A question that arises in many families abroad sooner or later. Is the child's Russian still alive, or only understood? It's impossible to tell just by listening, because at home they answer, and they answer in memorized chunks. The ten questions below cover the situation from four angles: speaking, reading, writing, and how much Russian is heard around besides the parents. In English-language articles, this situation is called language dominance.
Test for Parents
Ten questions about a typical day. Answer as things are now, not as you'd like them to be. At the end, there will be a breakdown of language power and three steps you can take this week.
The test placement shows where the child is currently. What to do next depends on their age and how much Russian speech they hear outside the family. Our groups are formed by level, separately for bilinguals and separately for those starting with the alphabet. Lessons are held online for forty minutes. You can get acquainted with the school at two free lessons.
Frequently Asked Questions about Dominant Language
01 What is the dominant language for a bilingual child?
This is the language the child speaks first: it's the language they think in, do mental math in, swear in, and express joy in. The dominant language almost always coincides with the language of school and friends, because that's where the child spends most of their day and solves most of their tasks. The second language doesn't disappear; it simply engages more slowly and requires effort.
02 Is it bad if English is dominant for a child?
By itself, no. For a child growing up in an English-speaking country, English is usually expected to be stronger, that's the normal course of things. What's worrying is when Russian goes from active to just understood, and the child stops responding in it. From that moment, the language starts to quietly recede, and it's much harder to bring it back later than to maintain it now.
03 Is it possible to change the language balance if the child is already a teenager?
It's possible, but a different approach is needed. It's enough for a toddler to just hear the language around them, but a teenager needs their own reason to use it: correspondence, friends, music, travel, a favorite author. A parental schedule doesn't work well here, but a genuine reason does.
