Bilingual English/Norwegian children - in Norwegian shools? Any?

[Anonym bruker]

Do they have to follow the same english curriculum as the native norwegians? Or can they get special education in English?

[shari_z]

If your child will be in a regular public school, then he/she will get the same education that all the other children get. They start learning English (British English, not American English) in first grade, so your child will just have an advantage over the others. My kid has loved being able to speak English and understand everything right away in at least one subject, and it has become a problem in that she wants to only speak English - which doesn't work well when the other kids don't understand. So her teacher and I had to have a chat with her today about that. (She's in 3rd grade.)

 

I guess the exception would be if your child didn't speak Norwegian, then it would get help in English UNTIL it learned Norwegian well enough to be integrated.

 

You can always look in to private schools if you want your child to have his/her education in English.

[Anonym bruker]

Have you found having Engilsh classes at such low level to be a bit of a waste of time? My children have dual citizenship (British / Norwegian). And ideally I would like them to be just as good in written English as in Norwegian. If they follow the speed native Norwegians learn English I fear it will be way to slow and not good enough if we decided to move to the UK at some point.

 

So, if I understand you, we would have to arrange private English education to achieve my goal?

[shari_z]

Well, yes, the English is at a low level, considering that it is aimed for 6 yr olds who don't understand a single word of English. When you look at it in context it's intended for, it's perfectly fine. I have been amazed at how quickly the children pick up on English. As a native speaker, I have been in the class several times to talk with the kids, and from the start I was startled. For example, after about two months at school in 1st grade:

 

Teacher: Good morning, children.

Children: Good morning, teacher.

T: How are you today?

C: We're fine, thank you.

T: What's the weather like today?

(and here they have to think and come up with the correct response, not a rote learned one like above - and they do it!)

C: It's cloudy/rainy/sunny/etc today.

And so forth continues the conversation.

 

I have personally not done much at-home training with my child to teach her written English, so the written aspect has been just right for her as she is just as clueless as the others where writing is concerned. I did try earlier, but she got very confused with the two languages and since we do live here, I stopped until she had a better grasp of written Norwegian. Now, in 3rd grade, we're starting up again. And incidentally, they now, in 3rd grade, have English spelling words every week, in addition to the Norwegian ones.

 

My feeling about Norwegian schooling is, your child (not meant personally, as it would be my child also if we move) will be behind regardless if you move to the UK or the US. I have never heard of anyone whose kid was not at least one year behind - in everything - if they started school here and then moved to the UK or US. And conversely, if they started in the US or UK and moved here, they were far ahead (1-2 years) of the grade (Norwegian skills aside, and those come quickly for the kids who don't speak it when they move here). This applies to lower education.

 

By the time the kids are in videregående, or at least finished with it, they are fluent in English (my experience), both written and spoken. So while the demands are little in the beginning, it increases over the years. I have no idea what foreign language expectations are like in the UK, but I can assure you that in Texas, where I come from, most kids who graduate from high school are *far* from fluent in any foreign language. They might be good, or really good, but I'd say that less than 1% are FLUENT, and the vast majority couldn't ask basic questions to help themselves if stuck in a foreign country.

 

Another example, my parents came from the US to visit when I had baby last year, and spent some time with my sister-in-law and her family. There my mother had conversations with my nieces, ages 12 & 16, in English. How many children at that age would carry on conversations in a foreign language in the US or UK? So they do learn English here, and well. In your case, how well your child would do in English if you move back to the UK would depend very much on your child's own efforts to learn it and the age at the time of the move.

 

If you are able to help your kids at home with written English, then you could do that. I can't tell you that you'd have to arrange private English education, but you could send your kids to private English schools and get your goal that way. But they will miss out a lot on the social life of Norwegian schooling, and I think that would be a pity as long as they are here. My guess would be that many people are more clever than I to help teach their kids the minority language at home, so you could give that a try.

 

I understand the desire to have your kids be fluent in your own native language, in my case English. I can't tell you how many times I cried because my daughter wouldn't/couldn't speak to my parents, in spite of all my talking to her in English, watching BBC and buying English videos for her to watch (not to mention keeping her home with me until she was 3 yrs old). It really broke my heart. But at 5, when we visited Texas, she finally cracked the code and started speaking English. And now I want her to be able to read so badly so she can enjoy the books I read at her age, but her skills aren't that good yet. So I wait and keep working with her, but at her speed, knowing it is also still confusing to her, this bilingual business in written language (this I found out after foreldresamtale at her school on Friday).

