Help with English Needed

S23 was in a second language immersion class for kindergarten and first grade, so he learned to read in that language and didn’t read anything in English until second grade. He still struggles a bit with reading. He too is much better at math. He really liked the “Who was…” and “What is…” books. They’re on sale now at amazon. https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_6?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=who+is+books+series+for+kids&sprefix=who+is%2Caps%2C254&crid=SX4Z2OOM9LV7

I second the recommendation to get them involved in extracurriculars where they are interacting with their peers and other adults.

“I just can’t stop blaming myself with their struggles in English. I wish I didn’t accept the offer from my company to move to USA. I did well for myself and my wife but did I cost my children’s future forcing them to live in a country where their parents don’t speak the language very well?”

Oh, please! You did your kids a big favor by making them native English speakers.

"Part of the problem is the town we live in. We live one of the nicest towns of Morris County in New Jersey. The majority of students are Americans and there are very few immigrant families like us. "

It seems you are pretty isolated in your upscale community. You need to befriend local indigenous population and this is mostly done through kid’s activities. Your kids should acquire “American” friends. This is easily done through sports. If they are not into football/baseball then there is soccer and lacrosse. If this does not work try chess and fencing. Basically you need to expose them to more native English speakers.
It seems your elementary school outsource English studies to the parents. There also may be rampant after school tutoring going on that you are not aware of.

If you want to make your kids read more try getting them books about something they are interested in. If they are into math - get them some age-appropriate math history books, something about Greek mathematicians or people like Galois with a fascinating life story.
Assuming that they also study foreign language at school they are almost try-lingual. Get them some books about history of languages, talk to them about how the languages they know deal with grammar. Maybe this will help them more interested in languages. I used to do this with my kids and it was productive. In the process I discovered that their (NJ award winning elementary) school almost did not teach mechanics of English.

Your kids do NOT need tutoring to learn better conversational, academic, and written english. You did NOT ruin their futures by having them here. This is an issue that can be solved for $0.00. You are the parent. Make them unplug the electronics.

Go to the library once a week. Or once every two weeks. Tell them this is what is going to happen from now on, and tough if they don’t like it. Create a reward chart for book reading. I used charts for my kids until 8th grade, they work. Or some other kind of reward system. Be diligent. Stick with it. Reward them with an extra hour of computer time whenver they finish a book.

Don’t totally ban the electronics, of course. But replace some of that time with books and documentaries. My techy son LOVES documentaries. Get the Planet Earth series. Watch old Mythbusters episodes. Mythbusters is great, my kids absolutely adored that show. Plenty of explosions. Watch Discovery Channel, History Channel. I do agree that spending too much time on electronics doesn’t help.

Make sure they are socializing with other kids outside of school. You are in NJ, right? You have an incredible science museum. Go there. Go on a camping trip this summer, use a ranger program. Go to an aquarium. You have a fun mine in NJ, it produces flourescent rock. The kids can choose their own rocks, and the mine is really cool. Yes, you do have to make an effort, but getting a tutor to teach them what they can only learn from experience and exposure is not how to do it. Kids learn by doing, and this is true of language as well. Time is on your side, because they are young.

P.S. How much will they hate having a tutor teach them English. That money is better spent at the places I suggested.

Your kids are bilingual and will soon catch up in reading/writing English. Being bilingual confers all sorts of cognitive advantages! Many immigrant parents stop speaking their home language to their kids and deprive their children of these advantages.

My situation at home is similar to yours, OP. My son doesn’t read much either. His English however has been advanced so far, though I wonder if he’ll fall behind in high school. He’s two grade older than yours. What differs between yours and mine might be that my kid is talkative and listens to or watches people talking online a lot. Maybe a vocabulary building activity alone can help yours. But people are different, there are Albert Einsteins and there are Bill Clintons.

@eiholi , what? Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar and attended Oxford. He wasn’t exactly stupid or lacking in conversational English skills.

I was assuming he meant scientific minds and humanities minds.

I have a kid who is unable to remember any grammar concepts in either of her languages. She is so smart she usually does ok in college because her ideas are good. For the first time she has an instructor dinging her for grammar. She will be back to checking everything at the writing center.

I mentor a group of first gen college freshmen who are ESL. Although they were born in the US, they only speak Spanish at home. It is not apparent in their conversational English, but woefully apparent in their writing skills and ability to read anything complex or nuanced, and they’re struggling to complete college level work.

These students did not grow up reading for pleasure - only did assigned reading, which is not enough, and as a result, their vocabulary is very limited. I suggest that your children read all types of English literature, not only to develop their vocabulary and comprehension, but to learn idioms and literary references. At least a book a week, and more during school breaks. Pick an author and read everything, then go on to another author from the same time period or genre, so they develop a deep understanding.

