Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Conjugation: Bosnian as a Second Language


Isaac and Eleanor are slowly learning Bosnian as they listen to it every day at school, but we decided they need more instruction to make quicker progress. Unfortunately, the school don't offer the equivalent of English as a Second Language program, and we haven't found any Bosnian teachers with experience teaching children.
       
So I decided that I need to create my own Bosnian as a Second Language support program for them. This is a bit tricky since, ahem, I don’t speak Bosnian. (Well, not much better than Isaac and Eleanor, anyway.)
       
Isaac and Eleanor know lots of nouns in Bosnian, but they haven’t taken the leap into speaking in sentences. So focusing on verb conjugations is a high yield endeavor: with just a bit of effort, they’d dramatically increase their ability to speak as well as their ability to understand. But how do you teach a five year old and a seven year old to conjugate verbs?


This turned into a l-o-o-o-o-o-ng post (who knew I had so much to say about conjugation?), so I’ve split it into three parts. I'd love, though, to hear any other suggestions for effective strategies to teach a new language to small children.

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