 

Good luck to you, and ask more questions if you have them!

[partyoffive]

Yes, they attend the same english classes as the rest.

 

My girls are billangual. But they tend to not WANT to be seperated from the rest of the class either. They get some extra homework and assignments in school. there is a couple of kids in their classes in the same situation. but they want to do what the rest of the class does, and my girls get embarrased/aanoyed when we speak english to them inforont of their classmates.

 

We do a bit at home in stead. It all works out fine.

[noggie]

Not quite true....

If one or both parents are foreign you can apply to the school to get " morsmålsopplæring". The school is then SUPPOSED to get a teacher for you ( in English they would use the normal teacher I guess), but I have heard of parents getting payed to come to school to teach their own child there( Dutch in that case)!!! Not all schools bother though.

When they are older they will have nynorsk as well as "normal" Norwegian/ bokmål ( or the other way) and you can then have extra English lessons insted.

As for the type of English it depends of the teacher. Our went to school in US so speak American English ( we rather have UK English as dad is Welsh, but ....).

Our school also use a program called its learning. Here they mix American and UK English and they never even realised. We just told the teacher that we teach her " correct" English ( no offence to you Americans) and that we expect she doesn't get any mistakes for this even if the book says American English. They were fine with this.

 

 

[shari_z]

But noggie, when I asked about morsmålopplæring, I got for a reply that that was aimed at children who did not speak Norwegian at all and needed to have their schooling in their native language (English, Dutch, German, you-name-it) and *only* until they were good enough in Norwegian to drop the morsmålopplæring.

 

I do get an impression, though, that immigrants to Norway who have English as their native language aren't quite immigrant-enough, if you understand what I mean, to qualify for many of the programs (be it school, barnehage or otherwise) aimed for minority language speakers. For example, here in my city, there is a free barnehage for children 4-6 yrs old who have another language than Norwegian as their native language. It's supposed to prepare them for starting school, of course. Well, I asked the helsestasjon about that and got for a reply that "Well, you could try, of course, but it was really not meant for English-speaking children, but rather "real" minority language speakers, like turkish, urdu, somali, etc." That of course was a barnehage, not school, but I have asked at my older child's school and gotten the same answer: she speaks Norwegian, she does not qualify for morsmålopplæring.

 

You (noggie) are fortunate that your school was understanding about the UK English vs American English. As an American, my child obviously speaks American English. It aggravates me to no end that she, as a native speaker, is told that she pronounces words wrong or spells them wrong because she uses American pronunciation or spelling. It is not wrong!!! It is a different version of the same language. In the same manner that speakers/writers of nynorsk are not wrong, they are using a different language. Maybe not the best comparison, but you get my meaning. Now I happen to think that RP is very nice to hear and don't mind my daughter learning it, but at the same time, I do mind her being told she is wrong for using American English.

[--niffi--]

I have a 13-year-old who's bilingual English/Norwegian, and so far I've found that school English varies enormously based on the teacher. In first grade my girl came home complaining that the teacher had corrected her for singing "Three blind mice" with a "th" - the teacher insisted it was supposed to be "tree blind mice".... Sigh. In fourth grade a new teacher asked for help from us at home in finding more suitable books. This helped for a while. In sixth grade an even keener teacher gave her high school English books, which really wasn't very useful as it was all about discos and teenaged stuff and drilled grammar she doesn't need.

 

What these kids need is help learning English spelling rules. Reading came easily for us, at any rate - my daughter loves to read in general and I just always made sure she had as many or more interesting English books to read as Norwegian books.

 

Spelling is harder, because they tend to just follow Norwegian spelling rules and write words the way that makes sense to them. I worked at finding books on this - at home in Australia they sell those homework books at the newsagent's, with gold stars for little ones, you know, and these aren't too bad. Teachers here in Norway are usually happy enough to go along with letting bilingual kids work in their own books when Norwegian kids are doing other work.