I really believe this is all they need to do at their age. Tutoring won’t help.

I know you’re kidding, @Lindagaf. I haven’t met a person who thinks Clinton is stupid. I was thinking about his 1988 DNC speech (talked too much) when I wrote.

Reading a lot may be unavoidable, so I may need to keep an eye on my kid too.

Reading a well-written newspaper is a great way to develop vocabulary. If your kids are interested in sports, try reading an article from New York Times sports section together every day. (Or an article from the NYT tech section.)

I would also recommend doing a google search on the terms “BICS” and “CALP” to see if you recognize your kids in the descriptions.

BICS are Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills. These are the language skills needed for everyday personal and social communication. Second language learners must have BICS in order to interact on the playground and in the classroom. It usually takes students from 1-3 years to completely develop this social language. BICS are not necessarily related to academic success.

CALP is Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency is the language associated with native language literacy and cognitive development. These are the language skills needed to undertake academic tasks in the mainstream classroom. It includes content-specific vocabulary. It may take students from 5 to 7 years to develop CALP skills. CALP developed in the first language contribute to the development of CALP in the second language.

@ArdenNJ -

It is possible that your kids were miss-handled by the ESL evaluator, but I don’t know what standards she was required to hold them to at that evaluation time, or how many years of follow-up were required by your state at that time. Certainly the comments from the classroom teacher would indicate to me that it may be worth asking for re-evaluation for ESL services. The language issues that the classroom teacher noted are precisely the sorts of things that a good ESL resource teacher could help a classroom teacher add into the regular classroom instruction. And frankly, I’d bet that there are a fair number of English-only speakers in that classroom who have at least some gaps in those areas. This could be a win-win for lots of students.

An interesting thread to find demographic peers :wink: We were in the same boat, but the kids’ language skills turned out just fine. Lots of good advice has already been provided by other posters, but let me try to pinpoint several other things. We never bought X-boxes or PlayStations, no matter how much they asked. #1 became an avid reader from early age, but it took #2 a few more years to start regular extracurricular reading. Both kids studied several foreign languages in elementary school, and continued throughout middle-high school and college, so today both of them are fluent in 3-4 languages. Learning a third/fourth language may help with developing English skills if instructions are provided in English. They also tutored many different subjects beginning in middle school, and tutoring may also have helped them to build active vocabulary. Lastly, both participated in several writing workshops as part of their regular coursework (in a magnet public school), as well as privately. That said, the most dramatic improvement of their language skills has probably occurred in high school, and later in college. The oldest became an amazing writer, but writing reports is also part of her job description.

Thank you all. I truly appreciate all the insights. @Lindagaf . Do you remember the first time I posted on these boards last year? You warned me that I was getting too worried too early. This board has been an eye opener for me. If I didn’t find this board, I wouldn’t get this many solid advice. Thanks all. I truly appreciate it.

@bouders - Who is and what is series. Excellent suggestion. I talked to my boys today. They loved those books. These will go into their Kindles as soon as their Kindles arrive tomorrow. (Sunday delivery, I know. :slight_smile: )

@Tanbiko - I wouldn’t call us isolated as my kids have a lot of American friends and we have befriended their families. Sleepovers are very common and today we had lunch with one of the families. Great advice on rest of your post. Thank you.

@Lindagaf - Tutoring is out of the window. We will follow the advice that was given. Our action plan includes a lot of these suggestions made on this thread. We have now agreed with our boys on Electronics. No iPad, Xbox during the weekdays. Only on weekends after they are done with their schools work in the morning. We already added all Nat Geo channels, Discovery channel and History Channel and we started DVR’ing a lot of shows and will watch them with kids with Closed Caption On. We have visited the Science Museum many times and they are exposed to a lot of things NJ has to offer. That’s why we thought they were fine but apparently it wasn’t. We now know what we did wrong as parents and we will fix the mistakes we did.

@Gourmetmom - Your post(Post #47) hits the nail in the head. What you are describing here is what we are experiencing. ( http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/20468805/#Comment_20468805 ). Their teachers told us the main reason their English is behind is because they don’t hear English at home from parents. That’s why their grammar is behind and their vocabulary isn’t as good as other American kids. We won’t pursue tutoring as many advised us against. Thanks for your input.

@Ironmom1 - Thank you. You know what the irony is, my wife and I love reading. We are NY Times subscribers and also Times magazine subscribers. We are also subscribers to NewYorker, Forbes etc. But we didn’t make our kids read them. At least we didn’t force them to read them. Now this will change. My wife and I will pick articles for them and have them read it. We will also make them read it to us out loud. We will also google BICS and CALP. Great advice. Thank you very much.

