Who is Magali?
Hello my name is Magali Cuoq, I am 43 years old and I am French, I live in France. I have 3 children, 13, 11 and 4 years old. My husband is French. Raising your French children bilingually is not easy but it is a challenge that brings many benefits.
At home, we speak French, our mother tongue. Being a mother and bilingual. I am not bilingual in the sense of being a mother tongue, but I have always used English in my daily life, whether at work, with friends, or for the last 13 years with my baby sitter and au pair. My husband works in an almost 100% English environment. My baby sitter is American and has been with us for 2 years, and during the confinement she has lived with us 100% which has helped a lot!
Language practice from an early age
As I have two secondary school children who lack practice, we institute English-only dinners. We also impose some films or series in English without subtitles for the teenagers.
For the little one, I have spoken English to her since birth, doubling the French, and we have had an au pair and baby sitters who speak English to her and play with her in English. I have also taken out a subscription to an online tool of training videos for children by children which supports our approach. So my daughter understands a lot now and is able to ask for simple things in English. She already has quite a lot of vocabulary! The funny thing is when her older brother asks her for translations!
Speaking English to my baby was quite intimate actually, as it seemed so unnatural to those around me. So we set up dialogues and rituals in English. The older children are not too willing but they eventually follow suit. I’m happy to see that English is becoming more widespread at school from a young age, but it’s still too timid for my taste.
Raising your French children bilingually
For me, bilingualism brings an opening for the future, but we’ll find out later! For the moment, at 4 years old, I can see that my daughter is at ease with everyone, even foreigners who don’t speak the language, and she is not shy! And she has been expressing herself very well in French since she was 2 years old, which was quite surprising. Sometimes she engages in conversation with me in English: I think she is trying to create a moment of closeness. And she asks me a lot about vocabulary, I feel she wants to.
And for his future learning, the future will tell us, I think this experience can only be beneficial.
If you embark on an adventure like mine, when you are not bilingual yourself: really hang in there, believe in yourself, and maybe don’t do it alone. The risk is not to integrate it into everyday life when it goes beyond everyday life, it becomes a learning process and can be experienced as a constraint for the learner as well as for the person trying to teach.
Discover in video the interview of Magali Cuoq realized by MARYPOP :
Read also Sarah’s interview of her children’s bilingual education on our blog.
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