 

What *really* worked though was when she wanted to write letter sto her cousin, who's two years younger, and she realised that she couldn't spell properly. Finally: motivation!

 

So - and this was in sixth grade - I found a list of words that sixth graders in Australia typically struggle with, divided them up into batches of ten, printed them out and cut up the sheets so she had a ten words to practice each week: one set at home and one in her pencil case. I emailed a copy of the list to her English teacher, who agreed to give her these words for the weekly "glosetest" (spelling/vocabulary test) instead of the words the other kids were doing. So she had some external motivation to do the work as well.

 

The English teacher also agreed that my daughter should work on four projects a year and prepare a powerpoint presentation for the class on each, along with a written essay. This sort of worked - the teacher didn't have time to follow up properly and it's really hard to get your own kid to work on stuff she doesn't want to do and that she knows she can get away with not working on...

 

But her spelling improved IMMENSELY and is almost at a native level now. She misspells beautiful and receive sometimes, but so do many English or Australian thirteen year olds.

 

Now she's just started ungdomsskole and we've not set anything up with her new teacher yet - I'm waiting to see how things go a bit first. Her first test was a little worrying, though. The teacher had caught three spelling mistakes she'd really made, had corrected one grammatical "error" that wasn't an error at all (grrr!) and had missed four other spelling errors. NOT very impressive.

 

So my experience is if you can provide your child's English teacher with materials, and make it really easy for them, that can help.

 

My sister's taking a different approach for her first grader and fourth grader: she called the international school in her town and asked if they had anyone who could teach a few kids English in the afternoons. She found a couple of other kids at her kids' school who are also bilingual English/Norwegian, and has actually found a teacher who'll come and give them weekly lessons as a group during the SFO time in the afternoon. Sounds like a great plan.

 

My biggest worry about letting kids follow regular Norwegian lessons at school here is that they learn not to work hard. I certainly saw that my daughter was working way below her ability because she knew she could easily coast. I worry that that laziness will transfer to other subjects too.

 

Plus it's just embarrassing for kids to have spelling mistakes like a seven year old when they're twelve.

 

Good luck and let us know if you come up with any good ideas!

[noggie]

Morsmålsopplæring is supposed to be for everybody with another first language! A child who learn to speak and write h*r first language well will also find it easier to learn Norwegian, no mather if they speak Norwegian from start or not (or so I have been led to belive from linguists I've spoken with about it).Bilingual kids often mix up the grammar of the languages if they don't. Some schools just can't be bothered to do the work as they have English anyway. What they don't get is that that is not the same.

I had both Pakistani and half Italians in my class and both got morsmålopplæring( yes, back in the stone ages). I also worked in sfo and as teacher assistent and the students at that school ( in Oslo) all got it as well ( if the parents asked). in the example I mentioned the dad was American and mum dutch. They chose Dutch as they use English at home.

I agree English speakers are treated as not foreign enough. we were lucky enough to get kindergarden when she was little because of her dad and we had split up then. I clearly am the Norwegian part here, but that didn't matter they said. Pluss we said we used English at home; )The sad thing is it's down to whoever's in charge where you live wether you will get what you're entitled to or not.

 

As for pronunciation, most Norwegians can't pronounce "w" correct ( they say "v" as they would in Norwegian) and they have an American/ Australian accent from watching too much television.

They sound so difficult where you live!

Shall now count my blessings. Good luck to you

 

 

 

 

[shari_z]

I actually checked at my school this week about morsmålopplæring and found out that children who are fluent in Norwegian do NOT qualify for morsmålopplæring. However, my kid (who is fluent in Norwegian) could get in a program called Grunnleggende norskopplæring. My question to the teacher was then, And this is supposed to help her learn better English how??? Sounds more like more Norwegian, rather than English as a native language instruction.

 

So, noggie, if you have gotten morsmålopplæring for your child, you are indeed lucky! Seems like if I want my kid to learn written English at a faster pace/as a native language, I will have to do the work myself.

 

So to the thread starter, the answer to your question could be answered like this: It depends on where you live, as to whether or not your child will follow the same English curriculum as the native Norwegians. You might get lucky as others have been, or you might get unlucky like me.

 

Now I'm going to find some sort of English-teaching resources.....