@happymomof1 - You are right on your suspicion. I can honestly say that our kids were mishandled by the school for not providing them ESL. We made this issue top priority and we will solve this on our own until they start middle school in September. If we see that problem continues, we will seek for ESL support. Thanks for the support since yesterday.

I’m going to say this ONE MORE TIME. If you want your kids to learn the language better…they need to USE the language in multiple types of situations. And they need to be interactive ones. It will help some if they read themselves…but it will help MORE if someone actually discusses with them what they read about. You can have the best publications on the planet at your house…and if you just read them…and never talk about them in English, this won’t really improve your kids’ use of English.

So…I agree, have them read. But wouldn’t it also be great to talk to them about what they read!

OR…what about joining scouts or taking classes at that science museum…classes that are fun. Opportunity to interact in English in a positive way…not school.

Please…the best way to,learn a language is to interact with others who speak that language.

@thumper1 , I do not think you understand the realities of immigrant households - babysitters and grandparents who do not speak English and parents who work long hours and are never home. We also made a concerted effort to maintain the heritage language and practically never spoke our bad English to our kids. Between the school, ECs, friends, TV and books our kids had more than enough English so both of them were in advanced language classes by 6th grade.
Yes, there was a lot of TV - Cow and Chicken, Spongebob, Hey, Arnold and Courage, the Cowardly Dog. They all helped too, I believe.
We ourselves actually learned English from TV by watching Peter Jennings - he was the only one we could understand in the beginning due to his Canadian accent.

Actually, I DO understand households where English isn’t the primary language. To be honest, I applaud the parents for also maintaining their native lnaigage with their kids.

This is why I mentioned participation in other activities where English is actually spoken…outside of the home.

Also, if the parent goal is for the student to learn the English language better, then if they can’t talk to the kids themselves in English, perhaps they can find others who can…a book group at the library, for example.

In my experience,the students who had the most difficulty becoming very very competent with English as a new language were those students who only spoke English at school…and no where else. This parent seems to want his twins to become more competent with the English language.

It is my opinion that watching TV, playing computer or IPad games, or reading English books…without any interactions with other English speakers…will not help as MUCH as having spoken interactions.

@ArdenNJ - A reference to this article appeared in my email inbox today. It might be worth sharing with your son’s classroom teachers. http://languagemagazine.com/2017/03/helping-academic-english-learners-develop-productive-word-knowledge/

I really like the Reading and Vocabulary Focus series published by Cengage that use texts from National Geographic articles for teaching academic vocabulary. These are probably outside the reasonable reading range of your kids right now, but possibly worth investigating to give you a notion of ways to help learn vocabulary. http://ngl.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do?N=+200+4294918395&Ntk=P_EPI&Ntt=6171317001268063991698458086728751150&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchallpartial

It strikes me that this is a lot of pressure on two fifth graders, at an age where they are only just learning what might drive them and not intellectually concerned with balance in their skills. They may be perfectly (and naturally) happy with what they like and not interested in a campaign for self improvement- yet. It’s not as if they have no intellectual interests, at all.

This may be one of the rare moments when I think overt push may not be called for, worrying about an ESL reassessment or taking away electronics severely. Their young brains are filled with other than English mechanics, their analytical focus may just be elsewhere, for now. They may catch up just fine, when they hit middle school or even 9th. I’m uncomfortable that the approach to parenting their young minds might be based so much on quantitative, right now. So much more- the curiosity and confidence, and the satisfaction in the ways they want to stretch- may be the priority.

Many here are pointing to reading. I’d say tackle this from another perspective: not tasks, but fun. Don’t let them see improving testing skills as a chore with some numerical goal. Instead, use what does interest them. At this age, there is no one right progression (ie, that it has to be books, first and foremost.) Or just sitting them in front of Discovery Channel, hoping what’s on tonight captures their curiosity.

Start with what does interest them and find those specific programs. (I’d include TED talks, some of which are aimed at kids.) No pressure, just matching their interests. Then, in time, they can want to pursue more knowledge, on their own, including books on those topics. Then it spreads.

One of mine was behind in reading, her skills through 8th were math and facts. Our goal was to keep her burning intellectually, feed that hunger, first.

Will your kids be going to private school for sixth grade? You were very much considering that last year at this time. Wondering where that went.

I won’t repeat what others have said (and agree that the school should provide services, and also ESL type programs are available in most communities). But here is another angle: many of the most selective schools do not require standardized testing. If your kids do fine in school but ran out of time on testing, perhaps this will help you think about the future differently: http://fairtest.org/university/optional