Why teach your children Russian?
Keeping the Russian language alive; Nurturing Bilingualism in a country / environment where it is not the Native language.
If you’re looking into tips and guides of how to teach your children Russian, in an environment where it is not spoken regularly, you’re in the right place! Offering bilinguilism or a second language to your child is so beneficial even if there is no plans to visit Russia or a Russian speaking country, there are many Russian speaking communities around the globe.
If you yourself know even a little Russian, you have the tremendous opportunity to pass this knowledge down to your children for free! Just like cooking, baking, hobbies you have, a language can be passed down in this manner.
Here are just a few benefits to bilingualism:
Benefits to bilingualism include but not limited to
- Cognitive benefits such as improved attention, multi-tasking, problem solving, creativity, and memory.
- Social & Cultural Benefits include; insight to culture, expand social circles, and being comfortable in groups with mutliple cultures (being open minded)
- Professionalism; Opens new job and education opportunities globally.
There are many more benefits. I am very passionate about passing down our knowledge and skills to our children, especially if it is free for us to give and that includes language.
A Little about me
Russian but not russian
Growing up as a first generation of immigrant parents who left the USSR
I was born and raised in the United States and am currently living in Canada. My parents and grandparents immigrated from Russia in the 1990’s. My mom is from Moscow, Russia, while my dad was born and raised in Kazakhstan. His parents immigrated from Ukraine as children, shortly after the second world war had ended. You can say immigration is in my blood.
We lived in very close-knit slavic communities and attended Russian speaking churches, so for me the language was all around. In church, there were classes available for children to learn Russian. Although I seldom attended for many reasons, I still wanted to learn and took the time to self-teach reading and writing. The language was all around so it was very much taking it to the next level beyond the alphabet and sounds.
I remember I would practice penmanship by taking The Bible and simply copying Bible verses on to paper, as we did not have many Russian books available.
Now that I have children and our at-home language is Russian, I always want to provide them the opportunity to learn the language and grasp it well including reading and writing because that opens many more doors than just being able to speak the language. My challenge is that we do not live in a Russian speaking community, their friends do not speak Russian. Our church is mostly German and has Russian and English service translations. Their formal education is in english. Talk about language opportunities!
So come along!
Come along and see how I navigate this challenge to teach my children Russian, give them a strong language foundation amidst living in a country and culture where they have little Russian language opportunities
I will talk about
- Our daily life how we incorporate regular language opportunities
- I will share resources either ones i create, or ones I find to make learning much more interesting
- How to navigate multiple languages; what to do when they speak back to you in English
- and much more!