[Anonym bruker]

You may be able to work out a solution where he/she is allowed to work with other material than the monolingual children, I know several kids who do that. Their parents have bought books meant for native speakers of English that give their children the challenges they will never get otherwise.

[Pinnus]

I just feel that I need to comment on some of the statements that a few of you are writing in this thread. I am 100% Norwegian so you will have to excuse any misspellings or other errors.

 

I am curious to why some of you seem to expect the Norwegian school system to keep your childrens english level up to speed with the level in the UK, US or Australia?

I cannot in a million years imagine that if I moved to one of those countries the schools would provide my children with Norwegian lessons sufficient enough that they could just pop right back in Norwegian schools at any time? I also do not think that parents from Bulgaria, Estonia, Ukraine, Portugal or any other countries expect their children to learn their mother tongue in Norwegian schools at the same level as if they were in their home country?

Why should it be different just because you are native english speakers?

 

At least your children will learn english in school, from elementary school to high school? In Norway?! English in Norwegian schools, belive it or not, is probably at the highest level in Europe, or the rest of the world for all that matters. As someone else pointed out, hardly anywhere else will a 12 year old be able to carry on a conversation in english? If you go to Germany, France or any country in eastern-Europe the english is by far a lot worse then here?

 

I have had only the basic english in school, requiered by Norwegian school law and I find that I do more then alright when I go abroad.

 

What I do not understand is why it should be different for you and your children because you are native ENGLISH speakers?

If your children speaks Norwegian why should they be requiered to do more? My boyfriend is Bulgarian and we will try our best to have our children speak Bulgarian, but it is obvios to us that we will need to do this on our own?

[shari_z]

Hi Ludi4ka:)

 

You have some interesting and valid points. I hope I made myself clear earlier in the thread that I will help my child *on my time* to improve her written skills in English and not expect the schools to do it. I am impressed with how quickly they learn it, and it was I who commented that my 12 year old niece was able to carry on a conversation in English with my monolingual mother.

 

I think the reason it appears to be different is because English has such a focus in the Norwegian school system and because Norwegians generally are good at speaking English. Bulgarian, Polish, Urdu, etc are not the main foreign language of this country, and that is just a fact. There are downsides to that, and here is one example. I moved to Norway 10 years ago, just a couple of months after a Polish friend. She was able to speak Norwegian much more quickly than I because nobody understood Polish. She was forced to learn Norwegian to make herself understood. I learned written Norwegian very quickly, but didn't start speaking until after I'd been here 4 years - because EVERYONE understood me when I spoke English! Some of the answered me in English, but most just answered in Norwegian. Norwegians are extremely good at English, and I feel that makes native English speakers have a focus on their children learning English at a native level in Norwegian schools - an expectation I find to be unreasonable, but understandable.

 

As I wrote earlier, my heart just broke when my daughter couldn't speak to my family in English, and now I am so anxious for her to be able to read and enjoy the books I read when I was 8 years old - which is why I want her to learn English as a native language. But I will do that on my time, not the school's time, and just be grateful for the fact that she is learning English in school at all.

 

That is my take on it. Maybe others have a different explanation.

 

Nice comments you came with. :-) (And your English is excellent - just proves how well all these children today will be in 15-20 years' time.)

 

[dualamerican]

Dear Ludi4ka and shari_z

 

I'm a Norwegian-American living in Norway since I moved here in third grade, now 18 years ago. You both seem to propogate a typical Norwegian attitude that I met all through my school years until I had great English teacher from Sri-Lanka in High School.

 

I definately disagree that we cannot expect the Norwegian school to provide specialized programs for native English speakers. It does for lots of other minorities, so why not? Also this is not about hiring native speakers necessarily as would be the case for Urdu. Since most English teachers now their trade it all they have to do is be willing to change the program.

 

I spent so many wasted years in class rooms attending English lessons for those who don't know the language. The result is that I know it no better now than when I moved here from the States. What is worse is that English teachers generally disapproved of the fact that I knew English and rather discouraged me from being ahead of the rest. It is easier with a uniform group. At best my teacher would rather cheakishly shrug my wish to learn more saying something like "look on the bright side you don't have to study so hard for this subject - be happy for that". As if you go to school to pass exams and not learn.

