I'm thankful for how God has equipped his church with people who have many different gifts and talents and are willing to share them with those of us adopting. There are several people at our church who teach ESL (English as a Second Language) and one of them passed on several great resources for me. Perhaps the most helpful was this article with many great tips on how to help older kids who are adopted acquire English during the first few months and years. Even if you are adopting younger kids, I think many of the tips could be helpful.P.S. Our kids will only know French when they arrive!
English Acquisition for Internationally Adopted Children
Hannah was a bit of a wonder child in that she was completely fluent with almost no accent after 9 months. Part of the reason is that she is very, very bright; she has an excellent memory; and most importantly, she had excellent Russian language skills which provided the foundation for her to learn her second language. She was also very eager to learn English.
Hannah's mastery of English was very quick. After three years home, she reads above grade level, writes poetry, and understands very subtle nuances of the language. Her language abilities quite remarkable and are probably not typical.
General language tips: -learn as much Russian (Chinese, Vietnamese, etc.) as you can and use it for the basics i.e."It's time for bed." "Do you need to go to the toilet?" "Come here" "Would you like an apple?" "I love you" "You're my daughter."
-When speaking Russian doesn't work, draw pictures and pantomime.
-When you're not communicating in Russian, speak English to your child constantly even when they don't understand it. For example, when you're going for a walk, just chat in English about what you see.
-Start reading as soon as your child is home and read every day
-Teach a game where they have to use English like "Go Fish" (I taught Hannah this on day 2)
-Resist asking them to repeat things for you in English, they'll do it when they're ready
-When they start to speak English, instead of correcting them, repeat it back correctly. For example if Hannah aid, "Yesterday I eat ice cream," I would say, "You ate ice cream yesterday?"
-Early on, get one of the phonics games. It helps them learn the alphabet as well as sounds
-Make language fun--after Hannah learned her alphabet, we did lots of verbal alphabet games
-As Hannah's English began to take off, my rule was I only corrected one thing per day
-Get a translator/tutor. I had a Russian graduate student who spent a couple hours with Hannah each week for a couple months. They were speaking Russian, but Olga was also teaching Hannah basic English i.e. vocabulary, numbers, a few letters, etc. I also used Olga to translate the "big" issues i.e. safety topics, upcoming Christmas, the aunt she was about to meet who was pregnant, etc.
Watching an older child begin to comprehend then to speak English is one of the many miracles of older child international adoption!
