonable to describe the influence of their speaking skills on developing child’s literacy in order to determine fields for further research.
It is not a secret that the first method of acquiring a language is imitation. This means that children simply repeat all those sound they hear. Therefore, children tend to change word forms adopting them to their articulation. Speaking the language of parents, children can even learn two languages. This language acquisition method is called “one parent, one language”.
However, as soon as parents realize that their children need more help in developing language skills, they invite external speakers including babysitters, grandparents, or tutors. The reasons for that can vary: to ensure children’s prosperous future, to load brain activity, or to make them speak language(s) they want(ed) to learn.
But even if parents ask for this help, they still keep being influential for children’s speaking environment creating domains and encouraging (or sometimes discouraging) language learning. As a result, a child differentiates languages spoken to mother and father (referring to “one parent, one language” strategy) or the purpose of speech: one language for informal speech, another - for study, and the third one – for physical activities.
All these examples demonstrate the indispensable role of parents in the process of language acquisition. In this reason, it will be really interesting to me to investigate parents’ beliefs about language learning by their children. This study will help to explain why parents choose certain language for their children and what kind of means they use.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts about language learning. It is very important topic today in our country. One's knowledge of three languages is one of the common requirements to apply for job positions or education institutions. Interestingly, I went to Russian-medium kindergarten, Kazakh-medium school, and English-medium university. All these decisions were made as a result of the influence of my parents, which I am very grateful for. Being a parent myself, today I often think before I talk to my daughter and try to speak only in Kazakh language. I believe that knowing Kazakh language is essential for our future generation. Fortunately, we have colorful books in Kazakh, cartoons and TV shows, although our country needs to reconsider the quality of these cartoons. I believe that my child needs to be able to think and analyze in Kazakh, read the literature, and write in Kazakh and my role is to guide her and help by showing an example.
ReplyDeleteAinur, at first let me thank you in person for inspiring to write this post ;)
DeleteIt is really great that you realize the importance of language acquisition as a mother and you create multilingual environment for your daughter. And as you say YOU are her example to follow.
Darina, I am a mother of 8-year-old girl and I am proud to say that my child can perfectly speak and understand Kazakh and Russian on the equal level. As she attends the kazakh-medium school, she is able to complete any kind of writing assignments (dictations, compositions and story recitals) correctly without any grammar or orthographical mistakes. She started to learn Russian at the beginning of this academic year (from grade 3) as a compulsory subject. Consequently, she is not as good at writing in Russian as she is at Kazakh, nevertheless she successfully accomplished past 3 terms in Russian and other subjects. I am writing all of these not to make boast of my daughter's achievements, though my daughter is my boast, but to explain the importance of mother tongue in every child's development as a person. Being able to speak two more languages English and Turkish except Kazakh and Russian I do no try to impose my language interests on my child, because I do understand that imposed language policy is usually coercive and unidirectional. Thus, I claim that that study should be provided in mother tongue in primary level in order to develop students’ writing and speaking skills in a proper way. My personal analyses suggest that in terms of trilingual education of Kazakhstan it is necessary to create an educational base for learning foreign languages in Kazakh: to train qualified multilingual teachers, to develop textbooks, quality dictionaries, translated literature, foreign language teachers for Kazakh-medium schools.
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DeleteAssanova, I am really glad to see how responsible you are as a parent in terms of language education! As a result, you have a multilingual daughter who I believe will be interested in even more languages.
DeleteI support your idea about creating an educational base for learning languages. But why to learn them in Kazakh? or was that a slip?
All those steps you listed are really important and I hope we will work on them soon.
Good linking of ideas in this post, Darina. I think the only thing missing is a clear source for all these great ideas. I know that they are general language acquisition concepts, but an academic source would help strengthen your reliability.
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ReplyDeleteDear Darina!
ReplyDeleteThank you for this clear post!
Your ideas and explanations are well delieved!
I also agree that parents take the most influential part in their children' language use, but the society and the environment a child live also plays a huge role. To illustrate that: the home language is not always the language of the country, and children tent to speak the language which is dominant or at least the most spoken
I believe that parents should encourage their children to speak home language as well as societal!
Thank you for sharing you point of view!
Excellent post!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that it will be interesting to consider attitudes of Kazakhstani parents towards the languages. I sometimes ponder over how people’s attitudes will change in, let’s say, 15 or 20 years. Now once can see that many parents give their preference to Kazakh-medium schools, even though they themselves are not perfect speakers of Kazakh. However, there are parents (especially Russophone Kazakhs) who speak predominantly in Russian at home and therefore send their offspring to schools with Russian-medium of instruction. Among reasons they delineate the following: ““the lack of Kazakh language schools nearby, fear of being unable to help a child with school work because of the lack of Kazakh language skills, and a belief that Russian language schools provide better quality education” (Smagulova, 2008, p. 456). In addition, today one can see that English is gaining valuable place in Kazakhstani society. Thus, believing English opens the door to better life, excellent carrier, parents try to make their infants speak English from the early age.
Considering current linguistic situation in Kazakhstan, how do you think our attitudes will change in 15-20 years? What language will you choose, when you have baby?
Darina!
ReplyDeleteWhat a nice post!
Thank your for raising the issue of language which is the most actual topic nowadays, perhaps.
I want to share with my experience. Actually my parents studied at two different schools: Dad - kazakh-medium school, Mum- russian-medium school. When I was 7 years old, there was a big question for them whether let me go to study at russian or kazakh-medium school. After a long discussion, they came to a decision to leave it for myself. Then, 7 years old Aliya went to choose the school that I want ))). I preferred to study at Kazakh-medium class and I am proud of my choice. This is because Kazakh language is the language of tomorrow.
I see a lot of students from school leadership are commenting your hot topic on parents’ impact on learning. This is due to the fact that only SL cohort among other schools speak mainly in Kazakh. We simply follow the rule that Kazakh with Kazakh speaks in Kazakh. I hope that in 10-15 years amount of Russian speaking Kazakhs will decrease or at least understanding about importance of knowing your own language is obligatory for the identity of the country. Foreigners who is coming to work here firstly go to study Russian, because as one professor says “ Who cares about Kazakh language?” I personally feel offended. So let’s build our country in order our children were proud of us.
ReplyDeleteThanŠ» you, Darina!
ReplyDeleteDear colleagues, thanks for your position to preserve our culture, identity for our future generation. I also faced with such challenge Mariyam pointed out that only family may not increase an opportunity to acquire the Kazakh language and society also plays “huge” role.
Let’s continue the campaign Kazakh speaks Kazakh in Kazakh in MA ML and not only)
Let’s provide ourselves with immersion program and start from ourselves, after that we can insert some changes in Kazakhstani policy!
Mariya, Aliya, Assiya, and Marzhan!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your feedback and sharing your experience!
I am really glad you to find out that you are so interested in this topic.
I completely support the idea of preserving Kazakh language but sufficient planning which involves work of a great range of specialists should also be taken into consideration. Kazakh is a very beautiful language and people all over the world should know about it. Therefore, we should do our best to work on language teaching materials so that Kazakhstani people will know minimum two languages (Kazakh and Russian).