 

I now speak only English with my daughter at home. Hopefully she will enter the school system with a great advantage. I definately hope the system will have come further and help her build on these skills rather than break her down.

[Anonym bruker]

To all of you from an English teacher:

 

1. Your child's English teacher is not allowed to "correct" American English pronounciation or spelling to British or vice versa. (Or any other native English "dialect")

 

2. If your child wants to learn more than the rest of the class, he/she is entitled to different or more tasks. That is what tilpasset opplæring means.

 

I advice you to talk to your child's English teacher about your child's education. That might be all the teacher needs to be remided of his/her duties.

 

Good luck!

[shari_z]

Anonym 14:01 10.09.2010:

 

I'm glad you have made these points. In the year since I first answered on this thread, I have become more and more discouraged with my child's school/teacher where English is concerned. My child is now in 4th grade and as far as I know, she does not have a special English teacher, only her "kontaktlærer", who is, in my opinion, extremely poor in English. I am tired of having to correct the school with giving misinformation on spelling of English words and misusage, only to be told "we copy it from 'Stairs', so that's just the way it is". So I just tell me child that "kunst og håndverk" is not "art" in English, as she was taught, but more correctly "arts and crafts".

 

I am now in a process to move to the U.S. for the spring semester simply because I want my daughter to have more English training than she is getting here in Norway at her school. I am hoping that I will be able to take with me Norwegian lessons so she won't fall too far behind in that, but otherwise I expect she will make strides and be in for a rude awakening in the American school system (at least where she will be) as they are definitely more demanding on the students. And I hope that one semester will be enough to jump start her written English skills such that she will be able to read Nancy Drew, etc in English as quickly as she does in Norwegian. Just reading alone in English will keep her skills up until the standard here (at whatever grade level it is) reaches her level.

 

But I will inquire more about tilpasset opplæring, because as I have stated earlier, the only thing our school was willing to offer her was "grunnleggende norsk opplæring" - and that hardly will improve her ENGLISH skills, and is othewise unneccessary as she is already fluent in Norwegian and doing fine in her Norwegian class at school.

 

Thanks for your input! :-)

[Anonym bruker]

Hi Shari_z,

 

I am a Norwegian mum married to an English speaker and the children are all bilingual. My son is also in 4th grade and since 3rd grade he has English with the class above. We are several families with bilingual children and together we have organised English lesson(after school) with a nativ speaking teachers. This has improved my sons reading and writing skills.

Another tip if you go to US for a semester is to check out www.globalskolen.no. This is a Norwegian oline school so your daughter want fall behind.

Good luck

 

[Kaisa75]

Hi to you all! I am Norwegian, married to an Irish guy, and have spent the last 7 years in Ireland (living in Norway now). I find this discussion really interesting, as both my children are bilingual too (am expecting the third now). I love the idea of organised lessons after school for biligual children (but am not sure we would be able to organize it in my home town, as it is rather small). My impression is that a lot of the English teachers in "grunnskole" have quite a poor level of the language.. Having said that, I am guessing it is good enough for Norwegian kids, because their level is so low. And, like Shari_z mentioned earlier, the majority of the pupils master it very well when they leave "videregående", so the school must be doing something right!

 

I didn't realize that you were entitled "morsmålopplæring" in English... Whether this is the case or not, I find it shocking that the teachers won't give the biligual pupils extra challenges (in other words "tilpasset opplæring"). This is something you can demand from the school, as they are obliged by law to do so!

 

Best of luck to you all.

[Anonym bruker]

It is really imortant for us that our kids master both languages, so we are considering moving to the US when our oldest starts school, so that he can get solid understanding English grammar and writing. And them maybe return to Norway after 3 years. I have understood it to be easy to get extra training in Norwegian if you come from abroad, so hoping that will bring his norwegian up to a good level agian.

 

Think this is really complicated, I am not satisfied with the English training he will get at his school here in Oslo.

 

Anyone thinking similar?

[cpubim]

I've actually experienced this challenge myself. Try spending your teens in Latin America (then Norway) as a native English speaker, when you don't come from an English-speaking country. I wasn't entitled to any special classes. However, I made arrangements with all my teachers that I could do what I wanted during class, as long as I did the classwork.I actually found that certain of my language skills were reinforced by having the basic rules repeated at a late age.

