Singapore Expats

Dear all,

I have a child who's turning three soon. My husband and I are locals. The private preschool she is attending right now provide both English and Mandarin classes. I am thinking of exposing her to a third foreign language when she turns three. I have been asking around and apparently, Alliance Francaise offers french lessons for children of all nationalities ages 5 and above. However, the lessons run once a week. Anyone out there knows of any centres/schools offering regular lessons in any foreign languages ??

Thanks !!

Being perfectly honest, i think English and Mandarin will be enough! After this i may consider Spanish before French but only for interest sakes not for a practical requirement.

LKY himself has said that his idea for bilingualism was a flop. He said that one cannot be effectively bilingual without being better at one at the expense of the other. And you want to take a 3 year old and force a 3rd one on them?

No offense meant, but I would be willing to bet you have piano, ballet, cooking and lord knows what else planned for the kid as well to prevent him/her from enjoying their childhood. You did not need to tell us that you were local, we could have guessed.

aiya.. why want to learn 3rd language at only 3 years old? too young la. let you kids learn to ride basikal first la or swimming. more useful mah.

when kids older, maybe learn malay oso good wat. can go JB to haggle for bargain or goto pasar malam. but for a gwai low language, go for spanish lor.

but in any language, make sure your kids learn proper inglish, not like me

I thought that this was a forum to post practical responses to what the person asks - not to tell them how to raise their child. If someone wants to send their child to learn another language and doesn't know where to send them - isn't this forum the place to ask? Also, the fact that they are local or not - some people want to have their children in every activity no matter where they are from. Broad stereotypes are never really nice.

Simultaneous bilingualism doesn't flop if you have two committed parents who are using the languages daily and providing learning materials in both languages (toys, videos, books etc.) Of course one language may dominate for some time (specifically the mother's language) if they get more input in that language, but the child will still be able to become fluent in both languages as they get older. There is nothing wrong with introducing a third language. What would be difficult would be to take a very young child who has a bilingual home environment and then start him/her in school that is conducted completely in a third language (especially one that the parents aren't speaking at all to help with homework etc.). This is not what the poster intends, she was just asking about weekly lessons in some other foreign language. Good luck finding some classes, it is beneficial for children to learn other languages, even at a basic level

cbavasi wrote:I thought that this was a forum to post practical responses to what the person asks - not to tell them how to raise their child. If someone wants to send their child to learn another language and doesn't know where to send them - isn't this forum the place to ask? Also, the fact that they are local or not - some people want to have their children in every activity no matter where they are from. Broad stereotypes are never really nice.

Have they asked the "child" what they "want"? You see, that's the problem here. Most want their children to live out the parents desires through the child without giving a thought to the child's wants at all. Sorry but I still have to disagree with you.

She says her child will be turning 3 when she wants to start the language classes. Maybe her 3 year old will protest at being taken to some language classes, or perhaps her child will is so young that he/she will go along with what the parents want - who knows!

Yeah, or like most local children, will be afraid to say anything for fear of caning or shaming.

Hey Chloe i think your child is still too young too learn a foreign language.I have an older boy at 4.5..initially I thought of doing the same thing but I realised that maybe that will be ok when he gets older.

You may want to consider putting your child in some Art activities or something else that kids their age would like.

sundaymorningstaple wrote:Yeah, or like most local children, will be afraid to say anything for fear of caning or shaming.

I understand that you've been in Singapore for many years now - but is it really necessary to continue these broad generalizations toward a very innocent question? For goodness sake - all she asked is where to take language classes.

So much for common sense.

sorry, not much help here. I do not know of any formal schools that offer foreign languages to kids. But I would say it is definitely possible for a 3-year old to pick up more than English and Mandarin at that age! Most chinese kids do pick up dialects like Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka etc from their grandparents. A number of my local Malay friends are trained in Arabic from young, on top of English and Malay :p
Learning a third language from young is not always due to the ambitions of kiasu Singaporean parents. There are a host of cultural factors involved as well.

I myself am bilingual and so are all my siblings and cousins. We spoke basic Malay/Indonesian from young; Thai and Tagalog for my cousins, as we were very close to our neighbours and they too love to teach us bits of their languages. Maybe an "informal classroom" environment could serve the purpose too. That said, mum and dad never enrolled us into any enrichment classes because we were too poor and they really did not see the need to burden us with extra classes

Some of the replies here sure stink!
Makes one ashamed to be associated with the term "expats".

It is not too early to introduce a third language at 3 years. In fact the earlier the better.Have a look at the Living Language Baby's First Words Series of CDs. According to this series, the linguistic experts recommend exposing babies to sounds from a foreign language from as early as birth as toddlers learn languages effortlessly and often without interference from other accents. If you teach a child at an older age, he will have a harder time learning it.