We've been working on a little bit of French with John Paul, mostly just because he's REALLY interested in "Wuds in Fwench!" His greatest successes have been body parts and numbers - he can already count to 20 on his own.
While walking up the stairs to take a bath, he started counting each step. "One... Two... Fwee..." Then he stopped, turned around and looked at us, and continued, "Un... Deux... Twah..." All the way up to twenty (skipping 16, Andrew reminds me), on his own!
Andrew considers this a failure. I think it's hilarious.
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Andrew's standards are unrealistic even for precocious kids. I don't think most two-year-olds can even count to 20 in their native languages, let alone a second language -- though the ESL teacher in me hastens to add that a new language at the age of two is not really a second language so much as a 1.5th language, or a 1.2rd language, or something. That's because he is learning French the same way that he is learning English.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Melissa. And reciting numbers in order comes quite a bit before recognizing how numbers match up to things.
ReplyDeleteYeah, he started reciting them when he was about 16 months old (in English only, and recognizing them), but it took a couple more months for him to reliably count objects. Right now our big struggle is 3-digit numbers. He can recognize up to 109 just fine, but it gets a little confusing after that. "One-oh-ten" is not a real number, after all...
ReplyDelete"Twenty-zewo" isn't a number, either, I hear. How did he get that? Counting backwards from thirty? Excuse me, "nirdy."
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