Bilingual carnival Part 2

Here is my second contribution to the Bilingual Carnival which this month is being hosted by www.bilingualforfun.com – pop over if you are interested!

Anyway, for any of the readers of my old blog you will know this is a photo of the scrabble board after a game that Leo had with my Aunty last month – you will spot that there is a complete mix of Italian and English words – they had a great game and both were taking it very seriously!! (but there is a mistake in there if anyone can see it!!??).

 Leo is, as you know, now 12 – his brother is 15 and as they have got older I have thought less and less about the bilingual part of their lives – apart from when they have an English test at school – but recently, partly because of the bilingual carnival and partly because of a few things that have happened I am a little more aware of it. I wanted the children to learn English in a very natural, passive way – what happened, happened – there was no official correction when they made mistakes and definately no conscious teaching – with Thomas that was fine – with Leo I am wondering if I made a mistake – he speaks and communicates well but now, at the ripe old age of 12 he is having some difficulties particularly when it comes to his ’school’ English - he is ‘pisssed off’ that other kids are getting better marks than him simply because they are ‘playing the game’ – ie  if you have to study a dialogue and then have an oral test on it the teacher will expect you to use the same words that were in the dialogue – it said ‘easy’ and when Leo said ’simple’ she wouldn’t accept it – when he had to write about what he can and can’t do he wrote that as far as skating is concerned ‘he sucks’ – she didn’t like that either – he feels a bit cheated – he knows he can speak English, he knows too that he has to improve and put some effort into it but he is feeling frustrated by the fact that the teacher isn’t accepting his English – we have told him that unfortunately marks in Italy count so he must learn to play the game (and it doesn’t come naturally to him) ie do what the teacher expects rather than what he would naturally say but at the same time we have told him that all we are really interested in is that he can happily talk and communicate in any situation he finds himself in – school does have a role here though – he must learn that ‘I suck at skating’ is fine when he’s talking to us or his cousins but isn’t really suitable for school (the same way Thomas had to learn that he couldn’t tell his English teacher that David James is a crap goal keeper – I happened to agree with him but there are words and then there are words!). A strange thing with Leo is that he seems to use words/expressions that we don’t – he went through a phase of saying ‘told’ya!’ – we don’t say that and he isn’t around English speaking people enough to pick it up – like when he kept saying ‘love you’ with that really irritating high pitched tone everytime I went out or said good bye to him (and here we are only talking about last year) – that ‘love you’ stuff is not us – I do love him and his brother but I don’t say it like that, in that context  (they see a lot of affection between me and Robert but we don’t even do the old ‘love you’ stuff – unless there is a heavy dose of sarcasm there!) – we have English Tv which Robert and I watch all the time but he watches hardly any TV in English so I really don’t now where he gets things from – and heaven knows what will happen now he has a year long subscription to The Simpsons comic in English! One final thing – the kids have always called me ‘Mum’ or ‘Mummy’ – never ‘mamma’ in Italian – but now Thomas is 15 we have noticed that he calls me Mummy much more than Mum – again, by not actually being around other kids of his age he has never noticed that ‘Mummy’ sounds odd – but how can I tell my lovely son that??

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