Intermediate fluency.
This is an exciting stage, especially for adults because you're able to absorb things that are not only comprehensible but they are also interesting. At this stage, there's less need for gestures, visual aides and context clues. The level of comprehension is much higher and the quality of the conversations is much deeper. A challenge that many of our parents face during this stage is the fact that their children's ability begins to surpass their own.
It is at this stage that parents may wish to have meaningful conversations with other native speakers, read books about things that interest them and/or find a community of like minded parents who want to raise bilingual children and have conversations that are at a more challenging level. While comprehension during this stage is excellent, it is important to note that you will still make grammatical mistakes and the best way to really understand the rules of grammar is to simply surround yourself with even more input, even more conversations in the second language.
Mastery of grammar is not achieved by memorizing rules and conjugating verbs, but rather by the constant usage of the language and through real and meaningful interactions which your brain can tie those rules to. The more real and meaningful interactions you have in the second language, the more the grammar structures will become second nature to you.
** Application
Tell stories of your childhood.
- Ask more in depth questions:
- What would happen if?
- Why do you think?
Advanced fluency.
Congratulations you're bilingual... for now. As you may have noticed we use the phrase language learning journey often throughout the book and there is a valuable reason for this. Being bilingual is not a final destination. It truly is a journey and once you stop using the language, you will stop being bilingual. For this reason it is crucial that you continue having real and meaningful relationships with people who speak the second language.
It is also important to note that while you may be bilingual in many areas of your life, you may not be bilingual in all areas of your life. Here are a couple examples to illustrate this. Daniela's father in law. Woo was born and raised in Korea. He moved to the United States when he was 8 and when he came to the United States was encourage to mainly speak in English. His 2 younger brothers were born and raised in the United States and therefore only spoke English and all his new friends were English speakers. He quickly started losing his Korean. The last person that he had a real and meaningful relationship with who only spoke Korean was his grandma and once his grandma passed away he no longer had a need to speak Korean and he has now completely lost his Korean language.
Example 2. Not bilingual in all subject areas. Daniela's example. While I am bilingual and have been told I have a native fluency in both English and Spanish, I went to college in US and all the vocabulary around child development came me in English. I was very surprised when I went to talk to one of my teachers about fine motor skills in Spanish and I was stuck, I was stuck because I couldn't think of the right terminology in Spanish. I had to, of course I was still able to communicate because I could say small muscles, the children can use small muscles and then she went on to tell me the right terminology in Spanish for fine motor skills.
This is a perfect example of why it is so important to have different conversations about different topics so that you can expand the different topics that you are bilingual in.
** Application
- Ask your child to retell stories or jokes.
- Take turns making up silly stories.
- Have your child teach you how to do something in the target language.