 

Now that I have successfully raised my children bilingually and my eldest has started school this year, this is an issue that is veryø important to me. "Luckily" my son has been assessed by various agencies for possible learning disabilities (turned out he's just very bright, and needs work on his social skills), so we managed to get "should receive extra challenges during his English lessons" as a point on his individual school plan. Unfortunately, I don't see any sign of this, and have had little success in my attempts to talk to his English teacher. Luckily I have friends in the UK who have managed to supply me with early reading/writing material from over there, which I can use. And I just keep monitoring the situation, watching for any signs of boredom.

 

In the end, we'll probably go live in the UK for a year or two to give our children a better foundation in English (and hopefully cure my daughter's strange English accent).

[Anonym bruker]

We must be very lucky, as our kids get English education on their own level ceveral times a week. We're a couple where Dad's from Wales and Mum's from Norway. Before our kids went to "innskriving" at school we were informed by the "skolesjef" in our kommune that if we wrote them in as bilingual we'd be intitled to certain perks.

So our kids, who are in a very small, rural school, have the books the others have, but cruise through those in no time. In addition they have a set of more advances books, and a few hours a week me or my husband i payed to teach them on their level. It works fine and our Uk family is very impressed with our kids' language skills.

 

Being a bilingual family is a lifestyle though. We've made a concious choice to talk English at home, watch English news, read English books and provide the children with lots of books, dvds and computer games in English. My kids have never been uncomfortable with us speaking English to them and both enjoy exploring both languages.

 

Well, guess we're lucky with our kommune then... as we get both extra material and paid for hours to teach them:-)

[Anonym bruker]

Anyone of you know how the deal is in Oslo? Is it up to each school, or bydel how they organise this?

[Spring Ahead with English]

I understand this problem from both sides:

I moved to Oslo last August to be with my fiancee (very soon to be husband), and have since been tutoring children in english.

 

I am a licensed teacher, having done my studies in Canada and Australia, and have taught in the UK. This has given me a very differentiated idea of what good teaching practice, I must say that I feel Norway's system is lacking in areas at the barenskole level.

 

Since August I have been tutoring both Norwegian and native English speakers in conversational and the grammatical English. My students' ages range from 4 - 15. This summer I will be finalizing my paperwork for starting my own private company to provide tutoring services in english.

 

If this sounds like an opportunity that you might be interested, please feel free to get a hold of me here.

 

Thank you very much for your time.

 

Sonia

 

 

[Marge76]

Hi Sonia,

 

We are a bilingual family that will be moving to Oslo in a couple of months. We would be interested in having someone tutor our 5 year old son in English.

 

Please send me a private message here, and I can give you more details!

 

[Anonym bruker]

I haave to agree with Shari_z here. My youngest is dual citizen too, and baby will be too... UK and Norwegian. I am a preeschool teacher my selv (and Norwegian) and I can confirm that in Barnehage, as ong as the child speaks English in any form, they do not get extra follow ups in language, because we norwegians are supposed to be able to speak and understand English our selves. That means that me as preschoolteacher should be capable (spelled correct?) to integrate and teach Norwegian to English speaking children my self. My oldest daughter is Norwegian. (different father). She did not know a word English when i met my husband. (she turned 5 just after I met him). She is now 8, and she talks English very well... Our experience is when she comes home from school, she might have learned a few English words or childrens songs or nursery rymes. We have had to correct her English several times (and have complained to the school) because it was so bad that we couldn't understand her. Her teacher had not been good in prounouncing the words her self, so our girl got confused.

 

Another thing was, she came home from school all proud of a new word. She had learned the word rock.And then she pointed at a pebble..... ! I told her that is a pebble, rock are bigger than that, found her a rock, and told her aboout stones. By the way, she actually knew this from before, but thought she had learned a new word on the pebble. Poor confused girl. We explained to her in the end that she have a teacher that was not very good in English, so if she woeacher ment she shhe tndered what tould just ask us. We also did offer to come and help the school wih their English lessons, as we know there are more kids in that class that has English speaking parents. School ignored it completely. Our girl is now starting a new school in the autumn.

 

Have to say, I do wonder how it will be when our next ones starts school....